"Is it necessary to speak more clearly? The milder and calmer you are, the more effective will be your anger; the more energetic you are, the more precious will be your forbearance; the more skillful you are, the better will you profit by your intelligence and even by your virtues; the more indifferent you are, the more easily will you make yourself loved. This is a matter of experience in the moral order, and is literally realised in the sphere of action. Human passions produce blindly the opposites of their unbridled desire, when they act without direction. Excessive love produces antipathy; blind hate counteracts and scourges itself; vanity leads to abasement and the most cruel humiliations. Thus, the Great Master revealed a mystery of positive magical science when He said, "Forgive your enemies, do good to those that hate you, so shall ye heap coals of fire upon their heads." Perhaps this kind of pardon seems hypocrisy and bears a strong likeness to refined vengeance. But we must remember that the magus is sovereign, and a sovereign never avenges because he has the right to punish; in the exercise of this right he performs his duty, and is implacable as justice. Let it be observed, for the rest, so that no one may misinterpret my meaning, that it is a question of chastising evil by good and opposing mildness to violence. If the exercise of virtue be a flagellation for vice, no one has the right to demand that it should be spared, or that we should take pity on its shame and its sufferings." - Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic (The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic)
