Irreparable Quotes & Sayings

Love, it's such a night, laced with running water, irreparable, riddled with a million leaks. A night shaped like a shadow thrown by your absence. Every crack trickles, every overhang drips. The screech of nighthawks has been replaced by the splash of rain. The rain falls from the height of streetlights. Each drop contains its own shattering blue bulb. — Stuart Dybek

When a person is so irresponsible and self-centered that they can't look out for the basic needs of their own family and they actually cause irreparable harm to their own children, that's totally unacceptable. And when they treat other people like they exist only to serve them, that's not only rude and offensive, it's completely wrong. No one on this earth should be allowed to step on other people just to build themselves up. — Angie Stanton

Something was stretched to the point of irreparable damage, and I wanted to bounce on it until it broke. — Scot Gardner

Rebut the negative, and the opposing campaign has not merely lost a skirmish, it has suffered almost irreparable damage. An effective rebuttal makes it hard for the campaign whose ad is destroyed to be believed about anything ever again. — Dick Morris

I was worried that my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way. — Donna Tartt

I can offer you no consolation, my friend," said he; "your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do? — Mary Shelley

Timing is a critical issue when it comes to succession. Passing the baton too early or too late could both cause irreparable damage. The timing just has to be right, but again you are responsible for creating or influencing the right conditions over the course of your leadership tenure. — Archibald Marwizi

On an afternoon like this, I would usually take my bike. My wrist brace, though, makes it impossible to steer, and the last thing I need is irreparable damage to an already non-functioning extremity. — Katie Klein

Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you're weak where you thought yourself strong. You'll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself - as I know you already have - in dark places, alone, and afraid.

What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.

From "A Left-Handed Commencement Address," Mills College 1983 — Ursula K. Le Guin

Living the basic good-mothering guidelines enables a mom to blend the responsibilities of parenthood with its joys; to know when to stand her grown and when to be flexible; and to absorb the lessons of the parenting gurus while also trusting her inner voice when it reasons that another cookie isn't worth fighting over, or that her child won't suffer irreparable trauma if, once in awhile, Mom puts her own needs first. — Sue Woodman

something can only be shattered so many times before it becomes irreparable, just as a piece of paper can only be folded so many times before it cannot be folded any more. While — Krystal Sutherland

The sound of his stable, strong heart soothing. She let her eyes close, and though her heart was torn and possibly irreparable, like Lincoln's, with the two ruined pieces there was one whole heart. — Lindy Zart

It is critical to realize that underlying the extermination of nature is the marginalization of human beings. If we are to save what is wild, what is irreparable and majestic in nature, then we will ironically have to turn to each other and take care of all the human beings here on Earth. There is no boundary that will protect an environment from a suffering humanity. — Paul Hawken

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm ... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art. — Georges Braque

I flipped open to read the marked passage in Daily Strength: "It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are, is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made out of them." - F. W. Robertson — Will Schwalbe

Never risk your reputation on a single shot, for if you miss the loss is irreparable. — Baltasar Gracian

I cannot separate the finances of India from those of England. If the finances of the Indian Government receive any severe and irreparable check, will not the resources of England be called upon to meet the emergency, and to supply the deficiency? — Richard Cobden

But I had to meet you in the end . . . eleven years old, and you were so brave. So good. You walked uncomplainingly along the path that had been laid at your feet. Of course I loved you . . . and I knew that it would happen all over again . . . that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damage. I am no fit person to love . . . I have never loved without causing harm. A — J.K. Rowling

To be wicked is never excusable, but there is some merit in knowing that you are; the most irreparable of vices is to do evil from stupidity. — Charles Baudelaire

Lack of intimacy among friends is a mistake that cannot be censured without becoming irreparable. — NIETZSCHE FRIEDRICH WILHELM

She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions - and in the end doing them irreparable harm. — Marcia Muller

To Be young is to be always ready to give up what we are in order to become what we must be.
To be young is never to accept the irreparable.
— The Mother

With so much evidence of depleting natural resources, toxic waste, climate change, irreparable harm to our food chain and rapidly increasing instances of natural disasters, why do we keep perpetuating the problem? Why do we continue marching at the same alarming beat? — Yehuda Berg

When you find yourself about to say something that crosses a line, something that could cause irreparable harm, sometimes the best you can do is just not say that thing. — Tammara Webber

