Words&Dirt

“The facade of a grand building rises gracefully, pilastered and crenelated. Stately wings soar on either side, somehow both heavy and light. It strikes Werner just then as wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world––what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them? When Russian prisoners are chained by threes and fours to fences while German privates tuck live grenades in their pockets and run?

Opera houses! Cities on the moon! Ridiculous. They would all do better to put their faces on the curbs and wait for the boys who come through the city dragging sledges stacked with corpses.”

––All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, pg. 364-5

“Patriotism is sometimes criticized as a form of idolatry. And because it involves belief in your nation, it does, indeed, share part of the psychology of religious belief. It is hard to believe in your nation, though, unless you appraise at least some of its achievements highly. Patriotism does not require you to believe that your nation is better, let alone best, among nations. But it works well, I think, only when you believe there is something distinctive in your national story to feel especially proud of.”

––The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen, by Kwame Anthony Appiah, pg. 97-8