In March of 1915, all three of Lord and Lady Chetwynd-Pitt's sons'd been gassed, blown up or machine-gunned in the very same week at the battle of Neuve-Chapelle. All three. Imagine that: On Monday, you've got three sons, by Friday you've got none. Lady Albertina had just, y'know, caved in. Physically, mentally, spiritually, brutally.
Oh, once you__e been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn__ want you back._ Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. __e__y whom I mean anyone over sixty__ommit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman__ memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.
Cloud Atlas
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Oh, once you__e been initiated into the Elderly, the world doesn__ want you back._ Veronica settled herself in a rattan chair and adjusted her hat just so. __e__y whom I mean anyone over sixty__ommit two offenses just by existing. One is Lack of Velocity. We drive too slowly, walk too slowly, talk too slowly. The world will do business with dictators, perverts, and drug barons of all stripes, but being slowed down it cannot abide. Our second offence is being Everyman__ memento mori. The world can only get comfy in shiny-eyed denial if we are out of sight.
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Discourse and critical thinking are essential tools when it comes to securing progress in a democratic society. But in the end, unity and engaged participation are what make it happen.
I am deep in my willed habits. From the outside, I suppose I look like an unoccupied house with one unconvincing night-light left on. Any burglar could look through my curtains and conclude I am empty. But he would be mistaken. Under that one light unstirred by movement or shadows there is a man at work, and as long as I am at work I am not a candidate for Menlo Park, or that terminal facility they cynically call a convalescent hospital, or a pine box. My habits and the unchanging season sustain me. Evil is what questions and disrupts.
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