The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
Good
Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.
The Arab states don’t seem to do a good job of providing for their own people, so I am not sure why they would suddenly develop an ability to help the Palestinians.
The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.
The good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.
Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.
Everybody believes in psychiatry; it’s supposed to be for our own good. Let psychiatry prove that anybody has an illness, and I’d concede, but there is no physical proof.
I’m not precisely saying that a really good board meeting at the MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Coucil) makes me want to go and write poetry, but there is a pleasure in doing that sort of thing well.
Fishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.