Holiness (n.) on the infinite path of approach shows itself as guilt, the giving as parsimony and the exposure as reserve.
Holiness (n.) is the ideal humanity introduced into being — an ideal contrary to the laws of being, not guaranteed to triumph.
Holiness (n.) evokes separation above all, like our word "absolute" — naming a way of being, or a beyond of being, rather than a whatness.
Holiness (n.) is the forgotten origin of the modern rights of man — what Kant, in mid-Enlightenment, called "that old holy book."
Holiness (n.) may change but never descend: what is holy we must raise, not bring down — the permanence of values is their elevation.
Holiness (n.) is necessary for the healthiness of the healthy: no natural tendency is healthy enough not to be inverted.
Holiness (n.) is care as Pascal's love without concupiscence — a no-place before the "there" of being-there, before my place in the sun.
Holiness (n.) of the human is not altered by the influences, complexes and dissimulations that cover it — they sanction the struggle for exploited man.
Holiness (n.) is the ultimate, unassailable value for the man who is truly a man — very difficult to preach, and it makes advanced society laugh.
Holiness (n.) is the most profound upheaval of being and thought: the mad thought in which dying for the other concerns me before and more than my own death.
Holiness (n.) cannot be disputed: man is no saint, but he is the one who has grasped that the only absolute value is the human power to put the other first.
Holiness (n.) of the Other is announced, without any odor of the numinous, by the mere grammar of conversation: the one I talk about is always also the one I talk to, and he contests what I make of him.