No one should think he can quickly dispose of questions posed here offhandedly. It was precisely because writers were in the habit during the time of the Reformation of theologizing with a hammer that the split in the Church became irreparable. And to work at overcoming this split means much effort. Only the patient need apply. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

This morning we were notified about the horrible news of the series of terrorist attacks in the United States, that have left a great trail of destruction. Mexico expresses its condolences to the Government and the American people for the irreparable human losses. We also express our energetic condemnation to these attacks. I have informed President George Bush of our feelings of sorrow and our solidarity in such difficult moments. — Vicente Fox

Today's television sitcoms ... the father is typically depicted as a clumsy buffoon, an inane and even unnecessary appendage. In creating that caricature, producers and directors have done irreparable damage to the God-ordained image of what may be one of the most significant roles and offices in eternity - that of a father, that of a real man. — Robert L. Millet

Well, do be careful, my love. Poetry can cause irreparable harm when misapplied. — Gail Carriger

If you do that, I won't ever let you go." If the physical connection had sealed them together, this would turn that seal into an unbreakable glue. "Even my death won't free you." The psychic scars would be irreparable.
"Whether we bond or not, your loss would change me forever." A quiet voice that held so much power it vibrated with it. "You are written indelibly on my soul, Zaira. Nothing will ever alter what you are to me. — Nalini Singh

Regardless of the subject of my films ... I am looking for a way of evoking in audiences feelings similar to my own: the physically painful impotence and sorrow that assail me when I see a man weeping at the bus stop, when I observe people struggling vainly to get close to others, when I see someone eating up the left-overs in a cheap restaurant, when I see the first blotches on a woman's hand and know that she too is bitterly aware of them, when I see the kind of appalling and irreparable injustice that so visibly scars the human face. I want this pain to come across to my audience, to see this physical agony, which I think I am beginning to fathom, to seep into my work. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel; which is very easily done with a bar of iron; and, when it is done, the pieces can never be put together again: so that by the metaphor is signified the easy and irreparable ruin of the wicked; see Isa 30:14. The word signifies that they should be so crumbled into dust, that they should be scattered about as with the wind; which, so far as it relates to the Jews, was fulfilled in their destruction by the Romans, and will have its accomplishment in the antichristian nations at the latter day; see Rev 2:26. — John Gill

I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late. — Albert Schweitzer

I don't know what the explosion did, but it damaged something deep and irreparable. Never mind. If I get home, I'll be so stinking rich, I'll be able to pay someone to do my hearing. — Suzanne Collins

To repair the irreparable ravages of time. — Jean Racine

There's nothing quite like a Scotch education. One is left with an irreparable debt. My head is full of irregular verbs still. — Ivor Cutler

Good-bye, my fair friend; beware of the amusing or capricious ideas which always seduce you too easily. Remember that in the career you are following, intelligence is not enough and that a single imprudence may become an irreparable misfortune. And finally sometime allow prudent friendship to guide your pleasures.
Good-bye, I still love you as much as if you were reasonable. — Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

There are places from which you cannot return. There is damage that can be irreparable. — James Frey

Love is dangerous because it makes you an individual. And the state and the church ... they don't want individuals, not at all. They don't want human beings, they want sheep. They want people who only look like human beings but whose souls have been crushed so utterly, damaged so deeply, that it seems almost irreparable. — Osho

Love is a driving force for a person's decisions, motives, and purpose in life, as is evidenced by many stories told throughout history. It has caused happiness, joy, war, and deceit. Without love, one cannot function and thrive among their peers or humanity as a whole. Its absence can cause irreparable harm to thought processes and logic - or in Van Gogh's case, make one crazed. — Renee Ericson

Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them. — Rebecca Solnit

A month later Billie sits at her dining room table, sifting through the pictorial record of Chris's final days. It is all she can do to force herself to examine the fuzzy snapshots. As she studies the pictures, she breaks down from time to time, weeping as only a mother who has outlived a child can weep, betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. Such bereavement, witnessed at close range, makes even the most eloquent apologia for high-risk activities ring fatuous and hollow. - describing the mother of Chris McCandless after learning of his starvation in the wild — Jon Krakauer

Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to shatter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again. — Edward Hoagland

