Minghao

“From now on you will have to cast off sloth in this way," said my master, "for one does not gain fame sitting on-down cushions, or while under coverlets; and whoever consumes his life without fame leaves a mark of himself on earth like smoke in the air or foam in water. And therefore stand up; conquer your panting with the spirit that conquers in every battle, if it does not let the heavy body crush it down.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“The whole social world seems populated with forces that in reality exist only in our minds. We know what the flag is for the soldier, but in itself it is only a bit of cloth. Human blood is only an organic liquid, yet even today we cannot see it flow without experiencing an acute emotion that its physicochemical properties cannot explain. From a physical point of view, man is nothing but a system of cells, and from the mental point of view, a system of representations. From both points of view, he differs from the animal only in degree. And yet society conceives him and requires that we conceive him as being endowed with a sui generis character that insulates and shields him from all reckless infringement - in other words, that imposes respect.”
― Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

“Society also fosters in us the sense of perpetual dependence. Precisely because society has its own specific nature that is different from our nature as individuals, it pursues ends that are also specifically its own; but because it can achieve those ends only by working through us, it categorically demands our cooperation. Society requires us to make ourselves its servants, forgetful of our own interests. And it subjects us to all sorts of restraints, privations, and sacrifices without which social life would be impossible. And so, at every instant, we must submit to rules of action and thought that we have neither made nor wanted and that sometimes are contrary to our inclinations and to our most basic instincts.”
― Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

“I was so wretched that I felt a greater attachment to my life of misery than to my dead friend. Although I wanted it to be otherwise, I was more unwilling to lose my misery than him, and I do not know if I would have given up my life for him as the story reports of Orestes and Pylades: if it is not fiction, they were willing to die for each other together, because it was worse than death to them not to be living together. But in me there had emerged a very strange feeling which was the opposite of theirs. I found myself heavily weighed down by a sense of being tired of living and scared of dying.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions