Bastard Freedom waves Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the false nature of freedom when it is denied to others, likening it to a deceptive display.
Thomas Moore's quote highlights the irony and hypocrisy of claiming to be free while others remain enslaved. The 'fustian flag' symbolizes a superficial and insincere representation of freedom that mocks the suffering of those who are still bound by oppression, suggesting that true freedom cannot exist without the liberation of all individuals.
In practice
In a speech advocating for social justice, one might use this quote to illustrate the ongoing struggle against oppression.
When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.
Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.
How many times do we lose an occasion for soul work by leaping ahead to final solutions without pausing to savor the undertones? We are a radically bottom-line society, eager to act and to end tension, and thus we lose opportunities to know ourselves for our motives and our secrets.
Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.
And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.
Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.
I felt we must separate political responsibility. The Dalai Lama should not carry that burden. So that is my selfish reason - to protect the old Dalai Lama tradition. It is safer without political involvement.
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.
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