there is beauty in every incident of life; the true and the false, the wise and the foolish, are all one in the eye that beholds all without passion or prejudice: and the secret appears to lie not in the retirement from the world, but in keeping a part of oneself vestal, sacred, intact, aloof from that self which makes contact with the external universe. in other words, in a separation of that which is and perceives from that which acts and suffers.
[ aleister crowley, "absinthe: the green goddess" ]