Veritas Quotes

Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet. Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

Am I the only one who has wood over that little vixen?

Note to self: Don't get on Veritas's bad side. She holds a grudge for centuries.

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appalling powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed. In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazi's once were. And with good reason. In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want. Piece of cake. In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake. The O'Reilly Factor. So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and a Chicago paper called "In These Times." Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic "New York Times" guaranteed there were weapons of destruction there. Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn't even seen the First World War. War is now a form of TV entertainment, and what made the First World War so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you? Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now give up on people too. I am a veteran of the Second World War and I have to say this is the not the first time I surrendered to a pitiless war machine. My last words? "Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse." Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas! Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler. What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards. Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing? Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue. Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love. Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart.

Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas. (Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.)

In vino veritas

One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.

Magna est veritas, et praevalebit: truth is mighty, and will prevail

A little love and attention can go a long way...too bad more people don't realize that.

Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica veritas.

Looking from the window at the fantastic light and colour of my glittering fairy-world of fact that holds no tenderness, no quietude, I long suddenly for peace, for understanding.

Veritas odium parit. (Truth breeds hatred)

Do not fear the loss of a friendship. Anyone who is willing to end a relationship because of a reasoned difference of opinion is not worthy of your friendship.

Whether you’re Veritas the Law Guardian, Ariel the vampire-witch, or Death’s scary demigod daughter. Doesn’t matter. In all your forms, in every manifestation of yourself, I love you.

The problem is, if you really want the Truth, then you have to have God along with it.

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas

Autoritas, non veritas facit legem

In vino veritas,” he tells me. In wine lies the truth.

Ian grinned before leaning down to lick the blood off my lip. "I know, it's a lot to take in. Never thought you'd be this happy, did you? Or this lucky. Blimey, go ahead and envy yourself. Countless other people will, I assure you.

Yet as the proverb says, 'In vino veritas,' whether with boys, or without them (In allusion to two proverbs.); and therefore I must speak.

Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas.

If Truth is taken away from us, then Right and Wrong are taken from us as well. If we don't know Right and Wrong, then we can't, we won't control ourselves, but will look to someone else to bring order through brute force and raw power. We will be controlled by a tyrant, and we will no longer be free...

It’s Ian’s Little Poppet now, remember?” I said snippily. His eyes were blazing with green. “Oh, it is indeed, and more than you realize.

Take away truth and people will lie. Scoff at virtue, and betrayal becomes a matter of course.

Icy pillars of serenity, spun from airy mist, entered my quiet vision in echoes of worlds unknown.

Sometimes I just forget how to "people.

Even if we both survive, I won't enforce my claim on you," I said desperately. "In fact, the first thing I'll do is drop you back at that bordello in Poland and order you a new carnival orgy, promise!" Then I threw up, spraying a stream of crimson all over him as I lost my fight against the nausea. "See?" I managed when I finished puking. Vow sealed with a blood oath." He looked down at himself in disgust. "This is everything I knew marriage would be.

Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in nobis veritas; If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us. Why, then, belike we must sin, and so consequently die: Ay, we must die an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera,19 What will be, shall be? Divinity, adieu!

Mankind without truth, without God-given morals...has strength...can think...can feel things emotionally–but if he isn't given a good, solid standard for right and wrong, then there's nothing to keep him from using strength and reason and feelings in selfish...even destructive ways...We wonder why people do such evil things, why there's so much violence in the world, why people rob and cheat and betray each other. But when we erase truth from our thinking and say there's no right or wrong except for what each person thinks is right or wrong, well, we get the world we deserve...when there's no truth that applies to everyone, then there's no way to argue for the rightness or wrongness of anything...

I’ve spent a lot of time believing that happy endings don’t exist for me. But I’m finally realizing that I’ve never tried to write my own.

Non foras ire, in interiore homine habitat veritas' (Go not outside; truth dwells in the inner man).

