True Libertie Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells 

Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being: 

Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd, 

Immediately inordinate desires

And upstart Passions catch the Government

From Reason, and to servitude reduce Man till then free. 

Therefore since hee permits 

Within himself unworthie Powers to reign

Over free Reason, God in Judgement just

Subjects him from without to violent Lords;   

Who oft as undeservedly enthrall His outward freedom:

Tyrannie must be,   

Though to the Tyrant thereby no excuse.

 

John Milton, Paradise Lost

 

 

Nor love thy Life, nor hate; but what thou livst
Live well, how long or short permit to Heav'n.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

From a friend

The leaping greenly spirit of trees and a blue true dream of a sky.

e.e. cummings 

For Time, though in Eternitie, appli'd to motion, measures all things durable by present, past, and future.

 John Milton, Paradise Lost

People can justify almost anything. That's why history keeps repeating itself.

from something I read

In the end is it not futile to try and follow the course of a quarrel between husband and wife? Such a conversation is sure to meander more than any other. It draws in tributary arguments and grievances from years before – all quite incomprehensible to any but the two people they concern most nearly. Neither party is ever proved right or wrong in such a case, or, if they are, what does it signify? 

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

 

Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.

Satan, Paradise Lost by Milton

Woke

The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys

Traffic

Power

Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

George Orwell, 1984

Nor did He lie asleep before the Word sounded above these waters; ‘before’ and ‘after’ did not exist until His voice was heard. Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow. 

Dante, The Divine Comedy

The Seven Virtues

Charity, Faith, and Hope.  Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance.

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Who sees need and waits a plea, already half refuses.

 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

 

Oh ignorant, self-seeking cupidity which spurs us so in the short mortal life and steeps us so through all eternity!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home.

Carl Sagan

Wisdom for our time

Quando omni flunkus moritati.

As related by Red Green of Possum Lodge 

Evolution vs Capitalism

Evolution is mindless, economics is mindful,

collectively and individually. 

Did you ever know a rich person that didn't want to be more rich?

Said to Angelina

The universe is a giant quantum-mechanical relativistic Rube-Goldberg patchwork construct, knit by interactions of its constituents, changed and ever changing through these interactions.

Vandana Singh, Ambiguity Machines and other stories

To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

Paul R. Ehrlich

The better you know someone the less understandable they become. That's what intimacy is not a threshold of knowledge but a capitulation to ignorance, an acceptance that another person is made as bewildered and ungovernable by her life as you are by yours.

Anthony Marra, Mercury Pictures Presents