Zinegeist

“To be licensed to exist was not necessarily a license to be loved in an increasingly Christian world.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“The idea of labor, of hard work, leading to increased productivity was so novel, so radical, in the overall span of Western history that most ordinary people, most of those who labored, could scarcely believe what was happening to them. Labor had been so long thought to be the natural and inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated it with slavery and servitude. Therefore any possibility of oppression, any threat to the colonists' hard earned prosperity, any hint of reducing them to the povery of other nations, was especially frightening; for it seemed likely to slide them back into the traditional status of servants or slaves, into the older world where labor was merely a painful necessity and not a source of prosperity.”
― Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution

“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
E'en in Australia art thou still more hot
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
(Since that's your winter it don't mean a lot)
Sometimes too bright the eye of heaven shines
And bushfires start through half of New South Wales
Just so, when I do see thy bosom's lines
A fire consumes me and my breathing fails

But thine eternal summer shall not fade
This is in no way due to global warming;
Nay, from thy breasts shall verses fair be made
So damn compulsive they are habit-forming
So long as men can read and eyes can see
So long lives this, thou 34DD

(Based on an idea by William Shakespeare. I'm sure he'd agree that I've improved it)”
― Manny Rayner

“Do you know how to read?'
'No. It is one of the black arts.'
He nodded. 'But a useful one,' he said.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan