#del

Fidelity purchased with money, money can destroy. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#loyalty #money #selling-out #money

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! ↗

— Charles Dickens

#pretext #self-delusion #money

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them! ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

#deserve #die #front #going #hell

The air was stifling, but he liked it because it was stifling city air, full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music, and the distant sound of warring police tribes. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#music

Most things, even the greatest moments on earth, have their beginnings in something small. An earthquake that shatters a city might begin with a tremor, a tremble, a breath. Music begins with a vibration. ↗

— Lauren Oliver

#delirium #lauren-oliver #small #music

Im Gegensatz zum Tier kann ich mich über die Zwänge der Natur erheben. Ich kann Sex haben, ohne mich vermehren zu wollen. Ich kann Substanzen konsumieren, die mich für eine Weile von der sklavischen Ankettung an den Körper erlösen. Ich kann den Überlebenstrieb ignorieren und mich in Gefahr bringen, allein um den Reiz der Herausforderung willen. Dem wahren Menschen genügt das Dasein nicht, wenn es ein bloßes Hier-Sein meint. Der Mensch muss sein Dasein erfahren. Im Schmerz. Im Rausch. Im Scheitern. Im Höhenflug. Im Gefühl der vollständigen Machtfülle über die eigene Existenz. Über das eigene Leben und den eigenen Tod. Das, meine arme, vertrocknete Mia Holl, ist Liebe. ↗

— Juli Zeh

#nature

If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught? ↗

— Robert J. Sawyer

#darwinism #evolution #infidelity #macro-evolution #macroevolution

I have an acute sense of delicacy. Naturally I am prejudiced in favour of virtue. ("The Accursed Cordonnier") ↗

— Bernard Capes

#virtue #nature

A purposeless virtue is a contradiction in terms. Virtue, like harmony, cannot exist alone; a virtue must lead to harmony between one creature and another. To be good for nothing is just that. If a virtue has been thought a virtue long enough, it must be assumed to have practical justification - though the very longevity that proves its practicality may obscure it. That seems to be what happened with the idea of fidelity... Our age could be characterized as a manifold experiment in faithlessness, and if it has as yet produced no effective understanding of the practicalities of faith, it has certainly produced massive evidence of the damage and disorder of its absence. (pg.115-116, "The Body and the Earth") ↗

— Wendell Berry

#fidelity #marriage #virtue #age

Fidelity is a living, breathing entity. On wobbly footing, it can wander, becoming something different entirely. ↗

— Kay Goodstadt

#brain-tumor #death #faith #food #gay