Damon’s Reviews > The Last of the Wine > Status Update

"No one should presume to read the universe till he has first read and mastered his own soul."

Mortal passion sinks us in mortal pleasure, so that the wings of the soul grow weak; and such lovers may rise to the good indeed, but not to the very best. The winged soul rises from love to love, from the beautiful that is born and dies, to beauty in itself eternal; the life itself, of which mortal beauty is only a moving shadow flung upon a wall.

"What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?"