Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.
Interpretation
Liberty requires a balance of order and restraint, particularly on those who are violent.
This quote emphasizes that true liberty cannot exist in a society without the establishment of order and the necessity of subordination to just laws. It suggests that liberty is not merely the absence of restraint, but rather the presence of a system that imposes necessary limits on those who would disrupt peace and justice. In this view, liberty flourishes when there is a fair and just system that curtails violence while allowing civil order.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of law and order in a democratic society.
A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.
There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254
The intention to live as long as possible isn't one of the mind's best intentions, because quantity isn't the same as quality.
Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession.
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