Smaranda

“Căntã, zeițã, mânia ce-aprinse pe-Ahil Peleianul,
Patima crudã ce-Aheilor mii de amaruri aduse;
Suflete multe viteze trimise pe lumea cealaltã,
Trupul fãcându-le hranã la câini și la feluri de pãsãri
Și împlinitã fu voia lui Zeus, de când Agamemnon,
Craiul nãscut din Atreu, și dumnezeiescul Ahile
S-au dezbinat dupã cearta ce fuse-ntre dânșii iscatã.”
― Homer, The Iliad of Homer, Volume 1

“In my experience ideology is a lot like religion; it's a belief system and most people cling to it long after it becomes clear that their ideology doesn't describe the real world.”
― Maureen F. McHugh

“[T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a uniculturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as 'white' and 'oppressive,' mass illegal immigration threatens to spoil everything for everybody, and the figure of the free-floating transnational migrant has been deposed by the contorted face of the psychopathically religious international nihilist, praying for the day when his messianic demands will coincide with possession of an apocalyptic weapon. (These people are not called nihilists for nothing.) Of all of this we were warned, and Salman was the messenger. Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator: Change only the name and this story is about you.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul