Power as the pursuit of more power inevitably founders in the void that lies beyond itself.

I've watched thee, Scarab! Yea, an hour in vain
⁠I've watched thee, slowly toiling up the hill,
⁠Pushing thy lump of mud before thee still
With patience infinite and stubborn strain.
Strive as thou mayest, spare neither time nor pain.
To screen thy burden from all chance of ill;
Push, push, with all a beetle's force of will,
Thy ball, alas! rolls ever down again.
Toil without end! And why? That after thee
Dim hosts of groping Scarabs too shall climb
This self-same height? Accursed progeny
Of Sisyphus, what antenatal crime
Has doomed us too to roll incessantly
⁠Life's Stone, recoiling from the Alps of time?

All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one's condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied; but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.

Everybody wants power. Power in some form or other. [...] Some people want power to persecute other human beings; you expend your lust for power in persecuting words, twisting them, molding them, torturing them to obey you.

I want power. I suppose that's the story of my life - seeking power.

Forever seeking, never found,
In this wide varied scene;
Sole object of unceasing search,
While in this low terrene.
Yet vain the search, if in the heart
Some lurking passion dwell;
For this will hang with cypress wreath
Retirement's secret cell.
In vain the outward scene is calm,
In vain the world we fly;
If thou, in pure religion's garb,
Thy friendly aid deny.

The struggle for power is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience. It cannot be denied that throughout historic time, regardless of social, economic and political conditions, states have met each other in contests for power. Even though anthropologists have shown that certain primitive peoples seem to be free from the desire for power, nobody has yet shown how their state of mind can be re-created on a worldwide scale so as to eliminate the struggle for power from the international scene. … International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.

So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.

...it is natural for man to try to attain power without recovering grace...(3)

The centre of me is always and eternally in terrible pain ... A searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfiguring and infinite.

Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them.

It is thus that life at its topmost toss irks and pains. Beyond is ever the unattainable, the lure of the infinite with its infinite ache.
- Oh, life! oh, youth! of, hope! oh, years! Oh pain-winged fancy, beating forth with fears.

A fine power is always heralded by great pain.

To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice.