fiefoe

<Biology lessons:>

What are the roots of one's pleasures and emotions? These are quite different, deeper sorts of roots, extending further back than the genealogy of one's own family.
One may feel isolated in one's own town, but one has forebears all over the world.
In modern botany, roots are not merely anchors through which all nourishment is drawn: they produce hormones too... they should not assume that roots give nothing but stability: they could say that roots also create moods. Everything that is remembered about the past is washed, and often drowned, in nostalgia, pride, illusions and passions of all .
It is now clear, therefore, that everyone needs small doses of foreign bodies, that in order to survive side by side with others, it is necessary to absorb a minute part of them.

<Modern love:>

What modern woman does fit neatly into an obvious slot?
Love is revealed to be like freedom, only a starting point: then many more choices have to be made.
Desire is no more inexplicable than taste. Over the centuries, it has been extraordinarily flexible and versatile, serving opposing causes, playing many different roles in history, like an actor, both comic and tragic...
There is no golden age to look back to in matters of sex.
Love is one of the last refuges where a person can feel that he or she is able to achieve something noble.
There are two types of women in the world today of whom there were very few in the past: the educated and the divorced. Every time new sorts of people emerge, they give a new direction to the passions.
Love, far from being a distraction from creativity, is a branch of it.

"An Intimate History of Humanity"