“The historian of manners obeys harsher laws than those that bind the historian of facts. He must make everything seem plausible, even the Truth; whereas in the domain of history properly so-called, the impossible is justified by the fact that it occurred.” Honore de Balzac
The central paradox of contemporary Christian fundamentalism is its spin on the message that the world and its concerns are irrelevant, and that soon, very soon, it will all pass away—and then turning around and making temporal behavior the basis for an ongoing political activism that is just shy of fascistic.
“His heart was a purple castle. It lay in a rock-strewn desert, concealed by dunes, surrounded by a marshy oasis, and set behind stone walls. It could be reached only from the air. It had a thousand private rooms and a thousand underground chambers and a thousand elegant salons, among them one with a purple sofa…” Patrick Suskind Perfume
Within 50 years after 1590, 1200 plays were presented in London—900 written by 50 professional playwrights.
