Once in a while evil triumphs because good men do nothing, but usually because they meddle in what is none of their damn business.
Dec 042020
Being
Identity, that spectator of what he calls himself,
That net and aggregate of energies in transient combination.
—Cunningham
Nov 172020
We try to convince ourselves that villains are unhappy: it should be enough to know that they are bad.
Nov 102020
Friends accumulate, like unmatched socks; enemies are chosen advisedly.
Nov 022020
Your self does not lie in what you love, still less in what you hate; or what you think, still less in what you feel: it lies in what you say and do and nothing more.
Oct 292020
Many people are so bored and unhappy that they welcome a personal disaster, as a change, and especially a social disaster, as a change in which others will suffer as well.
Oct 162020
True friends have seen the best in you, and put up with you anyway.
Oct 062020
Countless acts of surpassing excellence have been committed out of spite and fear.
Sep 302020
Sanity is less a particular outlook than a practiced aversion to the multifarious forms of crazy.
Sep 032020
There is a happiness in widely-shared enforced misery that goes a long way toward explaining nostalgia for Stalinism, or broadcast television.
Aug 272020
A single betrayal, revealed at the proper time, can retrospectively poison a man’s whole life.