All men aspire to excellence. The very crimes against the human race are derived from the “dream” of establishing an orderly existence.
War itself is the “dream” of eliminating bad men and bad societies.
All energy is the corruption of an aspiration to excellence.
Gold is exhausted radium and lead is exhausted gold.
It is the basic condition of the human mind to wish to be free. The desire is noble and wreaks a large part of the harm in public and private life.
What does man do with his despair, his rage, his frustration? There is a wide variety of things he does with it…
-Thornton Wilder, via Mockingbird NYC