Perhaps because of my fever, perhaps because of my lofty pain, I imagine that some one there is declaiming a great poem, that some one is speaking of Prometheus. He has stolen light from the gods. In his entrails he feels the pain, always beginning again, always fresh, gathering from evening to evening, when the vulture steals to him as it would steal to its nest. And you feel that we are all like Prometheus because of desire, but there is neither vulture nor gods. There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of the churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living. There is no mysterious fire. I have stolen the truth. I have stolen the whole truth. I have seen sacred things, tragic things, pure things, and I was right. I have seen shameful things, and I was right. And so I have entered the kingdom of truth, if, while preserving respect to truth and without soiling it, we can use the expression that deceit and religious blasphemy employ.
Henri BarbusseRelated topics
beginning blasphemy deceit declaiming desire employ entrails evening expression fever fire frenzy fresh gathering great hell imagine kingdom light living nest nor pain paradise perhaps poem preserving prometheus pure religious respect right seen soiling speaking steal stolen tomb tragic truth use vulture while things inferno feels gods stealsRelated quotes
I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn't enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.
2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.
3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by "printing money”, using the central bank's power of currency creation to push interest rates down.
4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses.
Paul Krugman
Here you should be guided by the words of St. Paul, I Corinthians 7 [:4–5], "The husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does; likewise the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does. Do not deprive each other, except by agreement,” etc. Notice that St. Paul forbids either party to deprive the other, for by the marriage vow each submits his body to the other in conjugal duty. When one resists the other and refuses the conjugal duty she is robbing the other of the body she had bestowed upon him. This is really contrary to marriage, and dissolves the marriage. For this reason the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death. If the government fails to act, the husband must reason that his wife has been stolen away and slain by robbers; he must seek another. We would certainly have to accept it if someone's life were taken from him. Why then should we not also accept it if a wife steals herself away from her husband, or is stolen away by others?
Martin Luther
I wouldn't say that I'm an orthodox Christian at all and the longer we live in the twentieth century the more fantastic discoveries are made, the more we hear what the universe is like I find it very difficult to be a kind of orthodox believer in Jesus as my saviour and that sort of thing. I'm more interested in the extraordinary nature of God. If there is God, if there is deity, then He, even as the old hymn says, He moves in a mysterious way and I'm fascinated by that mystery and I've tried to write out of that experience of God, the fantastic side of God, the quarrel between the conception of God as a person, as having a human side, and the conception of God as being so extraordinary. ... So these are still things that occupy me, and every now and again, if you're lucky, you're able to make a poem out of this conception of God ... so I suppose I'm trying to appeal to people to open their eyes and their minds to the extraordinary nature of God.
R. S. Thomas
Eons and unimaginable eons ago, before mankind existed on earth, only the waters existed. There was no land. And from the slime there sprang up a race of beings which dwelt in the sunken abysses of the ocean, inhuman creatures that worshipped Dagon, their god. When eventually the waters receded and great continents arose, these beings were driven down to the lowest depths. Their mighty kingdom, that had once stretched from pole to pole, was shrunken as the huge land masses lifted. Mankind came - but from whence I do not know - and civilizations arose. ... These things hate man, for they feel that man has usurped their kingdom. Their greatest hope is to sink the continents again, so that the seas will roll over all the earth, and not a human being will survive. Their power will embrace the whole world, as it once did eons ago. They are not human, you see, and they worship Dagon. They want no other gods worshipped on Earth. Ishtar, dark Eblis, even Poseidon of the sunlit seas....
Henry Kuttner
About the beginning of our Civil Wars, in the year 1642, a Chaplain of Sr. Will. Waller's (one evening as we were sitting down to Supper at the Lady Vere's in London, with whom I then dwelt,) shewed me an intercepted Letter written in Cipher. He shewed it me as a Curiosity (and it was indeed the first thing I had ever seen written in Cipher.) And asked me between jeast and earnest, whether I could make any thing of it. And he was surprised when I said (upon the first view) perhaps I might, if it proved no more but a new Alphabet. It was about ten a clock when we rose from Supper. I then withdrew to my chamber to consider of it. And by the number of different Characters therein, (not above 22 or 23:) I judged that it could not be more than a new Alphabet, and in about 2 hours time (before I went to bed) I had deciphered it; and I sent a Copy of it (so deciphered) the next morning to him from whom I had it. And this was my first attempt at Deciphering.
John Wallis
