Quotes: Metaphysics. Middle Age. Middle ages. Middle Class. Midwest. Might.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Metaphysics
Metaphysics meant discovering the essential nature of reality.
Metaphysics 351 …metaphysics had meant, throughout the history of thought, an attempt to discover the ultimate nature of reality. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.

Middle Age
Middle-aged people can believe in God while breaking all his commandments.
Middle-age 368 Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and breaking all the Commandments, without difficulty. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Middle-aged men are tired looking.
Middle-aged men 165 [Men aged forty-five]: …they know life and are so adorably tired looking. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

Middle Ages
The initial letters of their manuscripts were so illuminated that it was impossible to read the first page.
Middle Ages 414 In the abbeys all the monks were illuminating the initial letters of their manuscripts with such a riot of invention that it was impossible to read the first page at all. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Now that the guns have come, the Round Table is over.
Middle Ages 613 “Now that the guns have come,” said Arthur, “the Table is over.” T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Middle Class
Average people do the work and are manipulated by minorities at either end, the best and the worst.
Middle class 25 The decent, average people who do the nation’s work in cities and on the land are worked upon and shaped by minorities at both ends—the best and the worst. Hoffer, The True Believer

The great periods of culture were not produced by the aristocracy but by the bourgeoisie.
Middle class vs. aristocracy 444 It is a common delusion that the great periods of culture have been ages of hereditary aristocracy: on the contrary, the efflorescent periods of Pericles and the Medici and Elizabeth and the Romantic Age were nourished with the wealth of a rising bourgeoisie; and the creative work in literature and art was done not by aristocratic families but by the offspring of the middle class--by such men as Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, and Voltaire, who was the son of an attorney, and Shakespeare, who was the son of a butcher. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche.

Midwest
Memories of growing up in the Midwest.
Midwest 177 That’s my Middle West—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

Might
Might unfortunately is right.
Might 167 Ismene: For might unfortunately is right and makes us bow to things like this and worse. Sophocles. Antigone.

When might is right there is no right.
Might right 194 Chorus: Where might is right/ There is no right. Sophocles. Antigone.