“When the romantic fails to illuminate or enlighten others, and when social reform is slow to come—or seems not to come at all—then he or she can only resort to violence.”

The Nation review of Man’s Better Angels: Romantic Reformers and the Coming of the Civil War by Philip F. Gura

“They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience … They will keep no friend, unless he make himself the mirror of their purpose; they will smite and slay you, and trample your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if you take the first step with them, and cannot take the second, and the third, and every other step of their terribly straight path.” 


Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Blithedale Romance

***featured image: The Gang by John George Brown