Marginalia

Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”

“As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it[.]”

What makes you, my overbearing friend,
So damn special? Everyone must spend
Half a lifetime (…and reviewing the
Matter, one can only rue the thing)
Doing not the Thing, but doing the
Thing one needs to do to do the Thing.

Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

“‘Things and actions are what they are,’ Bishop Butler said, ‘and the consequences of them will be what they will be.’”

“What’s ‘erotica’?” It’s porn.
“What’s a Destiny?” Its aim:
To adorn
A mere Plight.
“Okay. Can you name
Vision’s purpose?” To embellish Sight.

Sir Roger Scruton, Sexual Desire: A Moral Philosophy of the Erotic

Sexual desire
Isn’t the desire
For sex, but rather,
Says Sir Roger,
The desire for a
Specific person.

But if a person is
Amenable to sex,
One desires them,
Specifically.
Honor is hard to come
By in such matters.