What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.

 

What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.
--
“Dragonfly” (p. 236)

 

Ursula K. Le Guin

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The noble lord in this case, as in so many others, first destroys his opponent, and then destroys his own position afterwards. The noble lord is the Prince Rupert of parliamentary discussion: his charge is resistless, but when he returns from the pursuit he always finds his camp in the possession of the enemy.

 

Benjamin Disraeli

 

Sudden thy silent beauty on me shone,
Fair as the moon had given thee all her spell.
Then, as Endymion had found on earth,
In unchanged beauty but in fashion changed,
Her whom I loved so long; so felt I then,
Not that a new love in my heart had birth,
But that the old, that far from reach had ranged,
Was now on earth, and to be loved of men.

 

Francis William Bourdillon

 

We cannot understand what happens in the universe. What is glorious in it is united with what is full of horror. What is full of meaning is united to what is senseless. The spirit of the universe is at once creative and destructive — it creates while it destroys and destroys while it creates, and therefore it remains to us a riddle. And we must inevitably resign ourselves to this.

 

Albert Schweitzer

 

Faith reads the understanding only as a dark saying; humanly speaking, it does not have the explanation, only in a certain deranged sense, so that, humanly speaking, it is the most foolish business arrangement ever made in the world. But this is the way it is supposed to be, and God in heaven is still unembarrassed; he is not selling out, whatever human beings do. And he is indeed unchanging, as the understanding says in order to mock the troubled one who cries out to God; but see, its mockery recoils on itself, because God truly is unchanged. He has not become a friend of cowardliness and softness; he has not become so debilitated over the years that he cannot distinguish between mine and thine and everything runs together before him; he is himself still the first inventor of language and the only one who holds the blessing in his hands; he is unchanged, even though he would not be able to satisfy the demands of the times! So it is with faith-humanly speaking, it is the most foolish and, humanly speaking, the most difficult business arrangement.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

The great error of the last 50 years is that conservatives think that they should unthinkingly endorse laissez -faire economics, but as presently conceived the free market destroys most of the things conservatives value; it destroys traditions, family life, societies, cultures, and established ways of doing things. The market place, as understood by contemporary neo-liberalism, is something no genuine conservative should support or endorse.

 

Phillip Blond