As objective as a panel of butchers telling us we should eat more meat

Everyone wants to live what they would see as the good life. Philosophers have had plenty to say about what this comprises, but their answers have tended to reveal an unsurprising bias. As people who value thought and contemplation, they have tended to come up with the idea that the good life is one of thought and contemplation. For some reason this answer has been granted a great deal of respect, even though it looks as objective as a panel of butchers telling us we should eat more meat.

J. Baggini, Welcome to Everytown (2007), 96-97

Pounded to death by the thunder of its own prosperity

The once ancient, free, and Hanseatic city of Hamburg, now almost pounded to death by the thunder of its own prosperity

J. Le Carré, Smiley's People (1979), 27

For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre

For fifty years the world has talked of, condemned, and executed Robespierre. Men and women, who have barely heard the names of Pitt and Fox, who know not whether Metternich is a man or a river, or one of the United States, speak of Robespierre as of a thing accursed. They know, at any rate, what he was--the demon of the revolution; the source of the fountain of blood with which Paris was deluged; the murderer of the thousands whose bodies choked the course of the Loire and the Rhone. Who knows not enough of Robespierre to condemn him?

...

Has it not been proved to us that crooked-backed Richard was a good and politic King; and that the iniquities of Henry VIII are fabulous? whereas the agreeable predilections of our early youth are disturbed by our hearing that glorious Queen Bess, and learned King James, were mean, bloodthirsty, and selfish.

A. Trollope, The Vendee (1850), Kindle ed. loc 4399 and 4405

But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous

"But rebellion and hell-fire are synonomous," said the priest, "and loyalty is the road to Paradise

A. Trollope, The Vendee (1850), Kindle ed. loc. 637

Only the whore of Babylon rises rather splendid

Only the whore of Babylon rises rather splendid, sitting in her purple and scarlet upon her scarlet beast. She is the Magna Mater in malefic aspect, clothed in the colours of the angry sun, and throned upon the great red dragon of the angry cosmic power. Splendid she sits, and splendid is her Babylon. How the late apocalyptists love mouthing out all about the gold and silver and cinnamon of evil Babylon! How they want them all! How they envy Babylon her splendour, envy, envy! How they love destroying it all! The harlot sits magnificent with her golden cup of the wine of sensual pleasure in her hand. How the apocalyptists would have loved to drink out of her cup! And since they couldn't: how they loved smashing it!

D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931), 87-88