(After witnessing executions in Paris) When I saw the heads being separated from the bodies and heard them thump, one after the next, I understood, and not just with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence and progress could justify this crime. I realized that even if every single person since the day of creation had, according to whatever theory, found this necessary I knew that it was unnecessary and wrong, and therefore that judgments on what i ...

I realized that I had been lost, and how I had become lost. I had strayed not so much because my ideas had been incorrect as because I had lived foolishly. I realized that I had been blinded from the truth not so much through my mistaken thoughts as through my life itself, which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism. I realized that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that I had ...

The hero sacrifices himself for something - that's the morality of it. Now, from another position, of course, you might say that the idea for which he sacrificed himself was something that should not have been respected. That's a judgment from the other side, but it doesn't destroy the intrinsic heroism of the deed performed.

The Indian yogi, striving for release, identifies himself with the Light and never returns. But no one with a will to the service of others would permit themself such an escape. The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others. One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero, is that one lives only for themself, while the other acts to redeem society.