“Every human creature is a terror to every other human creature. Human minds are like unknown planets, encountering and colliding. Every one of them contains jagged precipices, splintered rock-peaks, ghastly crevasses, smouldering volcanoes, scorched and scorching deserts, blistering sands, evil dungeons from behind whose barred windows mad and terrible faces peer out. Every pair of human eyes is a custom-house gate into a completely foreign port; a port whose palaces and slums, whose insane asylums and hospitals, whose market-places and sacred shrines represent the terrifying and the menacing as well as the promising and the pleasure-giving! But when once any small group of persons has been together for any reasonable length of time the official warders of these custom-house gates are withdrawn. Each individual in such a group feels he can wander freely through the purlieus of these other enclosed fortresses! He does not necessarily move a step. The point is that the gates into the unknown streets no longer bristle with bayonets, are no longer thronged with “dreadful faces” and “fiery arms.” MindHumansFriendshipComfortIndividualityTerror Book:A Glastonbury Romance Source: A Glastonbury Romance
“Who has not watched a mother stroke her child's cheek or kiss her child in a certain way and felt a nervous shudder at the possessive outrage done to a free solitary human soul?” WayHumansChildrenSoulDoneMotherCertainFeltFamilyKissingNervousCheeksSolitaryStrokesHuman SoulOutragePossessive Author:John Cowper Powys
“Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.” MenWorldHumansCertainEnergyHuman BeingsCreativeShareMaterialsOvercomingCreatorMythologyMaterial WorldSecretiveCreative Energy Author:John Cowper Powys
“What is the importance of human lives? Is it their continuing alive for so many years like animals in a menagerie? The value of a man cannot be judged by the number of diseases from which he escapes. The value of a man is in his human qualities: in his character, in his conscience, in the nobility and magnanimity, of his soul. Torturing animals to prolong human life has separated science from the most important thing that life has produced - the human conscience.” MenYearsHumansImportantSoulCharacterLife IsValuesAnimalNumbersQualityAliveDiseaseConscienceImportanceImportant ThingsHuman LifeJudgedContinuingNobilityMagnanimityHuman QualitiesMenagerie Author:John Cowper Powys
