Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption … - Patrick O'Brian

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I wouldn't say the anthropologists were making art, but they were definitely justifying their practices with very personal reasoning, passion, and they were also experimenting with form. There was a sense of trying to be as sincere as possible, whether you were investigating something far away from you or very close.

Patrick O'Brian

Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch. Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.

Absorption, Father, Husband, Men, Persona, Poison

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Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.

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. . . looking angrily at the wombat: and a moment later, 'Come now, Stephen, this is coming it pretty high: your brute is eating my hat. ' 'So he is, too,' said Dr. Maturin. 'But do not be perturbed, Jack; it will do him no harm, at all. His digestive processes--

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I am opposed to authority, that egg of misery and oppression; I am opposed to it largely for what it does to those who exercise it.

Exercise, Eggs, Doe, Authority, Largely, Oppression

For me the process works best with no interruptions, no breaks in the steady application, no letters to be answered, very little social life, no holidays; it is therefore a form of happy imprisonment.

Application, Holiday, Imprisonment, Letters, Littles, Process

After all a book can be represented as a conversation with one’s demon.

Book, Demon, Conversation