Law and order is gone, gunmen roam at will, raping and looting, and as people die of heat and thirst, bodies lie rotting in the street. Until now, such a hellish vista could only be imagined in a Third World disaster zone. but this was America yesterday." Daily Mail, London, Sept. 3, 2005.

 

 

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The essence of being human is that . . . one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. George Orwell.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Proust.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. Shakespeare.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied. Otto von Bismarck.

Speech is the surplus of our existence over natural being . . . . which like a wave gathers and poises itself to hurtle beyond its own limits. Merleau-Ponty

The intellectual is in search of a doctrine which shall make great demands on him and cure him of his subjctivity. Merleau-Ponty

What a child doesn't receive, he can seldom give later. P.D. James.

The corruption of reason is shown by the existence of so many different and extravagant customs. Pascal.

Sophistication is the ability to approach culture with the mininum amount of anxiety. Northrup Fry.

You win a while,
And then it's done,
Your little winning streak. Leonard Cohen.

The welfare of humanity is always the welfare of tyrants. Camus.

What constitues the Republic is the total destruction of what is opposed to it. Saint-Just

He looked to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of. Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was. Cormac McCarthy

The constellations . . .
worlds sprawled in their pale ignitions
upon the nameless night. Cormac McCarthy

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light. Edna St. Vincent Millay

Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awating the ultimate practitioner. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. Oscar Wilde

A poem is momentary stay against confusion.Robert Frost.

Every generation
is equidistant from God. Leopold Von Ranke

To find the Western path
Right through the gates of wrath. Blake

A patriot must be willing to defend his country from his government. Voltaire.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Sir Winston Churchill

In nature there's no blemish but the mind. None can be called deformed but the unkind. Shakespeare.

Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. Francis Bacon.

After the last tree has been cut down, after the last river has been poisoned,
after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find
that money cannot be eaten. Cree prophecy

I am haunted by the possibility that out of our mammalian midst, a Plato,
a Gauss, a Mozart, justified, redeems the species which devised
and carried out Auchwitz. George Steiner.

Sometimes one starts to dream about what culture, literary life, and teaching could be if all those who participate, having for once rejected idols, would give themselves up to the happiness of reflecting together. Merleau-Ponty