Luke > Recent Status Updates

[T]he law says you have the right to hold a n[—], but begging the law's pardon, it lies. Yes, Epps, when the law says that it's a liar, and the truth is not in it. Is every thing right because the law allows it?

Until they have been chained and beaten—until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage—let them refrain from saying what they would not do for liberty.

A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!

Been looking forward to rereading this for a long time.

Those who have been indulged by fortune and have always thought of calamity as what happens to others, feel a blind incredulous rage at the reversal of their lot, and half believe that their wild cries will alter the course of the storm.

...I can't say that he is not active in imagining what goes on in other people—but then he always imagines it to fit his own inclination.

[T]here will still remain the danger of mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an inevitable law that we must adjust ourselves to – which seems to me as bad a superstition or false god as any that has been set up without the ceremonies of philosophising.

Why should a gentleman whose other relations in life are carried on without the luxury of sympathetic feeling, be supposed to require that kind of condiment in domestic life?

To glory in a prophetic vision of knowledge covering the earth, is an easier exercise of of believing imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper placards, staring at you from a bridge beyond the cornfields; and it might well happen to most of us dainty people that we were in the thick of the battle of Armageddon without being aware of anything more than the annoyance of a little explosive smoke and...

She had only to collect her memories, which proved to her that 'anybody' regarded illegitimate children as more rightfully to be looked shy on and deprived of social advantages than illegitimate fathers.

The moment of finding a fellow-creature is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation as the moment of finding an idea.

Boredom is fear's patience.

Obviously, they built the hospital for the day they would need it themselves.

...Gwendolyn had not considered that the desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection[.]

Happy Birthday and Google Doodle, Virginia Woolf. Love ya lots.

Oh lord, spare me from introductions mewling and puking on and on about 'shy[ing] away from aesthetic criticism through a fear of sounding prejudiced.' It's not my fault your aesthetics are crap.

Rest in peace, Ursula K. Le Guin. Curse the Nobel Prize committee for being the cowards they are.

[I]t was not a matter of thrift but a precise intent to humiliate.

It is naive, absurd, and historically false to believe that an infernal system such as National Socialism sanctifies its victims: on the contrary, it degrades them, it makes them resemble itself, and this all the more when they are available, blank, and lacking a political or moral armature.

This desire for simplification is justified, but the same does not always apply to simplification itself, which is a working hypothesis, useful as long as it is recognized as such and not mistaken for reality.

Every victim is to be mourned, and every survivor is to be helped and pitied, but not all their acts should be set forth as examples.

What I am saying is that Okafor should not be surprised and should not waste his energy breaking a stick on his poor son's body. It is what happens when you sit back and do nothing about tyranny. Your child becomes what you cannot recognize.

I have worked with politicians, and gangsters, and holy men, and let me tell you, none of these can compete with a writer for mountainous inflations of ego and mouse-like insecurities of soul.

It struck me as slightly funny, as if he expected me to circulate a report on his sexual performance.

I was tempted to buy a complete set of 'In Search of Lost Time' simply because it was all there, but fortunately a complete set of 'Pilgrimage' appeared and tempted me even more.

'Can the West endure any democracy achieved by enemies who in no way resemble them?' (It's a shame that, while the quote is good, I doubt the author means for it to be taken seriously.)

Perhaps self-imposed suffering appeals to her. It does not appeal to me. I know I am capable of suffering for greater things. But to suffer for a truant husband, an irresponsible husband like Adizua is to debase suffering. My own suffering will be noble.

A reputation for ruthlessness can do wonders for peace.