#til

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." (Frauds on the Fairies, 1853) ↗

— Charles Dickens

#utilitarianism #age

[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automatic dishwasher will sigh through its changes, a plane will drone over, the nearest freeway will vibrate the air. Red and white lights will pass in the sky, lights will shine along highways and glance off windows. There is always a radio that can be turned to some all-night station, or a television set to turn artificial moonlight into the flickering images of the late show. We can put on a turntable whatever consolation we most respond to, Mozart or Copland or the Grateful Dead. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#isolation #loneliness #modern-society #noise #peace

You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life. ↗

— Emo Philips

#being #day #every #every day #get

Simpson, the student of divinity, it was who arranged his conclusions probably with the best, though not most scientific, appearance of order. Out there, in the heart of unreclaimed wilderness, they had surely witnessed something crudely and essentially primitive. Something that had survived somehow the advance of humanity had emerged terrifically, betraying a scale of life monstrous and immature. He envisaged it rather as a glimpse into prehistoric ages, when superstitions, gigantic and uncouth, still oppressed the hearts of men: when the forces of nature were still untamed, the Powers that may have haunted a primeval universe not yet withdrawn. To this day he thinks of what he termed years later in a sermon 'savage and formidable Potencies lurking behind the souls of men, not evil perhaps in themselves, yet instinctively hostile to humanity as it exists.' ("The Wendigo") ↗

— Algernon Blackwood

#monster #monstrous #nature #primeval #primeval-man

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still. ↗

— Goldwin Smith

#country #england #famine #find #machines

And to go forward, you need to get rid of your anger. And in order to do that, you need to go back to the past," Mike said. "You sound like a fortune cookie. ↗

— Amy Lignor

#anger

Anger is an agro-chemical that makes self-destruction to grow faster. Like a stone thrown upward, all angry people eventually fall down into the dirty ditch of sorrowful self-harm and a pathetic loss of real-self. ↗

— Israelmore Ayivor

#anger #fall #fertilizer #grow #real-self

We got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that. ↗

— Pat Travers

#ago #albums #along #battles #doing

One thing that makes aikido is so powerful, it utilizes power of opponents to win the fight. ↗

— Toba Beta

#art-of-peace #fight #opponent #powerful #utilize

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man. ↗

— H. Rider Haggard

#fallen-nations #futility #inevitability #knowledge #learning