In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Ag… - Djuna Barnes

Our bones only ache while the flesh is on them. Stretch it thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.

A king is the peasant’s actor, who becomes so scandalous that he has to be bowed down to – scandalous in the higher sense naturally. And why must he be bowed down to? Because he has been set apart as the one dog who need not regard the rules of the house, they are so high that they can defame God and foul their rafters! But the people – that’s different – they are church-broken, nation-broken – they drink and pray and piss in the one place. Every man has a house-broken heart except the great man. The people love their church and know it, as a dog knows where he was made to conform, and there he returns by his instinct.

How cruel is reason! How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is meditation! How subtle is the lack of reason!