L’arte di vivere è l’arte di credere alle menzogne, il tremendo è che, non sapendo quid sit veritas, sappiamo però che cos’è la menzogna.

Vincit omnia veritas!

Getting someone behind the wheel of a car is like putting them into deep hypnosis; their true self comes out. In vehicle veritas. Israelis, for instance, drive both defensively and offensively at the same time, which is, come to think of it, the way Israelis do pretty much everything.

One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.” I was actually terrified that I already meant it. A guy might just be a keeper who hears your cry for help in his head. And comes into a den of thieves to get you out. And then holds your hair while you throw up for ten minutes.

Can a rose survive in winter?

The lies they've convinced their eyes that they're seeing, will not mar the truth in my lens.

Outside of Piers Morgan’s home is a sign strategically positioned in the front of his property by the walkway. Its bold red-and-white typeface is a warning to all passersby: “Protected By Armed Response Security Systems.” James O’Keefe of Project Veritas discovered the sign as he sought signatures for a petition seeking to rid Hollywood films of all firearms. He took a photo of the sign and asked Morgan via Twitter “Hey, @piersmorgan, can you explain these signs on your Beverly Hills property?” Morgan could not, so he ignored it. While Morgan snores soundly in his bed, he has a security firm keep watch with a firearm and rush to Morgan’s defense if Morgan finds himself under threat. This way Morgan can pretend that he’s against firearms when, really, he’s just outsourced his gun. He is a royalist: He believes that commoners shouldn’t possess firearms, especially Americans. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy: Progressives view firearms as only situationally evil. They’re evil in the hands of anyone other than themselves or their security firms. Don

I saw you then and felt nothing. Saw you months later during the ghoul uprising and felt nothing then, too ... until I watched you tear through a group of ghouls 'til they were no more than blood in the wind. Made me so hard, I almost tripped over my cock on my way to kill the ghoul in front of me." "Romantic," I said in an acerbic tone, but a fluttering had started inside that I was having a difficult time controlling. A quick grin. "Indeed. Felt nothing when you rudely interrupted my orgy, either, except rage when I recognized you as the Guardian who'd been at Katie's supposed execution. Then we fought ... and I felt the same thing I'd felt when I watched you tear through those ghouls years before." "Something long and hard?" I supplied, adding, "I remember it hitting my foot when I was trying to hold you down." "Not that, though that, too," he said with another unrepentant grin. Then it faded as he said, "I felt that you were mine.

The personal love Christ has for you is infinite - the small difficulty you have regarding the church is finite.... What is happening on the surface of the church will pass, but Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Are you incapable of being afraid?” I asked with admiring exasperation. “No.” Now his tone was clipped. “When you vanished with Phanes, and every prophetic feeling I had screamed that you’d die if I didn’t find you, I was terrified.

It is the littlest of flowers that fly the farthest . . . That have the courage to fly the farthest.

For a moment, I was safe, wrapped in a blue-hued embrace.

You should be glad of it,” Ian said at once. “Saves you worlds of trouble. I’ve had enemies cause me less stress, and that’s on a good day of being with her.

Damn. Still straight, then?” He smirks. “Last time I checked.” “Need a hand checking again? Because I volunteer as tribute.

This is me going after what I deserve. This is me finally writing my own happy ending.

Emeralds of the lake sparkled luxuriously, dancing as beckoning figures of the night sky, as the sun began to descend, turning the ripples into opals of many hues.

Why do we experience beauty as transcendent yet somehow impermanent and corrupted, and suffering as somehow wrong, rather than simply a part of the natural order?

I have no idea what to say to him. “The Latin Club is totally evil,” I blurt. “The Latin Club?” I can understand why he’s confused.

In vino veritas -- In wine there is truth.

Vincit Omnia Veritas!

Veritas, truth

Luz et veritas, Light and truth

Ma volete la verita? C'è qualcosa tra tutti noi. E' la nostra maledizione e la nostra benedizione, è la nostra prova e il nostro errore, e il nostro "quella cosa".

