Book VII : Modern Times, Ch. IX : The Final Consequences
Penguin Island (1908)
Context: Penguinia gloried in its wealth. Those who produced the things necessary for life, wanted them; those who did not produce them had more than enough. "But these," as a member of the Institute said, "are necessary economic fatalities." The great Penguin people had no longer either traditions, intellectual culture, or arts. The progress of civilisation manifested itself among them by murderous industry, infamous speculation, and hideous luxury. Its capital assumed, as did all the great cities of the time, a cosmopolitan and financial character. An immense and regular ugliness reigned within it. The country enjoyed perfect tranquillity. It had reached its zenith.
“In a life, most of us turn no more than 45 degrees. Not much
compared to those who turn full-circle in the slighest breeze
or those who totally uncoil, but enough in the end
to tell a bag of diamonds from a sack of coal.”
'Crux', from Cloudcuckooland.
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Simon Armitage 17
Poet, playwright, novelist 1963Related quotes
Writing for the court, Spano v. New York 360 U.S. 321 (1959)
1950s
Introduction, p. xiii
"Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982)
[Our treatment of animals is stalling human progress, February 19, 2018, Quartz, https://qz.com/1209936/our-treatment-of-animals-is-stalling-human-progress/]
As quoted in Exit with Honor: The Life and Presidency of Ronald Reagan https://books.google.com/books?id=qPfqBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA64(2015) by William E Pemberton. p. 64
Post-presidency (1989–2004)
“Those who have compared our life to a dream were right…”
Book II, Ch. 12
Variant translation: They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.
Essais (1595), Book II
Context: Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We are sleeping awake, and waking asleep.