The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), I : The Man of Flesh and Bone
Context: Everything in me that conspires to break the unity and continuity of my life conspires to destroy me and consequently to destroy itself. Every individual in a people who conspires to break the spiritual unity and continuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself as a part of that people.
“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”
“Sometimes it feels like the whole world is conspiring to destroy my house… "
- Shigure Sohma”
Source: Fruits Basket, Vol. 2
“My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place, and I can’t despise my whole life.”
Source: Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches
“All afflicts and injures me, and conspires to my injury.”
Tout m'afflige et me nuit, et conspire à me nuire.
Phèdre, act I, scene III.
Phèdre (1677)
“My sins, my wild loves, and Fate herself
have all conspired against me.”
Erros meus, má fortuna, amor ardente
Em minha perdição se conjuraram.
Selected Sonnets: A Bilingual Edition (2008), ed. William Baer, p. 99
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Erros meus, má fortuna, amor ardente
“The human voice conspires to desecrate everything on Earth.”
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1955)
Source: The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (2010), Ch. 2: 'Life: Freak Side-Show or Cosmic Imperative?', p. 31
“Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or by something else.”
XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: Everything that is destroyed is either destroyed by itself or by something else. If the world is destroyed by itself, fire must needs burn of itself and water dry itself. If by something else, it must be either by a body or by something incorporeal. By something incorporeal is impossible; for incorporeal things preserve bodies — nature, for instance, and soul — and nothing is destroyed by a cause whose nature is to preserve it. If it is destroyed by some body, it must be either by those which exist or by others. … But if the world is to be destroyed by other bodies than these it is impossible to say where such bodies are or whence they are to arise.