In vino veritas ("In wine, truth")

Veritas filia temporis

Veritas Omnia Vincit

Die on your knees, or take the fight she offered you. I care not which. ~ Veritas

I was hoping that the first time you expressed affection for me, it would not be in a room full of strangers. And that you would not have just said it to a sniveling creature like that Raymond!” “I expressed affection for Ray?” “Yes!” “Man, I really must be drunk.” Louis-Cesare just looked at me. I blinked politely back, until I realized that he expected a response.

Y la polilla que seguía la luz se dejó morir, se rindió y abandonó sus intentos de alcanzarla, se resignó a verla a la distancia, tan hermosa e inalcanzable; un recordatorio permanente de una posible felicidad destruida, imposible de obtener, imposible de mantener; simplemente imposible.

The Student" “In America,” began the lecturer, “everyone must have a degree. The French do not think that all can have it, they don’t say everyone must go to college.” We incline to feel, here, that although it may be unnecessary to know fifteen languages. one degree is not too much. With us, a school—like the singing tree of which the leaves were mouths that sang in concert— is both a tree of knowledge and of liberty— seen in the unanimity of college mottoes, lux et veritas, Christo et ecclesiae, sapiet felici. It may be that we have not knowledge, just opinions, that we are undergraduates, not students; we know we have been told with smiles, by expatriates of whom we had asked, “When will your experiment be finished?” “Science is never finished.” Secluded from domestic strife, Jack Bookworm led a college life, says Goldsmith; and here also as in France or Oxford, study is beset with dangers—with bookworms, mildews, and complaisancies. But someone in New England has known enough to say that the student is patience personified, a variety of hero, “patient of neglect and of reproach,"—who can "hold by himself.” You can’t beat hens to make them lay. Wolf’s wool is the best of wool, but it cannot be sheared, because the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as with wolves’ surliness, the student studies voluntarily, refusing to be less than individual. He “gives him opinion and then rests upon it”; he renders service when there is no reward, and is too reclusive for some things to seem to touch him; not because he has no feeling but because he has so much.

You can take him!” Ray whispered in my ear. “Damn straight.” The next thing I remember, Ray was fishing me out from under the table. Or, at least, he was trying to, but Scarface’s foot was in the way. “On. Her. Ass,” Scarface said proudly. “She just slipped,” Ray said, sounding frantic. “Anybody could slip. She’s fine!

A girl locked in a tower with no life experience. But, you know, Rebecca . . . this isn’t a fairy tale. Your tower will never protect you from the darkness outside.” “And your tower will always be a prison,” I said softly.

I know, it’s a lotto take in. Never thought you’d be this happy, did you? Or this lucky. Blimey, go ahead and envy yourself. Countless other people will, I assure you.” A laugh escaped me even as my eyes became so shiny, his image started to blur. “You might be the most conceited man I’ve ever met, and I’ve met millions of them.” His low, seductive laugh coincided with his hands settling on my hips. “Then I deserve a spanking, don’t I? Here, I’ll start things off.” - Ian and Veritas

Soft white billowed about the surface, blowing gently against the windowsill in remembrance of the enigmatic swan’s graceful flight. Or so it reminded me, alluringly tranquil in its flicker of light and form, but not quite translucent. Not quite here.

Ah laikse aşkımız elbet biter bir kışbaharyaz günü Gözlerin uçurumlar kaydeder avuçlarıma Bir çınar gövdesini bir hamle daha yayar Üç içbükey komodin silah çeker vurulur Sen gidersin denklem düşer ben aşk olduğumu ağlarım … Modern bir alışkanlıktır ölmek, seni doğasıya seviyorum. BEN SANA DÜZENLİ OLARAK TELEFON EDİYORUM! Vincit omnia veritas! Belki inanmayacaksın ama ben bu şiiri ellerimle yazıyorum sevgilim Çünkü benim gömdüğüm kızlar ara sıra boğulur Ve laik aşk çarpık toplumlaştırır, doğurma ne olur Sirk deseler tek hırkam var, çatışmada bıraktım Şimdi gidip Beckett okuyacağım, beni de seyret Tanrım Öfkemi devletle bir toprağa gömüyorum Aklımsa çamura saplandı saplanacak Şems çeker çıkarır kitabı havuzdan, kuru Ertan, alsana şu tüfeği duvardan benim ellerim ıslak.

