"Luxuries are easy to take up but..." - Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate ... the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.”

“We are all happy if we but knew it.”

“Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.”

“I think it makes small difference to the dead, if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All that is an empty glorification left for those who live.”

“The bed has become a place of luxury to me! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world.”

“Luxury is the opposite of the naturally necessary.”

“I simply decided that dope wasn't worth the ritual.”

“Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.”

“The ending of my experience with cocaine came in a periodic way. I would get high less frequently, I would use smaller amounts, and I would do coke for less periods of time. And that process just kept increasing and increasing until I wasn't using it at all. I didn't go on a program anywhere. I didn't join an organization or detox anywhere. I just slowly tapered off until it was gone. That was also true of my heavy pot use. I just tapered off until there was almost no use at all. And the same thing was true of drinking tons of beer.”