#rve

Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?' 'Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders.' Cosca cocked an eyebrow. 'But we're you truly guilty?' 'Yes' He frowned for a moment then waved it away. 'Nobody's perfect. Lets leave the past behind us. ↗

— Joe Abercrombie

#men

Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as a threat to the very fabric of society. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy and the deviant, the decadents attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived as the chief enemy of art. ↗

— Asti Hustvedt

#bourgeois #decadence #decadent #deviant #literature-decay

It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking. ↗

— Ron Paul

#federal-reserve #fiat #fiat-money #paper-money #war

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

To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#perversion #security #suffering #nature

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. ↗

— Aldo Leopold

#community #integrity #otherwise #preserve #right

Don't observe yourself too closely. Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#let-it-be #observe #past #nature

Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves." "You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least. ↗

— Jane Austen

#hysteria #irony #nerves #sarcasm #respect

I respect those who say that the United States should simply withdraw from the Middle East, but I don't respect them for anything but their honesty. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#isolationism #middle-east #noninterventionism #respect

There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'. ↗

— Philip K. Dick

#liberty #spying #surveillance #surveillance-society #technology