Orts #713
Heaven forbid I should fetter my impartiality by entertaining an opinion.
— Nello, in Romola (1862/63) by George Eliot (1819-1880)
Talk not of monks and their legends, young man . . . ! It is enough to overlay human hope and enterprise with an eternal frost to think that the ground which was trodden by philosophers and poets is crawled over by those insect-swarms of besotted fanatics or howling hypocrites.
— Bardo, in Romola
But a little philosophy should teach us to rid ourselves of those air-woven fetters that mortals hang round themselves, spending their lives in misery under the mere imagination of weight.
— Tito, in Romola
After all the talk of scholars, there are but two sorts of government: one where men show their teeth at each other, and one where men show their tongues and lick the feet of the strongest.
— Niccolò Ridolfi, in Romola
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value-added link: six and a half minutes of mesmerizing images: lava flows at Kilauea volcano, Hawaii