My Dear Lord, please help me. Place me in the Center of Your Perfect Will. Adoro te devote, latens Deitas. Bread of Life by bread concealed, speaking heart to heart. Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit. Let Your presence draw me in here my senses fail. Visus cactus, gustus in te falliti. This is truth enough for me. Peto quod petivit latro paenitens. Seeing You upon the Cross, flesh and blood, I find. Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor. I see not but name You still God and Prince of Life. O memoriale mortis Domini. How I thirst to meet Your gaze gloriously revealed. After life's obscurity, let me wake to see. Beauty shining from Your Face for eternity. Amen.

Non avrai le mie lacrime, non avrai la mia rabbia, non avrai neanche gocce d'oddio, non avrai i miei rimorsi, non avrai la mia porta aperta, ma ho sempre aperto l'orrizonte verso la verità e quella verità non c'è nelle tue mani, quella verità è il tuo incubo, quella verità è la tua tribulazione, quella verità è il tuo fallimento, quella verità è il tuo nemico, quella verita è il tuo veleno, quella verità è la tua fine. ~ Angelica Hopes, via dei pensieri belli #poesia © Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn 2019 Introduzione del mio libro giallo, The K.H. Trilogy

Harvard was named after Rev. John Harvard. Its 1692 motto is: Veritas, christo et ecclesiae (Truth, for Christ and the Church). Harvard’s 1646 Rules and Precepts read: 2. Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisedome, Let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seeke it of him (Proverbs 2:3).

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power? And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all—criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom?

And in it she found a stillness and peace, a beauty that gently wrapped up the unraveled ends and lost questions and unresolved threads of life’s journey. In it, she found the entirety, the end, the beginning, and the moments in between, the essence of all she was and had ever been, and all the world was and had ever been.

If I am your shadow [...,] it is only because you are my light. And the one cannot exist without the other. ~Draco

Movement is life!

I told my imagination to discontinue communication with my thoughts.

And the shower of roses spun around me, inviting me to take part in their ever-present waltz.

It is the littlest of flowers that fly the farthest . . . That have the courage to fly the farthest.

A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi. In front a precipice, behind, wolves.

But I did not see any of it. I saw color. And, in distant melodies, I remembered color.

The great Rocky Mountains, softly shaded in gray, were submerged in a sea of fluffy white clouds, feathery wisps enveloping the peaks like a kingdom of the air.

I held onto it as the world tilted upside down in a dizzying vortex of lost dreams.

Scattered pebbles reached toward the waters like a cocoon transformed to liquid sapphires, and a forest of trees and bramble framed each curve, mountains rising in the distance.

That wasn’t so bad,” I decided, after downing the shot. Maybe I was getting my rhythm. “Because you threw it over your shoulder,” Scarface told me, looking smug. “Did not.” I looked behind me, only to see an outraged vamp with fey wine dripping down his face. “Oops.” “It was for luck,” Ray said defensively, wrapping both my hands around a glass. “Drink!” I drank.

