“Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants, and their nearest relatives.” PassionHouseInterestLossGroupsCardsRuinsTemplesEmpiresGamblingSquaresIndifferentInfantSpectatorsIvory Author:Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
“Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for the monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time.” KnowsMenHumansLittlesSeemsLife IsOrderLossEffortProgressConditionsPeriodsMassErrorsDefeatDisasterRuinsTriumphIndifferenceDisorderHuman ConditionCatastropheMonstrousFelicityProdigies Book:Memoirs of Hadrian Source: Memoirs of Hadrian
“When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the watery main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I have seen such interchange of state, Or state itself confounded to decay; Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.” StatesHandsAgeWinningLosesLossRichTaughtProudCostOceanEternalGainsAdvantageSlaveStoresRageHungryKingdomsRuinsMortalsFirmSoilShoreBuriedDecayTowersLoftyBrassInterchange Book:Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved Source: Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved