61
" Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions. I lost her thirty years ago [I was a child then]--nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.
She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!
And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words [not to mention my features and gestures], I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood which gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.
What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers. "
― Samuel Smiles , Character
62
" Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals enact both in the way they talk about underprivileged blacks and the way they represent them. The existence of that class cruelty and its fascist dimensions have been somewhat highlighted by the efforts of privileged-class blacks to censor the voices of black youth, particularly gangsta rappers who are opposing bourgeois class values by extolling the values of street culture and street vernacular. Significantly, the attack on urban underclass black youth culture and its gangster dimensions (glamorization of crime, etc.) is usually presented via a critique of sexism. Since most privileged-class blacks have shown no interest in advancing feminist politics, the only organized effort to end sexism and sexist oppression, this attack on sexism seems merely gratuitous, a smoke screen that deflects away from the fact that what really disturbs bourgeois folks is the support of rebellion, unruly behavior, and disrespect for their class values. In reality, they and their white counterparts fear the power these young folks have to change the minds and life choices of youth from privileged classes. If only underclass black folks were listening to gangsta rap, there would be no public effort to silence and censor this music. The fear is that it will generate class rebellion. "
― , Killing Rage: Ending Racism
63
" One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong, towering heavenward, turning the twilight to a palpable darkness, a strange and horrible antagonist of vapour striding upon its victims, men and horses near it seen dimly, running, shrieking, falling headlong, shouts of dismay, the guns suddenly abandoned, men choking and writhing on the ground, and the swift broadening-out of the opaque cone of smoke. And then night and extinction – nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead. "
― H.G. Wells , The War of the Worlds
65
" As a young man, he had instinctively husbanded the freshness of his powers. At the time, it was too soon to see that this freshness was giving birth to vivacity and gaiety, and shape to the courage needed to forge a soul that does not pale, no matter what life brings, regards life not as a heavy burden, a cross, but merely as a duty, and does battle with it with dignity.
He had devoted much mental care to his heart and its wise laws. Observing the reflection of beauty on the imagination, both consciously and unconsciously, then the transition from impression to emotion, its symptoms, play, and outcome and looking around himself, advancing into life, he derived for himself the conviction that love moves the world like Archimede's lever, that it holds as much universal and irrefutable truth and good as misunderstanding and misuse do hypocrisy and ugliness.
p. 494 "
― Ivan Goncharov , Oblomov
66
" Black snowflakes creep down from the sky, advancing slowly, methodically. All the money in the world, which my father seems to have, can’t keep the demons from chasing me ⎯ Aishling Morrighan Delaney, a.k.a. princess of Clan Delaney. Everything is messed up. I’m wearing the “Happy Birthday” sash across my chest that my best friend, Claire, had always insisted I wear for my special day, but this is not that day. My twentieth birthday was over a month ago, on October 31, the night of Samhain, the Celtic New Year’s Eve.This is December 7th, and the Ten Colds Moon is rising. My fate stalks me. Doesn’t look like I’m going to make it to my belated birthday party. I lean into my horse, Kheelan, as he tears across the bracken and bramble moor, and beyond through the amethyst fields of devil’s bit, for a moment outrunning the faerie’s freak show. The spiky shrubs of the moor bite my legs as we attempt to outrun the Fates and the black snow that comes like a gathering sandstorm, trailing me. This princess thing in Ireland can get a girl killed fast, or maybe it’s just me. I am the faerie slayer of the seventh order and the 28th generation, the prophesied Gael Siridean, the Searcher. As such, my head is crowned with a supernatural bounty, and the price is high…The thread of my life frays rapidly, as does the hem of this black velvet medieval-style dress I borrowed from my best friend, Claire. She’s throwing me a themed party this year. If I make it out of this alive tonight, she’s going to kill me for ruining her dress and causing her more worry. Maybe she’ll grant me mercy when she takes in my drenched, haggard appearance with thistle strewn throughout my hair and dark eyeliner no doubt leaving claw marks down my cheeks. I can’t tell her what really happened here tonight. I can’t tell anyone. "
67
" To return to the general analysis of the Rosicrucian outlook. Magic was a dominating factor, working as a mathematics-mechanics in the lower world, as celestial mathematics in the celestial world, and as angelic conjuration in the supercelestial world. One cannot leave out the angels in this world view, however much it may have been advancing towards the scientific revolution. The religious outlook is bound up with the idea that penetration has been made into higher angelic spheres in which all religions were seen as one; and it is the angels who are believed to illuminate man's intellectual activities.
In the earlier Renaissance, the magi had been careful to use only the forms of magic operating in the elemental or celestial spheres, using talismans and various rituals to draw down favourable influences from the stars. The magic of a bold operator like Dee, aims beyond the stars, aims at doing the supercelestial mathematical magic, the angel-conjuring magic. Dee firmly believed that he had gained contact with good angels from whom he learned advancement in knowledge. This sense of close contact with angels or spiritual beings is the hallmark of the Rosicrucian. It is this which infuses his technology, however practical and successful and entirely rational in its new understanding of mathematical techniques, with an unearthly air, and makes him suspect as possibly in contact, not with angels, but with devils. "
― Frances A. Yates , The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
73
" [I retained] only the Habit of expressing my self in Terms of modest Diffidence, never using when I advance any thing that may possibly be disputed, the Words 'Certainly, 'undoubtedly', or any others that I give the Air of Positiveness to an Opinion; but rather say 'I conceive', or 'I apprehend a Thing to be so or so', 'It appears to me', or 'I should think it so or so for such & such Reasons', or 'I imagine' it to be so or so, or 'it is so' if I am not mistaken.—This Habit I believe has been of great Advantage to me, when I have had occasion to inculcate my Opinions and persuade Men into Measures that I have been from time to time engag'd in promoting.—And as the chief Ends of Conversation are to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well meaning sensible Men would not lessen their Power of doing Good by a Positive assuming Manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create Opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which Speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving Information or Pleasure: For if you would inform, a positive dogmatical Manner in advancing your Sentiments, may provoke Contradiction & prevent a candid Attention. "
― Benjamin Franklin , The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin