One More World Lost …

It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.
— John Fowles 'The Magus'

Dutiful Pursuits

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
— John Fowles 'The Magus'

The Evolutionary Horizon

In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal.
— John Fowles 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'

Indifference To The Suffering Of Others

Looked through the paper.
Makes you want to cry.
Nobody cares if the people
Live or die.
— Leonard Cohen 'In My Secret Life'

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
— WH Auden 'Musée Des Beaux Arts'

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world.
— John Fowles 'The Collector'

A most depressing thing occurs
But no-one minds and no-one stirs,
Which means you've ended up with two
Depressing things depressing you.
— Michæl Leunig 'The Two Depressing Things'

How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
— Kurt Vonnegut

Mind The Gap

He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap.
— John Fowles 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'