Natural Quotes (page 108)
Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it's right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of its existence. We can't prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering - unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality.
Ursula K. Le Guin
There are... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky...
E. T. A. Hoffmann
I have sometimes thought that a woman's nature is like a great housefull of rooms: there is a hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits . . . and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.
Edith Wharton
Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal) hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way—by example.
Frank Herbert
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature. Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit. By its own moods interprets, every where. Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge