#y

When someone says they feel old, I always want to ask them why they feel old. Time passes for everyone. No one is exempt. ↗

— Donna Lynn Hope

#growing-old #old #age

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. ↗

— Paul Kriwaczek

#leadership #political-stability #age

A brick could be used as the Cube of Love. But I'd use it sparingly, or risk heart attack.
 ↗

— Dark Jar Tin Zoo

#brick-and-blanket-uses #divergence-test #funny #humor #love

The epitome of culture is the search for truth, or at least a reasonable approximation of reality, most notably the need to know ourselves and the world around us. ↗

— Eric Chaisson

#reality #truth #age

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it. ↗

— Irwin Shaw

#warfare #wwii #age

It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#age

A provisional government was appointed on April 1 (it consisted mainly of Talleyrand's whist partners), and the following day the Senate, on Talleyrand's urging, declared Napoleon deposed. ↗

— J. Christopher Herold

#talleyrand #age

I used to play basketball and I was pretty competitive, but I was never a bad loser. I never got angry. For me it was always about doing my best and devoting myself to a challenge. ↗

— Benicio Del Toro

#always #angry #bad #basketball #best

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#age

The first time I saw hundreds of fiddlehead ferns boiling in an enormous pot I realized what an odd person I must be to hear tiny cries from the mouths of cooking vegetables. ↗

— Maureen Seaton

#vegetables #age