102
" Alain gazed at the old road, his expression uncharacteristically somber. " The Emperors believe they have the power to force their illusions on all others. This is part of that. The road itself is declared dead, never to be used, and no one dares dispute the Imperial will." " Not much better that the Great Guilds, is it?" " No I do not think so. When you seek allies among the commons, Mari, I believe you should look to those who do not blindly accept the authority of their leaders." " Too much failure to accept authority and you end up with anarchy, like in Tiae," Mari pointed out." That is so," Alain agreed. " But as you told your elder, there is much that lies between total control and anarchy. The leaders of our Guilds and the rulers of the Empire would have us believe that only those two extremes exist, but I have been among the free cities and you have been in the confederation. Their governing systems are not perfect, but they work while still allowing their people freedom." " Freedom?" Mari turned to Alain, surprised. " I've never heard you use that word. Hardly anybody uses it." " I was taught that freedom is an illusion, only one more illusion which distracts from the path of wisdom." A flare of some deep emotion showed in Alain's eyes. " But I have felt freedom, Mari, as I walked the road beside you, and I know it is no illusion. The will of the Great Guilds, of the Emperor, those things are illusions, and their images will not endure. "
107
" He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns. "
― Robert Sheckley , Mindswap
111
" I have always said which politics is ugly, still i would like to tell let's have no faith in politics and don't trust politician. see what is going on in our world most important in our own country, can you really see? people are getting killed or losing their life for the false and wrong purposes of those ugly politician. i can expect more worse the situation then it is right now, and I am pretty sure I won't be disappointed. i wish our fellow humans specially our nation understand that we will never be able to build our country by making war everywhere, as i always said that with war we can not bulid our country, make our nation life better and bring a positive change in our society or our world. with war we only destroy our country, killing our fellow human beings and even destroying humanity inside of ourselves. Let's understand that we have a group of wrong and ugly people which we call them ( politician ). they are trying to do whatever they can and it take even the let lots of people to die for their own purpose to get what they want. they will never be able to bring peace by what they are busy doing so please come join me and let's say (No) to war and not only with words but we need to show it practically in our life , Let's not to pick up guns and refuse to go War. We need to have faith in God and follow the right path that he showed us. Let's spread love among human beings. Remember that if you keep having faith in politics and politician, i promise that you will see more difficult time and more worse then how it is now. Let's stop making excuses, having faith in God, asking him for help and following the right path that he showed us. "
113
" He perceived too in these still hours how little he had understood her hitherto. He had been blinded, — obsessed. He had been seeing her and himself and the whole world far too much as a display of the eternal dualism of sex, the incessant pursuit. Now with his sexual imaginings newly humbled and hopeless, with a realization of her own tremendous minimization of that fundamental of romance, he began to see all that there was in her personality and their possible relations outside that. He saw how gravely and deeply serious was her fine philanthropy, how honest and simple and impersonal her desire for knowledge and understandings. There is the brain of her at least, he thought, far out of Sir Isaac's reach. She wasn't abased by her surrenders, their simplicity exalted her, showed her innocent and himself a flushed and congested soul. He perceived now with the astonishment of a man newly awakened just how the great obsession of sex had dominated him — for how many years? Since his early undergraduate days. Had he anything to put beside her own fine detachment? Had he ever since his manhood touched philosophy, touched a social question, thought of anything human, thought of art, or literature or belief, without a glancing reference of the whole question to the uses of this eternal hunt? During that time had he ever talked to a girl or woman with an unembarrassed sincerity? He stripped his pretences bare; the answer was no. His very refinements had been no more than indicative fig-leaves. His conservatism and morality had been a mere dalliance with interests that too brutal a simplicity might have exhausted prematurely. And indeed hadn't the whole period of literature that had produced him been, in its straining purity and refinement, as it were one glowing, one illuminated fig-leaf, a vast conspiracy to keep certain matters always in mind by conspicuously covering them away? But this wonderful woman — it seemed — she hadn't them in mind! She shamed him if only by her trustful unsuspiciousness of the ancient selfish game of Him and Her that he had been so ardently playing.... He idealized and worshipped this clean blindness. He abased himself before it. "
― H.G. Wells , The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
115
" ...that whole day, being with Willem, being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door. "
― Gayle Forman , Just One Day (Just One Day, #1)
120
" And all at once he saw before him a precipice, as it were without bottom. He was a patrician, a military tribune, a powerful man; but above every power of that world to which he belonged was a madman whose will and malignity it was impossible to foresee. Only such people as the Christians might cease to reckon with Nero or fear him, people for whom this whole world, with its separations and sufferings, was as nothing; people for whom death itself was as nothing. All others had to tremble before him. The terrors of the time in which they lived showed themselves to Vinicius in all their monstrous extent...Vinicius felt, for the first time in life, that either the world must change and be transformed, or life would become impossible altogether. He understood also this, which a moment before had been dark to him, that in such times only Christians could be happy. "
― Henryk Sienkiewicz
