On his journey to Leopold's Congo in 1890...

"There were instances in which Mr. Henry M. Stanley sent one white man, with four or five Zanzibar soldiers, to make treaties with native chiefs. ... All the sleight-of-hand tricks had been carefully rehearsed, and he [the white man] was now ready for his work. A number of electric batteries had been purchased in London, and when attached to the arm under the coat, communicated with a band of ribbon which passed over the palm of the white brother's hand, and when he gave the black brother a cordial grasp of the hand the black brother was greatly surprised to find his white brother so strong, that he nearly knocked him off his feet in giving him the hand of fellowship. When the native inquired about the disparity of strength between himself and his white brother, he was told that the white man could pull up trees and perform the most prodigious feats of strength.

Next came the lens act. The white brother took from his pocket a cigar, carelessly bit off the end, held up his glass to the sun and complaisantly smoked his cigar to the great amazement and terror of his black brother. The white man explained his intimate relation to the sun, and declared that if he were to request him to burn up his black brother's village it would be done.

The third act was the gun trick. The white man took a percussion cap gun, tore the end of the paper which held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of the left arm. A cap was placed upon the nipple of the gun, and the black brother was implored to set up off ten yards and shoot at his white brother to demonstrate his statements that he was a spirit, and, therefore, could not be killed. After much begging the the black brother aims the gun at his white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, the white man stoops, and takes the bullet from his shoe!

By such means as these, too silly and disgusting to mention, and a few boxes of gin, whole villages have been signed away to your Majesty."

- George Washington Williams, 1890, "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty Leopold II". Williams, an African-American civil war veteran, journeyed to the Congo in 1890 (the same year Conrad visited). He came, like Conrad, expecting to see the fruits of colonialism - hospitals, schools, gay adventuring. Instead he walked into one of the largest genocides in history: over a twenty-three year period, an estimated ten million Congo natives died from starvation, disease, and murder. This genocide was commanded by Leopold II of Belgium, who reaped humongous profits from Congo rubber and ivory.

On the end of Hamlet

"Nothing is resolved: there has been only prodigal death, of which the required one - Claudius's - is without catharsis. We do not know who the Ghost was, or whether he is now at peace, or whether Gertrude knew about her second husband, or how else Hamlet could have fulfilled himself - only that we could have done no better with his difficulties than he has. Denmark, once powerful, has been reduced to a client of Norway - largely through the activities of Hamlet. But of course his meaning is not contained by these circumstances, far from it. His body is to be taken, in a final pun, 'to the stage', a place of display and honour, with a sense of permanence, facing the sky. As the play closes on a single half-line of practical instruction and the lights go down on Hamlet, the frailty of his life, the permanence of his spirit, and above all his extraordinary enquiries, begin their long ringing in the ears. "

- Michael Pennington, 1996, Hamlet: A User's Guide, pg. 150. An excellent, insightful book on the great play, written from an actor's perspective (and a good actor's one at that).

maddened by the sound of harps...

"It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant...[The story] glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important. At the beginning, and during its process, and most of all at the end, we look down as if from a visionary height upon the house of man in the valley of the world. A light starts - lixte se leoma ofer landa fela [that light shined over many lands] - and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voices to cease. Grendel is maddened by the sound of harps."

- Tolkien, 1936, "Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics", a once much-studied lecture. The echoes of a beautiful, most un-scholarly music can be heard behind this piece of academia; the same music, much amplified, would later haunt a masterpiece. Yet who in 1936 knew to look for the Beowulf-author's heir in the figure of a modest, obscure professor?

"Why ought people do what morality requires? The honest answer, I think, is that they ought to do it only if they care about the well-being of others; wish to live in harmony with them; want to avoid a life likely to be solitary, nasty, brutish, and short; are moved by examples of good lives; and are repelled by examples of evil ones. Such people are the friends of humanity. Humanity also has its enemies, and that is what evildoers indifferent to the moral "ought" are. It is important to bear in mind that evildoers are not mere backsliders who lie, steal, or cheat, but people whose actions cause monstrous harm. They do not just violate moral limits, but reveal a depraved attitude toward them. They are the sort of people who snatch an old woman from her deathbed in order to burn her alive, like the crusaders; who enjoy a cozy lunch between two bouts of mass murder, like Stangl; and who incite a mob to dismember and cannibalize live victims on mere suspicion of political dissent, like Robespierre. To think of such evildoers as enemies of humanity is not too strong a condemnation and to treat them as such is well deserved. ..."

- from John Kekes' (2005) The Roots of Evil, Cornell University Press, pg. 198. A well-argued book, sobering, clear-sighted and unromantic, although perhaps Kekes pays too little heed to  psychopathy as a disease. Not least among the book's virtues is simply being a university-press book that is actually readable.