Tom Craven

“We’re all in favor of moral rules that prevent others from doing things that harm our own interests. Just look at the Seven Deadly Sins, a list of all those things we don’t want other people to do, though we might well have an interest in doing them all ourselves. (Symmetrically, “virtues” are traits you want other people to possess—altruism, modesty, chastity —even if you yourself are better off avoiding them.)”
― Robert Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind

“It is better to hear the thunder than to watch the cloud.”
― Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

“But (for Melmoth never could decide) was it in a dream or not, that he saw the figure of his ancestor appear at the door?–hesitatingly as he saw him at first on the night of his uncle's death,–saw him enter the room, approach his bed, and heard him whisper, 'You have burned me, then; but those are flames I can survive. I am alive, I am beside you.' Melmoth started, sprung from his bed,–it was broad day-light. He looked round,–there was no human being in the room but himself. He felt a slight pain in the wrist of his right arm. He looked at it, it was black and blue, as from the recent gripe of a strong hand.”
― Charles Robert Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
― H.P. Lovecraft