... a personal philosophy.

The significant truth is not that you are lucky to have been born into one of the best—the richest or most powerful—countries; but that others are unlucky not to have been born into it. You are not a starving Indian peasant, but you might have been. That you are not is not a matter for self-congratulation, but one for charitable action, for concern. The proper domain for nationalism is art and culture; not politics.

—John Fowles, The Aristos, chap. 9.

... a novel.

... the instinct, or urge, or need, or whatever it was that impelled most boys and a good many grown men to climb things, to get as high as possible. There was a peculiar airy excitement in reaching for a branch or a foothold. And a thick pleasure flowed like syrup through the blood.

—Evan S. Connell, Mr. Bridge, 1969.

... a history.

It may at first sight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in which we actually are. That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful in us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving. But, in truth, there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we should cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future. And it is natural that, being dissatisfied with the present, we should form a too favourable estimate of the past.

—Thomas Macaulay, The History of England, Chapter 3.

... an impression or comment.

In every age, convention and the usage of dull formality are ever wearing away what is beautiful in speech. In every age the pioneer is called upon to penetrate daringly into the unknown and capture new shapes of loveliness, even though in doing so he cannot fail often to bring back what is trivial, banal, extravagant, absurd.

—Havelock Ellis, Impressions and Comments, 18 January 1922.

... an essay.

Mere legal enactments, enforced, or left unenforced, by paid officials or the police, to be effective must themselves become taboos, printed on the fleshy tablets of the individual citizen’s heart.

—Havelock Ellis, “The Function of Taboos,” from More Essays of Love and Virtue, 1931.