#rim

Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#failure #john-steinbeck #morality #punishment #strength

It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#common-law #empowerment #fathers #feminism #feudalism

Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't stand the thought of them changing? Is it a crime when you love someone so much that you can't see clearly? ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#crime #love #seeing #change

In Chestnut Hill money didn't talk, but it drank, and played a lot of golf. ↗

— Alistair McHarg

#dark-comedy #great-dialogue #humor #quirky-characters #social-satire

This document outlines our plan to perpetrate insurance fraud, insider trading, and character assassination. ...hopefully tripling our paycheck on this job. Okay, see? Those words I understand just fine. Use them more often. -Lieutenant Massey Reynstein & Captain Tagon ↗

— Howard Tayler

#money #plans #vocabulary #money

The larger crimes are apt to be the simpler, for the bigger the crime, the more obvious, as a rule, is the motive. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#mystery #motivational

The truth is, I hoped the cure would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him -- I could hit on nothing that wasn't charming. It's wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. ↗

— André Gide

#motivational

You ignorant little rodent! This isn't just an old book. This is the book of Everafter." "Sorry, I haven't read it. I'm waiting for the movie," Puck said. ↗

— Michael Buckley

#sisters-grimm #movies

I looked at it [revolver] as if it reminded me of a crime I had committed with an irrepressible smile such as rises sometimes to people’s lips in the face of great catastrophes which are beyond their grasp, the smile that comes at times on certain women’s faces while they are saying they regret the harm they have done. It is the smile of nature quietly and proudly asserting its natural right to kill. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#crime #nature-s-right-to-kill #regret #revolver #smile

In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality. ↗

— Wilhelm Reich

#god #nature