#ty

The right-wing Tories and the conservative Whigs fought Napoleon as the Usurper and the Enemy of the Established Order; the liberal Tories and the radical Whigs fought him as the Betrayer of the Revolution and the Enslaver of Europe; they were all agreed in fighting him, and his notion that their disagreement signified national disunion was mere wishful thinking. All dictators since his time have fallen into the same trap: themselves blind to the values of liberty, they cannot conceive that people who disagree on its meaning can nevertheless unite in upholding their freedoms against patent despotism. ↗

— J. Christopher Herold

#liberty #napoleon #napoleonic-wars #tories #whigs

I believe that the military-industrial state will eventually collapse, possibly even in our lifetime, and that a majority of us (if prepared) will muddle through to a freer, more open, less crowded, green and spacious agrarian society. (Maybe; of course it may be only a repeat of the middle ages.) ↗

— Edward Abbey

#collapse-of-industry #future #age

our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#age

(The subjects of What Should I Do With The Rest Of My Life) "have convinced me that past failing can as easily prove preparatory as predictive. Age does not of itself limit on enable us. The choice is ours. ↗

— Bruce Frankel

#inspirational #motivational #reinvention #retirement #successful-aging

Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them. ↗

— Bill Watterson

#commercial-viability-of-art #tigers #van-gogh #art

I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals. ↗

— Patrick White

#false-teeth #farting #myths #old-age #senility

I once laughed at the vanity of women of thirty or forty who whitened their ruddy old skin with lead, but now I know such salves are not disguises for old crones who wish to catch a young husband. Instead they are only a mask we wear so that we can, for a little while, still recognize ourselves. ↗

— Rebecca Johns

#aging-gracefully #beauty #age

Look at me, chica." When she does, I repeat, "Eres hermosa." "What does it mean?" "You're beautiful. ↗

— Simone Elkeles

#carlos-fuentes #love #rules-of-attraction #sweet #beauty

You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea. Another city will be found, better than this. Every effort of mine is condemned by fate; and my heart is-like a corpse-buried. How long in this wasteland will my mind remain. Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look I see the black ruins of my life here, where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted." New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas. The city will follow you. You will roam the same streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods; in these same houses you will grow gray. Always you will arrive in this city. To another land-do not hope- there is no ship for you, there is no road. As you have ruined your life here in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.2 ↗

— C.P. Cavafy

#age

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths. ↗

— Raquel Cepeda

#educational-inequity #educational-system #infallibility #miseducation #age