After Quotes (page 174)
Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them. The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but an apalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, - a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her...
Kate Chopin
With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me.
Oscar Wilde
There’s some of them’ll be nursing a guid scratch or two on their hinder-ends this night.… Man, it was a rout.’
‘I imagine,’ said Piero Strozzi, his dark face impassive, ‘that my lord Grey’s army would not relish their defeat either.’
‘Oh, aye, the English,’ said Buccleuch absently.
‘We are, after all, at war with them and not with the Kerrs,’ the Marshal said mildly.
Dorothy Dunnett
The word agriculture, after all, does not mean "agriscience," much less "agribusiness." It means "cultivation of land." And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both "to revolve" and "to dwell." To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by...
Wendell Berry