While they suffered an irreparable loss, my children are still fortunate. Nothing will bring their father back, but our circumstances have softened the blow. This is not the case for many children facing heartbreaking difficulties. Two out of ten U.S. children of all backgrounds live in poverty, and one-third of black and close to one-third of Latino children are poor. Forty-three percent of children of single mothers live in poverty. More than two and a half million children have a parent in jail. Many children face serious illness, neglect, abuse, or homelessness. These extreme levels of harm and deprivation can impede children's intellectual, social, emotional, and academic development. We — Sheryl Sandberg

Without doing injustice to the living, it may safely be asserted that our loss is irreparable; and that among the shining hosts of the great and good who now cluster around the banner of the country, there exists no purer spirit, no more heroic soul, than that of the illustrious man whose death I join you in lamenting. — Jefferson Davis

People talk about how strong families are, but no one warns that they can also be as fragile as glass left out in the snow. One wrong tap and they shatter into hundreds of irreparable pieces. — Ruth Cardello

Whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. ( ... ) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, "My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer!" Isn't his "I did not know I was a believer!" at the very root of his irreparable guilt? — Milan Kundera

We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss. — Isaiah Berlin

The closest Western Civilization has come to unity since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the week the Sgt. Pepper album was released ... At the time I happened to be driving across country on Interstate 80. In each city where I stopped for gas or food - Laramie, Ogallala, Moline, South Bend - the melodies wafted in from some far-off transistor radio or portable hi-fi. It was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. For a brief while the irreparable fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the minds of the young. — Langdon Winner

Even top caliber hospitals cannot escape medical mistakes that sometimes result in irreparable damage to patients. — Carl Levin

Sad, that lives can be shattered, into so many pieces that they can never be put back together, the the relentless force of love. Irreparable. — Ellen Hopkins

Until her last moment on earth she was unaware that her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman was a daily disaster. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Certainly, the perception of the average consumer is a vital part of every business, and if a retailer, service provider, or corporation is sending out signals that its approach is lackadaisical, its methods halfhearted, and its execution indifferent, the business in question could suffer severe-and in some cases, irreparable-losses. — Michael Levine

The Victim's Narrative: The story begins long before the harmful act, which was just the latest incident in a long history of mistreatment. The perpetrator's actions were incoherent, senseless, incomprehensible. Either that or he was an abnormal sadist, motivated only by a desire to see me suffer, though I was completely innocent. The harm he did is grievous and irreparable, with effects that will last forever. None of us should ever forget it. They — Steven Pinker

No sinner is irreparable or irredeemable. No sin is so great that the blood of Jesus cannot cover it. His love is so deep and wide that he can, in one moment of our faith, forgive our past, present, and future sins. Sin is simply not a problem for God. — Judah Smith

We are not asked to SEE," said Amy. "Why need we when we KNOW?" We know
not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. "It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is 'hard to trust' when things are entirely bewildering? — Elisabeth Elliot

Weeping ... betraying a sense of loss so huge and irreparable that the mind balks at taking its measure. — Jon Krakauer

Any belief in supernatural creators, rulers, or influencers of natural or human process introduces an irreparable split into the universe, and prevents us from grasping its real unity. Any belief in Absolutes, whether the absolute validity of moral commandments, of authority of revelation, of inner certitudes, or of divine inspiration, erects a formidable barrier against progress and the responsibility of improvement, moral, rational, and religious. — Julian Huxley

Here's to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it's caused me. — Stanley Kubrick

Grace had torn me apart and put me back together so many times that I'd started to believe that was what I wanted. A kintsukuroi relationship, more beautiful for having been broken. But something can only be shattered so many times before it becomes irreparable... — Krystal Sutherland

Any individual or society that fails to honor or provide the opportunity for women to fully exert their power can never truly prosper. All creativity, growth, imagination, nurturing - All possibilities are born within the female womb of the Devine Feminine. To deny Her a rightful place, either within ourselves or in the world in which we live, is to do irreparable harm and endure the loss of countless joys. — Rod Stryker

I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm. Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls. — Pablo Neruda

Each year, several million children either die or suffer irreparable developmental defects because of vitamin A deficiency. Countless others are harmed by malnutrition and starvation. Yet many of these deaths would be preventable if we addressed them head on and used the tools that exist to stop them. — Richard J. Roberts

They showed me that it was not necessary to demonstrate facts: it was enough for the author to have written something for it to be true, with no proof other than the power of his talent and the authority of his voice. It was Scheherazade all over again - not in her millenary world, where everything was possible, but in a irreparable world, where everything had already been lost. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Society takes upon itself the right to inflict
appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of
shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man's punishment
is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the
very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed
of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a
creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted
an irreparable, an irremediable wrong. — Oscar Wilde

Nothing is irreparable in politics. — Jean Anouilh

I wouldn't want to see anything irreparable happen, but I also like it when seemingly irreparable thing occur and men and women find a way to move past it. — Robert Downey Jr.

