Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.

I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

Margaret Thatcher

I am so grateful for my troubles. As I reflect back on my life, I have come to realize that my greatest triumphs have been born of my greatest troubles.

Steve Maraboli

The perfect church service,would be one we were almost unaware of.Our attention would have been on God.

C.S. Lewis

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

George Eliot

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Wole Soyinka

Nunc scio quit sit amor.Lat., Now I know what love is.

Virgil

Power is not a means; it is an end....Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself....The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything.... No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends....We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.... There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless....If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

George Orwell, 1984

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.

George Orwell, 1984, Pt 1 ch 3

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.

George MacDonald

my idea of good company.. is the company of clever, well-informed people. who have a great deal of conversation.

Jane Austen

A wise man is able to differentiate between humility and weakness, he does not mistake courage for pride.

Newton Gatambia

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Matthew 7:12

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