Formative Quotes (page 92)
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Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist.
John Gresham Machen
Ecthelion must be similarly from Aegthelion . Latter element is a derivative of stel 'remain firm'. The form with prefix ' sundma ' , estel , was used in Q{uenya} and S{indarin} for 'hope'? sc. a temper of mind, steady, fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose. The unprefixed stel- gave [? S verb] thel 'intend, mean, purpose, resolve, will'. So Q ? elma 'a fixed idea,..., will.
J. R. R. Tolkien
He had, in fact, already begun to sink into that creeping dry rot of pedagogy which is the worst and ultimate pitfall of the profession; giving the same lessons year after year had formed a groove into which the other affairs of his life adjusted themselves with insidious ease. He worked well; he was conscientious; he was a fixture that gave service, satisfaction, confidence, everything except inspiration.
James Hilton
The assumption is that life doesn't need to be navigated with lessons. You can just do it intuitively. After all, you only need to achieve autonomy from your parents, find a moderately satisfying job, form a relationship, perhaps raise some children, watch the onset of mortality in your parents' generation and eventually in your own, until one day a fatal illness starts gnawing at your innards and you calmly go to the grave, shut the coffin and are done with the self-evident business of life.
Alain de Botton
But words are things and a small drop of ink, Falling like a dew, upon a thought produces. That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think;'Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses. Instead of speech, may form a lasting link. Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces. Frail man, when paper - even a rag like this -, Survives himself, his tomb and all that's his.
George Byron
Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury? sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal? drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover. The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy. But never mind about gods! Sara ranting at him represented the human spirit in its purest, least...
Salman Rushdie
What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which gave its wintry glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I remembered no one who had ever lived and breathed within my quietly moving form~ The Vampire Armand
Anne Rice
I marvel again at the nakedness of men's lives: the showers right out in the open, the body exposed for inspection and comparison, the public display of privates. What is it for? What purposes of reassurance does it serve? The flashing of a badge, look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here. Why don't women have to prove to one another that they are women? Some form of unbuttoning, some split-crotch routine, just as casual. A doglike sniffing.
Margaret Atwood