A Socialist Government is one which in its nature does not tolerate any true and real opposition. For there the Government provides everything; and it is absurd to ask a Government to provide an opposition.
G. K. Chesterton, Outline of Sanity
If it is art, it is not for all and if it is for all, it is not art.
Arnold Schoenberg
Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
He who has so little knowledge of human nature, as to seek happiness by changing any thing but his own dispositions, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove.
Samuel Johnson, Rambler 6
Every affection which seems good is not be pursued immediately: nor must every opposite affection be fled from straightaway.
Non enim omnis affectio, quae videtur bona, statim est sequenda: sed neque omnis contrario affectio ad primum fugienda.
De Imitatione Christi III.9.4
Compared to modern politics, the Athenians drew relatively few distinctions and imposed few effective buffers between public opinion and decision making – either at the level of state policy formation or legal judgement. Objectivity was not considered possible or even particularly desireable. That there was a relatively direct and causal relationship between the opinion of the majority, and state policy and legal decisions is a fundamental difference between Athenian democracy and modern governmental systems. This direct and causal relationship must be a key factor in our assessment of the social function of Athenian political oratory.
Josiah Ober. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton 1989 (151).
The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalisation of indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others, it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it is none of my business. The globalisation of indifference makes us all ‘unnamed’, responsible yet nameless and faceless.
Pope Francis §
The great art therefore of piety, and the end for which all the rites of religion seem to be instituted, is the perpetual renovation of the motives to virtue, by a voluntary employment of our mind in the contemplation of its excellence, its importance, and its necessity, which, in proportion as they are more frequently and more willingly revolved, gain a more forcible and permanent influence, till in time they become the reigning ideas, the standing principles of action, and the test by which every thing proposed to the judgment is rejected or approved.
To facilitate this change of our affections, it is necessary that we weaken the temptations of the world, by retiring at certain seasons from it; for its influence, arising only from its presence, is much lessened when it becomes the object of solitary meditation. A constant residence amidst noise and pleasure, inevitably obliterates the impressions of piety, and a frequent abstraction of ourselves into a state, where this life, like the next, operates only upon the reason, will reinstate religion, in its just authority, even without those irradiations from above, the hope of which I have no intention to withdraw from the sincere and the diligent.
This is that conquest of the world and of ourselves, which has been always considered as the perfection of human nature; and this is only to be obtained by fervent prayer, steady resolutions, and frequent retirement from folly and vanity, from the cares of avarice, and the joys of intemperance, from the lulling sounds of deceitful flattery, and the tempting sight of prosperous wickedness.
Samuel Johnson, Rambler 6
I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair
And angrily I cried, “Perdition!
Up from out of under there.”Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, “What should he come
Up from out of under for?”
Morris Bishop
What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary — property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life — don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. Vol 1, 591-2.