Rainier Moreno-Lacalle’s Reviews > The Passionate State of Mind: And Other Aphorisms > Status Update

The nonconformist is a more stable type than the conforming individual. It is the average man of today who shows the most striking differences from people of other ages and other civilizations. The rebel of today is twin brother of rebels in all ages and climes.

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

When we are conscious of our worthlessness, we naturally expect others to be finer and better than we are. If then we discover any similarity between them and us, we see it as irrefutable evidence of their worthlessness and inferiority. It is this that with some people familiarity breeds contempt.

The only way to predict the future is to have the power to predict the future. This win possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make the their prophesies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person’s nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.

Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not organically part of us, while self-esteem derived from the potentialities and achievements of the self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body or possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is sensitive and uncompromising.

... the path of self-realization is the most difficult. It is taken only when other avenues to a sense of with are more or less blocked. Men of talent have to be encourage and goaded to engage in creative work. Their groans and lame at echo through the ages.

The best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be it’s cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self.