Later on, towards the middle of my life, I grew more and more opposed to alcoholic drinks: I, an opponent of vegetarianism, who have experienced what vegetarianism is, — just as Wagner, who converted me back to meat, experienced it, — cannot with sufficient earnestness advise all more spiritual natures to abstain absolutely from alcohol. Water answers the purpose. . . . I have a predilection in favour of those places where in all directions one has opportunities of drinking from running brooks. In vino Veritas: it seems that here once more I am at variance with the rest of the world about the concept 'Truth' — with me spirit moves on the face of the waters. . . . Here are a few more indications as to my morality. A heavy meal is digested more easily than an inadequate one. The first principle of a good digestion is that the stomach should become active as a whole. A man ought, therefore, to know the size of his stomach. For the same reasons all those interminable meals, which I call interrupted sacrificial feasts, and which are to be had at any table d'hôte, are strongly to be deprecated. Nothing should be eaten between meals, coffee should be given up — coffee makes one gloomy. Tea is beneficial only in the morning. It should be taken in small quantities, but very strong. It may be very harmful, and indispose you for the whole day, if it be taken the least bit too weak. Everybody has his own standard in this matter, often between the narrowest and most delicate limits. In an enervating climate tea is not a good beverage with which to start the day: an hour before taking it an excellent thing is to drink a cup of thick cocoa, feed from oil. Remain seated as little as possible, put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open, to the accompaniment of free bodily motion — nor in one in which even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. All prejudices take their origin in the intestines. A sedentary life, as I have already said elsewhere, is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.

A sash of iridescent butterflies fluttered across in remnants of topaz, dipped in distant peacock’s tears as they mingled with forget-me-nots and morning glories, bluebells and cornflowers spilling through the cerulean waters in the flight of an Eastern bluebird. It was no longer solid, but a creature now made of those same prismatic tears it had once touched, too refined and elegant to lose its path even as it faded away.

And that,” Peter said with a smile once again directed at his brother, “says more than you may think. I rather miss the days when Paddington and Pooh bears walked about.” “And picnics were to be had,” Little Dan added.

In former times, military power was isolated, with the consequence that victory or defeat appeared to depend upon the accidental qualities of commanders. In our day, it is common to treat economic power as the source from which all other kinds are derived; this, I shall contend, is just as great an error as that of the purely military historians whom it has caused to seem out of date. Again, there are those who regard propaganda as the fundamental form of power. This is by no means a new opinion; it is embodied in such traditional sayings as magna est veritas et prevalebit and ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. It has about the same measure of truth and falsehood as the military view or the economic view. Propaganda, if it can create an almost unanimous opinion, can generate an irresistible power; but those who have military or economic control can, if they choose, use it for the purpose of propaganda.

Laughter may not be nearly as expressive as language, but it has two properties that make it ideal for navigating sensitive topics. First, it’s relatively honest. With words, it’s too easy to pay lip service to rules we don’t really care about, or values that we don’t genuinely feel in our gut. But laughter, because it’s involuntary, doesn’t lie—at least not as much. “In risu veritas,” said James Joyce; “In laughter, there is truth.”51 Second, laughter is deniable. In this way, it gives us safe harbor, an easy out. When someone accuses us of laughing inappropriately, it’s easy to brush off. “Oh, I didn’t really understand what she meant,” we might demur. Or, “Come on, lighten up! It was only a joke!” And we can deliver these denials with great conviction because we really don’t have a clear understanding of what our laughter means or why we find funny things funny. Our brains just figure it out, without burdening “us” with too many damning details.

When he turns to me, I realize I’m staring at him like a creeper. His eyes light up with amusement. “Need something?” “No,” I say too quickly. He gives me a comical frown. “Bummer. Because there are other things I could teach you besides cooking. Just saying.

It was when I was happiest that I longed most,” the central character in C. S. Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces says as she reflects on her encounters with beauty. “And because it was beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else, there must be more of it.

The luminescent flow of a sunbathed garden— illuminating the shifting colors of its inhabitants— echoed in my memory as I opened the antique bookstore door in the shaft of window light. The books, like the flowers of the garden, awaited me with the thrill of a new mystery.

Sunken yellow lurched in a mindfield of black twisted cylinders, falling like poisoned honey across my vision. It cleared, and became a series of flashing images, jagged edges of memories, each more beautiful and terrible than the last, playing across the screen of blackened cement.