Reality, the present, the irreparable, the necessary, repel and even terrify me. I have too much imagination, conscience, and penetration and not enough character. The life of thought alone seems to me to have enough elasticity and immensity, to be free enough from the irreparable; practical life makes me afraid. I am distrustful of myself and of happiness because I know myself. The ideal poisons for me all imperfect possession. And I abhor useless regrets and repentance. — Henri Frederic Amiel

But it had still made him feel vulnerable, yet another piece of evidence added to the overstuffed file testifying to his pinched prissiness, his fundamental and irreparable inability to be the sort of person he tried to make people believe he was. — Hanya Yanagihara

It is not by regretting what is irreparable that true work is to be done, but by making the best of what we are. It is not by complaining that we have not the right tools, but by using well the tools we have. What we are, and where we are is God's providential arrangement - God's doing, though it may be man's misdoing; and the manly and the wise way is to look your disadvantages in the face, and see what can be made our of them. — Will Schwalbe

On a micro level, if we're not terribly lucky, this sort of thing can happen to us quite frequently - the political becoming the personal in dramatic and irreparable ways. I remember the first time I went out into the desert, passing by all these mine fields and getting the history on them from my guide and realizing all these murderous mechanisms were real, were just sitting out there waiting for a victim, and some of them had been for sixty, seventy, eighty years. — Ron Currie Jr.

It is in fact no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder that will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come. — Whittaker Chambers

Our relationship could now thrive only in my head, and to discuss it with a mother intent - admittedly in my own best interest - on challenging it with reality might do it irreparable harm. — Mohsin Hamid

But for sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return or the past should be recalled. — Samuel Johnson

If there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true - that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love and obey Jesus Christ, incur at the Last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss. They will pass into a night on which no morning dawns. — David Platt

The key is to just focus on the spots where the love is real, because you can just drive yourself crazy focusing on the negativity, focusing on the relationships that are irreparable and just aren't going to work, trying to convince the haters that you are indeed lovable. So much of that is wasted energy. — Amanda Palmer

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. — Oswald Chambers

Jean-Yves looked up at his mother's face, her greying chignon, her harsh features: it was difficult to feel a rush of tenderness, of affection for this woman; as far back as he could remember, she had never really been one for hugs; it was equally difficult to imagine her in the role of a sensual lover, a slut. He suddenly realised that his father must have been bored shitless his whole life. He felt terribly shocked by this, his hands tensed on the edge of the table: this time it was irreparable, it was definitive. In despair, he tried to recall a moment when he had seen his father beaming, happy, genuinely glad to be alive. — Michel Houellebecq

If she has given you children remind yourself every day of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth words in this sentence. If you hurt her in ways that are irreparable I will send out people to hurt you back, sorry, but it has to be like that. Yes, you may have had a difficult childhood, but please allow me to introduce myself: Hello, I am the woman who doesn't give a shit. Make her something warm to drink in the mornings and give her time to begin speaking; only rush at her with an embrace or a gemstone. Wildflowers. A love note. Yeats. — Mary-Louise Parker

One can feel an attraction towards a particular person. But to release that fount of sorrow, that sense of the irreparable, those agonies which prepare the way for love, there must be
and this is perhaps, more than a person, the actual object which our passion seeks so anxiously to embrace
the risk of an impossibility. — Marcel Proust

I believe employers should be aware that employees who earn under $10 an hour cannot lead an independent life. But I do not believe that government should dictate wages. We have seen this fail in Socialist and Communist countries. It will do irreparable harm. — Richard Riordan

The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist, seems to me not merely unobtainable
that is a truism
but conceptually incoherent ... Some among the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss. — Isaiah Berlin

And yes, you will die, but probably not until everyone you know is already dead too. Your parents, your friends, your pets, each death leaving a small but irreparable scar on your not yet still, still-beating heart. The living tell the dying not to leave and the dying do not listen. The dying tell us not to be sad for them and we do not listen. The dialogue between the living and the dead is full of misunderstanding and — Joseph Fink

