Poshlost

“Jokes and folklore and poetic metaphor, the wisdom of folly, tell the secret truth.”
― Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History

“I did not yet love, and I loved to love; I sought what I might love, in love with loving.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person. . . . It is therefore a science founded on nescience. . . . This science, alone of sciences, must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nescience. . . . It is therefore peculiarly and alone science of darkness.”
― John Ruskin, Unto This Last

“The snow is coming," she said. "Soon it will be snow time. Together then as in other snow times. Drinking busthead 'round the fire. Truth is a locked room that we knock the lock off from time to time, and then board up again. Tomorrow you will hurt me, and I will inform you that you have done so, and so on and so on. To hell with it. Come, viridian friend, come and sup with me.”
― Donald Barthelme, Amateurs