What is creative instinct, if not an incessant living sympathy with Nature, a constant craving like that of Nature's own, to fashion something new ou… - John Galsworthy

Here’s a sentence in a book I’m reading: ‘We belong, of course, to a generation that’s seen through things, seen how futile everything is, and had the courage to accept futility, and say to ourselves: There’s nothing for it but to enjoy ourselves as best we can.’ Well, I suppose that’s my generation, the one that’s seen the war and its aftermath; and, of course, it is the attitude of quite a crowd; but when you come to think of it, it might have been said by any rather unthinking person in any generation; certainly might have been said by the last generation after religion had got the knock that Darwin gave it. For what does it come to? Suppose you admit having seen through religion and marriage and treaties, and commercial honesty and freedom and ideals of every kind, seen that there’s nothing absolute about them, that they lead of themselves to no definite reward, either in this world or a next which doesn’t exist perhaps, and that the only thing absolute is pleasure and that you mean to have it — are you any farther towards getting pleasure? No! you’re a long way farther off. If everybody’s creed is consciously and crudely ‘grab a good time at all costs,’ everybody is going to grab it at the expense of everybody else, and the devil will take the hindmost, and that’ll be nearly everybody, especially the sort of slackers who naturally hold that creed, so that they, most certainly, aren’t going to get a good time. All those things they’ve so cleverly seen through are only rules of the road devised by men throughout the ages to keep people within bounds, so that we may all have a reasonable chance of getting a good time, instead of the good time going only to the violent, callous, dangerous and able few. All our institutions, religion, marriage, treaties, the law, and the rest, are simply forms of consideration for others necessary to secure consideration for self. Without them we should be a society of feeble motor-bandits and streetwalkers in slavery to a few super

Love is no hot-house flower,
but a wild plant, born of a wet night,
born of an hour of sunshine; sprung
from wild seed, blown along the road
by a
wild wind.

Prima ancora del suo primo disastroso matrimonio, si ricordava d’aver seguito con ardore le ribellioni dell’Irlanda, e le cause di divorzio di donne che cercavano di liberarsi da uomini che odiavano. Avevano un bel da dire i parroci che la libertà spirituale e corporale son cose affatto diverse! Perniciosa dottrina, quella! Il corpo e l’anima non si possono separare in tal modo. La libera volontà costituisce la forza di ogni legame, e non la sua debolezza.