You never really heard anything about Humpty when he was whole; only that he was broken, irreparable. — T.L. Hines

Of course I loved you . . . and I knew that it would happen all over again . . . that where I loved, I would cause irreparable damage. I am no fit person to love . . . I have never loved without causing harm. — J.K. Rowling

The struggle to create a nation and world of economic and social justice and environmental sanity is not an easy one. The struggle to try and create a more peaceful world will be extremely difficult. But this I know: despair is not an option if we care about our kids and grandchildren. Giving up is not an option if we want to prevent irreparable harm to our planet. — Bernie Sanders

Men cheat because it's in their genetic code. A woman does it because she doesn't have enough
dignity; in addition to handing over her body, she always ends up handing over a bit of her heart. A
true crime. A theft. It's worse than robbing a bank, because if one day she is discovered (and she
always is), she will cause irreparable damage to her family.
For men it is just a "stupid mistake." For women, it feels like a spiritual crime against all those
who surround her with affection and support her as a mother and wife. — Paulo Coelho

Where error is irreparable, repentance is useless. — Edward Gibbon

The penalty of death is the only one that makes an injustice absolutely irreparable; from which it follows that the existence of the death penalty implies that one is exposed to committing an irreparable injustice; from which it follows that it is unjust to establish it. This reasoning appears to us to have the force of a demonstration. — Nicolas De Caritat, Marquis De Condorcet

The truly solitary being is not the man who is abandoned by men, but the man who suffers in their midst, who drags his desert through the marketplace and deploys his talents as a smiling leper, a mountebank of the irreparable. The great solitaries were happy in the old days, knew nothing of duplicity, had nothing to hide: they conversed only with their own solitude. — Emil Cioran

How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable? — Gwenn Wright

Monsieur, beware of love! It is lying in ambush everywhere; it is watching for you at every corner; all its snares are laid, all its weapons are sharpened, all its guiles are prepared! Beware of love! Beware of love! It is more dangerous than brandy, bronchitis or pleurisy! It never forgives and makes everybody commit irreparable follies. — Guy De Maupassant

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead. — Albert Camus

I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.
Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.
I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person. — Charlaine Harris

The results of the Great Society experiments started coming in and began showing that, for all its good intentions, the War on Poverty was causing irreparable damage to the very communities it was designed to help. — Charles Krauthammer

Life itself is a sea full of reefs and maelstroms that a human being takes the greatest care and caution to avoid; he uses all his efforts and ingenuity to wend his way through, while knowing that even if he is successful, every step brings him closer to the greatest, the total, the inescapable and irreparable shipwreck, and in fact steers him right up to it, - to death: this is the final goal of the miserable journey and worse for him that all the reefs he managed to avoid. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable ... — Susanne Katherina Langer

Fully aware that life is too short for the choice to be anything but irreparable, he had been distressed to discover that he felt no spontaneous attraction to any occupation. Rather sceptically, he looked over the array of available possibilities: prosecutors, who spend their whole lives persecuting people; schoolteachers, the butt of rowdy children; science and technology, whose advances bring enormous harm along with a small benefit; the sophisticated, empty chatter of the social sciences; interior design (which appealed to him because of his memories of his cabinetmaker grandfather), utterly enslaved by fashions he detested; the occupation of the poor pharmacists now reduced to peddlars of boxes and bottles. When he wondered; what should I choose for my whole life's work? his inner self would fall into the most uncomfortable silence. — Milan Kundera

Reasonably accurate appraisal of one's own capabilities is, therefore, of considerable value in successful functioning. Large misjudgments of personal efficacy in either direction have consequences. People who grossly overestimate their capabilities undertake activities that are clearly beyond their reach. As a result, they get themselves into considerable difficulties, undermine their credibility, and suffer needless failures. Some of the missteps, of course, can produce serious, irreparable harm — Albert Bandura

Have you ever done something so horrible and so irreparable that you knew there was nothing you could ever do to fix it?"

"No," I said gently. "Mostly because I'm eight. — Jo Graham

We, as licensed protectors of the species and members in good standing of the master-class of the race, by the power invested in us by those who wish to survive and reproduce, vow to enforce the fiction that life is worth having and worth living come hell or irreparable brain damage. — Thomas Ligotti