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Complete works of Peter Paul Rubens

"Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above it's hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy."

*Perceive ye not that we are worms, designed
To form the angelic butterfly, that goes
To judgment, leaving all defence behind?
Why doth your mind take such exalted pose,
Since ye, disabled, are as insects, mean
As worm which never transformation knows?

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Volume 2: Purgatorio*

*Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen the stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space.

Ernst Jünger*

*“A cultivated soul is one where the din of the living does not drown out the music of  the dead.”

Nicolás Gómez Dávila*

Bes till, O wand'rer!
Dost thou not hear the sad song of night?
How the wind does beckon thee to the rest of a while
And to lend him thine ear?
What woeful tale does it tell tonight?
What tragedy of old?