Sometimes there are moments colored in shades that glimmer like soft silver light Like a poem, they bid us on. Their direction unknown, but clear Sometimes the color is only dirty gray, ugly, coarse, unrefined But it propels us forward, Because, without it, the silver will not stand.

Ceux qui arriveront à vaincre tous ces obstacles, et à triompher de l’hostilité d’un milieu opposé à toute spiritualité, seront sans doute peu nombreux ; mais, encore une fois, ce n’est pas le nombre qui importe, car nous sommes ici dans un domaine dont les lois sont tout autres que celles de la matière. Il n’y a donc pas lieu de désespérer ; et, n’y eût-il même aucun espoir d’aboutir à un résultat sensible avant que le monde moderne ne sombre dans quelque catastrophe, ce ne serait pas encore une raison valable pour ne pas entreprendre une œuvre dont la portée réelle s’étend bien au-delà de l’époque actuelle. Ceux qui seraient tentés de céder au découragement doivent penser que rien de ce qui est accompli dans cet ordre ne peut jamais être perdu, que le désordre, l’erreur et l’obscurité ne peuvent l’emporter qu’en apparence et d’une façon toute momentanée, que tous les déséquilibres partiels et transitoires doivent nécessairement concourir au grand équilibre total, et que rien ne saurait prévaloir finalement contre la puissance de la vérité ; leur devise doit être celle qu’avaient adoptée autrefois certaines organisations initiatiques de l’Occident : Vincit omnia Veritas.

Oh, I suppose we are all a bit crazier as kids. But I hope you never lose your sense of randomness. I hope you never lose the way you dance in the moonlight, your eyes filled with wonder. I hope you always care as much as you do today. ‘Blasé’ never looked good on anyone. And, if the world decides to be one big snob, ignore it.

There are walks of pain—the pacing-around-your-house-lonesome-heartbreak kind. There are walks of joy—leaping and bold, ecstatic with good news. There are walks of new beginnings—the first steps of a child or a young woman learning to become like a child again. And there are hornets’ nests of walks that sting you with living terror.

I wanted the distance so I could figure it all out.” “Your sexuality,” he guesses. “That,” I agree. “And my career, too. I need a better graphic-design job, and some more coursework. I don’t want to hear Dad’s opinions all the time. Not about that, and not about…” “Steamy-hot man-loving?” Roderick offers, and I almost choke on my sandwich. “Sorry,” he says with a grin. “I was born with no filter.

do we have a compulsion to devise elaborate ideas about our place in the universe? Why do we experience beauty as transcendent yet somehow impermanent and corrupted, and suffering as somehow wrong, rather than simply a part of the natural order? Why do the advocates of each new system of justice believe they can devise legal codes that will achieve a fully just social order, even though every previous system of justice has failed?

. . . for a moment, perhaps an hour, they would wait, wait for something, and when that waiting was over, it was simply dismissed, goodbyes stated, reading materials closed, a momentary pause in the day that did not hold up to whatever came next. Waiting was often a resented gift, imparted to those who accepted it grudgingly in the hopes that something better would come along when the gift was tossed aside, boxed away for the next recipient.

When you are drunk, your understanding of your true self changes. This is the crucial implication of drunkenness as myopia. The old disinhibition idea implied that what was revealed when someone got drunk was a kind of stripped-down, distilled version of their sober self—without any of the muddying effects of social nicety and propriety. You got the real you. As the ancient saying goes, In vino veritas: “In wine there is truth.” But that’s backward. The kinds of conflicts that normally keep our impulses in check are a crucial part of how we form our character. All of us construct our personality by managing the conflict between immediate, near considerations and more complicated, longer-term considerations. That is what it means to be ethical or productive or responsible. The good parent is someone who is willing to temper their own immediate selfish needs (to be left alone, to be allowed to sleep) with longer-term goals (to raise a good child). When alcohol peels away those longer-term constraints on our behavior, it obliterates our true self.