7
" We are training not isolated men but a living group of men, - nay, a group within a group. And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, - not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the lory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth...and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and bringing a birth, not an abortion. "
― W.E.B. Du Bois
12
" As melancholia replaced the jarring of my invention, I sat.
Unable to breathe in the smog I had created, unable to stand on my betraying legs, unable to howl at the heavens over my sordid soul.
In this inferno, I became paroxysmic, my self-hatred, superparamount, numbness dulling the agony of such a devilish act,
An iron curtain fell upon the surrounding world, or at least what I had left of it to be owned by the laconic eclipse.
All the angels fled, disowning my prayers, the lurid world backed away, leaving me forsaken and detached,
I could no longer hear the bombings, hear them fall, my own fabrication, only the dead air that came after, the intense silence.
Cynical and paralyzed, I realized I had purloined a portion of Hell and given it to the unwilling Earth,
Punishing those I had no right to punish, judging those I had no reason to condemn, destroying cities I had never set foot in.
This is how I became Death, the destroyer of Worlds. "
― Moonshine Noire
14
" The world is too much with us; late and soon,Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;Little we see in Nature that is ours;We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,The winds that will be howling at all hours,And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,For this, for everything, we are out of tune;It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. "
15
" If an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitous man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him: he may-no matter how generous and good his nature- one day repent of the connection he formed in early life; and she may have the pain and torture of knowing that he does so. "
― Charles Dickens , Oliver Twist