Hagar

“As a matter of fact, reality is itself a combination of determinisms, and freedom consists in overcoming and transcending these determinisms. Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity....We must not think of the problem in terms of a choice between being determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity, and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interested, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom.”
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

“Some days they would talk all morning about exactly how warm Heaven might be. It could not be warm enough so that souls went naked, or could it? If souls went naked, then why all the weaving, and if there was no weaving then how did souls occupy themselves?”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

“Modern man, instead of attempting to raise himself to truth, seeks to drag truth down to his own level.”
― René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World

“It was always and ever hard to tell with women why they chose one way and not another.”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders