Orts #717

all, from Romola (1862/63) by George Eliot (1819-1880)

   Altogether this world [Florence at the close of 1492], with its partitioned empire and its roomy universal church, seemed to be a handsome establishment for the few who were lucky or wise enough to reap the advantages of human folly: a world in which lust and obscenity, lying and treachery, oppression and murder, were pleasant, useful, and when properly managed, not dangerous. And as a sort of fringe or adornment to the substantial delights of tyranny, avarice, and lasciviousness, there was the patronage of polite learning and the fine arts, so that flattery could always be had in the choicest Latin to be commanded at that time, and sublime artists were at hand to paint the holy and the unclean with impartial skill.

. . . it is the lot of every man who has to speak for the satisfaction of the crowd, that he must often speak in virtue of yesterday’s faith, hoping it will come back tomorrow.

Justice is like the Kingdom of God — it is not without us as a fact, it is within us as a great yearning.

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Oliver Sacks, a modern day saint IMHO, on his diagnsis of terminal cancer: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html