Noreen

“We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.

Arthur Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, eighth edition, pp. 30-31.”
― Arthur Balfour

“That is to say, their thoughts came higglety-pigglety out of the big, buzzing, booming confusion of their minds, too many pouring out chaotically in the same instant.”
― Bernard Bailyn, Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History

“Every major feature of the modern United States—from racial equality to Social Security, from the Pentagon to the suburb—represents a repudiation of Jeffersonianism.”
― Bernard Bailyn, Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History

“Ultimately, happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of your mental afflictions and the discomfort of being ruled by them.”
― Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment