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1 " You fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye "
― Margaret Atwood
2 " Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined. "
― Aristotle , Politics
3 " Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of people-shaped spacecraft. We are affected constantly by what's going on around us. Whether our flexibility is based in neuroplasticity or in less dramatic aspects of the brain, we have to start acknowledging that we are mutable, persuadable and vulnerable to clever distortions, and that very often what we want to be is a matter of constant effort rather than attaining a given state and then forgetting about it. Being human isn't like hanging your hat on a hook and leaving it there, it's like walking in a high wind: you have to keep paying attention. You have to be engaged with the world. "
― Nick Harkaway , The Blind Giant
4 " And you’re stuck like a hook through the roof of your mouthTired of living for your sick daysEvery day makes you sickTired of living just get paidWhen you’re dying to livebut you can’t "
5 " Intelligence without wisdom is like a hook without bait. "
6 " Poetry is a hook for memory "
7 " Mary.” Turning at the soft sound of her name, she glanced behind herself. Then frowned. “Lassiter?” “I’m over here.” “Where?” She looked all around. “Why is your voice echoing?” “Chimney.” “What?” “I’m stuck in the fucking chimney.” She raced over to the fireplace and got on her hands and knees. Looking up into the dark flue, she shook her head. “Lass? What the hell are you doing up there?” His voice emanated from somewhere above her. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” “What are you—” An arm came down. A very sooty arm that was encased in a red sleeve that had white trim. Or what had been white trim and which was now smudged with ash. “You’re stuck!” she exclaimed. “And thank God no one lit this fire!” “You’re telling me,” he muttered in his disembodied voice. “I had to blow out Fritz’s match like a hundred times before he gave up. Fuck, that sounds dirty. Anyway, just remind me never to try to be Santa for your kid, okay? I’m not doing this again, even for her.” Mary stretched a little farther in, but the logs on the hearth stopped her. “Lassiter. Why can’t you free yourself by dematerializing—” “I’m impaled on a hook that’s iron. I can’t go ghost. And will you just take this?” “Wha "
8 " Fuck," he said, sliding his hands down to my thighs. " You're making this very hard to be the good guy you said I was last night." " I'm not drunk." He pressed his forehead to mine, chuckling softly. " Yeah, I can see that and while the idea of taking you right now, against the wall, is enough to make me lose control, I want you to know that I'm serious. You're not a hook up. You're not a friend with benefits. You're more than that to me." I closed my eyes, breathing heavily. " Well, that was...really sort of perfect. "
9 " I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side. "
― Anne Rice , Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
10 " For preference utilitarians, taking the life of a person will normally be worse than taking the life of some other being, because persons are highly future-oriented in their preferences. To kill a person is therefore, normally, to violate not just one but a wide range of the most central and significant preferences a being can have. Very often, it will make nonsense of everything that the victim has been trying to do in the past days, months or even years. In contrast, beings that cannot see themselves as entities with a future do not have any preferences about their own future existence. This is not to deny that such beings might struggle against a situation in which their lives are in danger, as a fish struggles to get free of the barbed hook in its mouth; but this indicates no more than a preference for the cessation of a state of affairs that causes pain or fear. The behaviour of a fish on a hook suggests a reason for not killing fish by that method but does not in itself suggest a preference utilitarian reason against killing fish by a method that brings about death instantly, without first causing pain or distress. Struggles against danger and pain do not suggest that fish are capable of preferring their own future existence to non-existence. "
― Peter Singer , Practical Ethics
11 " Both Marx and Nietzsche understood that moral outrage is the last resort of the powerless. That is why Marx refused to issue moral condemnations of capitalism, preferring instead to lay out, calmly and ruthlessly, his reasons for believing that it is destined to be replaced by socialism. And that is why Nietzsche mocks Christianity for portraying its crucified Saviour as bait wriggling on a hook to catch unsuspecting souls. "
― Robert Paul Wolff
12 " A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other. "
13 " I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it's poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple. "