"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general joke."
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (via liquidnight)
ratak-monodosico:

Here German women stumble past the Brandenburg Gate in 1945. Germany had lost. It’s most virile and young men killed. Only women and old men remained. The women were ‘fodder’ to the hungry Russians.
thishunger:

edwardianera:

Portraits—Evening by Edward J. Steichen, 1903
turnofthecentury:

Countess de Castiglione as Elvira at the Cheval Glass, 1861-67 by Pierre-Louis Pierson
from Met Museum
darkface:

My Limbo by *ValentinaKallias
turnofthecentury:

Mary Pickford, c.1910 by by William S. Earle
from LOC