The Republic of Heaven

Kate Chopin in The Awakening wrote:The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.

Lajos Zihaly in The Angry Angel wrote:A man who cannot draw strength from himself, but only from litanies and anthems, is far more dangerous than one who after reading a handbook thinks he can drive a car or plane.

Zihaly again wrote:Obviously Mihály Ursi had committed a serious blunder in staying alive - at least as far as his political career was concerned - because had he fallen victim to the Nazis, it is certain that Bear Avenue would still be Mihály Ursi Avenue. Since then it had unobtrusively become Gurkin Avenue. Great political changes show extraordinary fondness and reverence for the dead. Less for the living. Heroic resistance in the living is not always a merit; in most cases it is a dangerous stigma. Those who at some time have resisted are tainted by the eternal stigma that somewhere, for something, they will again resist, because resistance lies in their nature, like some grave flaw of character.

Catherine Jinks in Pagan's Crusade wrote:People who read are always a little like you. You can't just tell them, you have to tell them why.

Anne Rice in Pandora wrote:Let the young sing sounds of death. They are stupid. The finest thing under the sun and the moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition and despair. I marvel at human endurance.

Anne Rice in Pandora wrote:I remember that a long time ago, Armand told me that he asked Lestat, "How will I ever understand the human race?" Lestat said, "Read or see all the plays of Shakespeare and you will know all you ever need to know about the human race." Armand did it. He devoured the poems, he sat through the plays, he watched the brilliant new films with t Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Brannagh and Leonardo DiCaprio. And when Armand and I last spoke together, this is what he said of his education: "Lestat was right. He gave me not books but a passage into understanding. This man writes" - and I quote both Armand and Shakespeare now as Armand spoke it, as I will to you - as if it came from my heart:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps into this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle.
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
"This man writes this," said Armand to me, "and we know that it is absolutely and utterly the truth and every revelation has sooner or later fallen before it, and yet we want to love the way he has said it, we want to hear it again! We want to remember it! We want never to forget a single word."

Garth Nix wrote:Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker?

George Orwell wrote:All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

George Orwell wrote:The creatures outside looked from man to pig, and from pig to man, and from man to pig again; but already it was impossible to tell which was which.

The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
---A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf

and "The world is quiet here" from SoUE