Heather

“The picture of a universe of infinitely many wholly unrelated substances is at least as hard to understand as the monism of Spinoza, and far less easy to reconcile with appearances.”
― Roger Scruton, Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction

“Choosing Luther and Calvin instead of the spiritual reformers who were their contemporaries, Protestant Europe got the kind of theology it liked. But it also got, along with other unanticipated by-products, the Thirty Years’ War, capitalism and the first rudiments of modern Germany. “If”
― Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy: An Interpretation of the Great Mystics, East and West

“The social state has freaks which Nature does not allow herself; it is nature plus society. The description of social species would thus be at least double that of animal species, merely in view of the two sexes. Then, among animals the drama is limited; there is scarcely any confusion; they turn and rend each other — that is all. Men, too, rend each other; but their greater or less intelligence makes the struggle far more complicated.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Works of Honore de Balzac

“The Oratorian boarding school in Vendôme, which Balzac was sent to at a young age.  It was a gruelling and miserable place to live, with severe monastic rules.”
― Honoré de Balzac, Works of Honore de Balzac