William Kelly

“Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but a disease.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“As we know, priests make the most evil enemies – but why? Because they are the most powerless. Out of this powerlessness, their hate swells into something huge and uncanny to a most intellectual and poisonous level. The greatest haters in world history, and the most intelligent, have always been priests: – nobody else’s intelligence stands a chance against the intelligence of priestly revenge. The history of mankind would be far too stupid a thing if it had not had the intellect of the powerless injected into it...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals

“[H]ell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason...I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose...”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy