Donna

“Like his father, like Jules Renard, he had been carried along the slow, steady swindle of history and experience.”
― Mavis Gallant, Paris Stories

“When you confuse the ego that you perceive in others with their identity, it is the work of your own ego that uses this misperception to strengthen itself through being right and therefore superior, and through reacting with condemnation, indignation, and often anger against the perceived enemy.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“If you think you are so enlightened,” Ram Dass said, “go and spend a week with your parents.” That is good advice. The relationship with your parents is not only the primordial relationship that sets the tone for all subsequent relationships, it is also a good test for your degree of Presence. The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Create a Better Life

“In the century-and-a-half since the Emperor Qianlong had dismissed King George III's request for trade facilities with the contemptuous words, ‘China has … no need of the manufactures of outside barbarians’, the balance of power in the world had altered. China had stagnated, its wealth haemorrhaging away in bloody rebellions and civil unrest. Europe, through the Industrial Revolution, developed undreamed-of power and irresistible pressures for expansion. Conflict between the two was inevitable.”
― Philip Short, Mao: The Man Who Made China