A Quote by Seneca the Younger
Human society is like an arch, kept from falling by the mutual pressure of its parts
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If any such lover be in earth which is continually kept from falling, I know it not: for it was not shewed me. But this was shewed: that in falling and in rising we are ever preciously kept in one Love.
Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell
Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red
Reverberance of hail upon the dead
Thunder like an exploding crucible!
I was going to shave it. It went in two parts. I got a bob first but it kept falling all over my face. Then it was off, short. The main reason it was long was because my mother cut it short when I was little and I was trying to make up for that.
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together.
All the inventions and devices ever constructed by the human hand or conceived by the human mind, no matter how delicate, how intricate and complicated, are simple, childish toys compared with that most marvelously wrought mechanism, the human body. Its parts are far more delicate, and their mutual adjustments infinitely more accurate, than are those of the most perfect chronometer ever made.
Nothing so cements and holds together all the parts of a society as faith or credit, which can never be kept up unless men are under some force or necessity of honestly paying what they owe to one another.
Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving.
We say yes to the society of solidarity and democracy where free people together, in mutual respect and under mutual responsibility, shape a life where everyone has equal opportunities and equal value.
We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named fair competition and so forth, it is a mutual hostility.
When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.
Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
Winning the Olympics was an amazing feeling, but afterwards, it was a bit like, 'What do I do now?' So I lost a bit of motivation going back into training and competitions; I had so much pressure on me. I kept thinking, 'I'm the Olympic champion. I can't lose' - being only 19 and having to deal with all that pressure.
If an architect wants to strengthen a decrepit arch, he increases the load laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.
The leaves are falling, falling as from way off, as though far gardens withered in the skies; they are falling with denying gestures. And in the nights the heavy earth is falling from all the stars down into loneliness. We all are falling. This hand falls. And look at others: it is in them all. And yet there is one who holds this falling endlessly gently in his hands.
Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.
The institutions of human society treat us as parts of a machine. They assign us ranks and place considerable pressure upon us to fulfill defined roles. We need something to help us restore our lost and distorted humanity. Each of us has feelings that have been suppressed and have built up inside. There is a voiceless cry resting in the depths of our souls, waiting for expression. Art gives the soul's feelings voice and form.
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