HOW SCIENCE STRUGGLES TO EXPLAIN BEAUTY

'The great power of evolution, through natural and sexual selection alike, is that so much order can be created without the process needing to go anywhere at all. This is why it explains so much and so little at once - and why at the end it really is not all that satisfying, because it says little about the precise nature of the beauty that surrounds us. Perhaps the most important things are those about which the least can be said. Was science never meant to capture wonder?'

David Rothenberg, Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution, p.45.

INSTINCTIVE RECOGNITION OF BEAUTY

'He did not say to himself that it was beautiful. He felt, he recognized, the beauty of it in his flesh...'
Wendell Berry, How It Went: Thirteen more stories of the Port William Membership, p.27.

COURTESY

'...she had courtesy, which implied a great deal more than civility and good manners. It meant that while being completely yourself, you were all the time helping the other person to be himself, through your appreciation of his point of view, your respect for his individuality, your sensibility, and your quick awareness of how he thought and felt and what he was.'

John Moore, The Waters Under the Earth, p.239.

THE POLITICAL STRUCTURE OF ENGLAND

'"I've got a theory about the political structure of England...I believe that fundamentally it's a matter of Cavalier and Roundhead still. The argument ended when the king's head came off; but the attitudes remain. I believe that the two opposing attitudes are still the main sources of all our political thought and behaviour. Sometimes the pull is one way, sometimes another; but between them they dictate our policies and legislation....

It isn't a question of one side being better than the other," he went on. "In the long run I dare say there's been just as much courage, honour and political genius demonstrated by the puritan-nonconformist-dogooder Roundheads as by the easy-going-laissez-faire-romantic Cavaliers. Allegiance cuts right across Party and class. There are Roundheads on my side of the House and Cavaliers in Labour; there are costermongers and tarts who are Cavaliers like you, and peers who are Roundheads. Both side produce rulers and both sides produce rebels. England wouldn't be what she is if she didn't draw her inspiration from both sources.'"

John Moore, The Waters Under the Earth, p.159.