Life doesn't retreat.
Laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.
Power: a currency that never went out of style.
There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.
Pain is an interesting and off-putting thing. Few if any things in life concentrate our attention so completely and terribly, and few things are more boring to listen to or read about.
If our god's work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.