#at

It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force. ↗

— Alexander Hamilton

#chance #government #society #united-states #violence

It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn't seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand. In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God. ↗

— Maria Augusta von Trapp

#inspirational #tapestry #beauty

Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them. ↗

— Mikhail Bulgakov

#wine #women #love

To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men. ↗

— Ella Wheeler Wilcox

#misattributed #men

There were a billion lights out there on the horizon and I knew that all of them put together weren't enough to light the darkness in the hearts of some men. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#evil #hearts #lights #psychology #psychopaths

Rousseau pounced. Men who dislike cats were tyrannical: "They do not like cats because the cat is free and will never consent to become a slave. ↗

— Robert Zaretsky

#jeanjacquesrousseau #men

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley. An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy! (To A Mouse) ↗

— Robert Burns

#fate #men #mice #planning #plans

Relationship doesn’t remain, We resonate on different flames, I could cut you down again, If you were like all other men, If you were like all other men, I know that I could shut you down again ↗

— Amy Winehouse

#men

There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind. ↗

— Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

#fantastique #fantasy #genre #horror #inspiration

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence. ↗

— Pierre Bourdieu

#rationalism #reductionism #transcendence #art