To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him; their own selves, their version of him.
When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it’s alive; then they have the parts and they’ve lost the whole, for the link that’s missing was the living soul.
The suffering may be moral or physical; and in my opinion it is just as absurd to call a man a coward who destroys himself, as to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever.
We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection–which we have ourselves created.
