Fragments from Karl Marx's Scorpion and Felix -
“Ovid sat in Tomi, whither the god Augustus had hurled him in his anger, because he had more genius than sense.
There among the wild barbarians wilted the tender poet of love, whose ruin love itself had brought about. Deep in thought, he rested his head upon his right hand, and his longing eyes wandered toward distant Latium. The singer’s heart was broken, and yet he could not abandon hope and his lyre could not be silent and in sweet songs of passionate melody it spoke his longing and his pain.
Around the old man’s frail limbs the north wind whistled, so that he was seized with unfamiliar shudderings, for it was in the hot land of the South that his life had flowered, and it was there that his imagination had decked its rich hot-blooded frolics in robes of splendour, and when these children of genius became too bold, then about their shoulders Grace would gently cast her divine, enswathing garland of veils so that the gossamer folds spread wide and a rain of warm dew-drops fell.”
Mostly on foreign policy.
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“All his actions had something of the character of an allegory; and it is likely enough that some leaden-witted scientific historian may some day try to prove that he himself was never anything but an allegory. It is true enough in this sense that he was labouring at a double task, and rebuilding something else as well as the church of St. Damien. He was not only discovering the general lesson that his glory was not to be in overthrowing men in battle but in building up the positive and creative monuments of peace. He was truly building up something else, or beginning to build it up; something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation stone, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.” — Chesterton, on St. Francis of Assisi
“I never came into the church as a person who was being taught Catholic doctrines. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church through ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell: when people leave the Church, they have quit praying. The active relating to the Church’s prayer and sacraments is not through ideas. Any Catholic who today has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church. That’s meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.” — Marshall McLuhan
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As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.
This, sir, is my resignation.
” — William Faulkner resigns from the post office, 1924[video]
“Certainly, Gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any sett of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” — Edmund Burke, Speech to the Electors of Bristol, 1774
“We hereby declare our independence from the Autocrat of the Post Office” - Alexander Berkman, 1916