A World Without Princes Quotes

It's the problem with fairy tales. From far away, they seem so perfect. But up close, they're just as complicated as real life.

No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can’t stand boys!

For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important?

And Sophie and Agatha lived happily ever after, for girls don't need princes for love to call... No, they don't need princes in their fairy tales at all

Sophie and Agatha locked eyes one last time but neither screamed for the other. Once true loves, the two girls now pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil... Both of their wishes granted.

No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can't stand boys! They smell, they talk too much, they mess up everything, and they always have their hands in their pants ...

No one likes boys! Even girls who like boys can’t stand boys! They smell, they talk too much, they mess up everything, and they always have their hands in their pants, but that doesn’t mean we can go to school without them! It’s like stymphs without bones! It’s like witches without warts! Without boys, LIFE HAS NO POINT!

Nothing in this world was ever certain. Princes could become as frightening as ogres. Princesses could become villains. Best friends could become enemies.

What is the world coming to when girls allow their hands to be kissed without gloves? That young people don't use proper protection these days is exactly why there are always so many colds going around.

I feel like Sleeping Beauty, forever asleep, with the waking world continuing on without me fully aware. Only there is no prince to wake me from this slumber, this half-life.

Agatha let out a rush of air and gripped her old history textbook to her chest. Leave it to a librarian to find the book she needed, she thought, silently thanking the tortoise.

Because we grow up, Filip,' Tedros exhaled. 'When you're young, you think your best friend is everything. But once you find real love... it changes. Your friendship can never be the same after that. Because no matter how much you try to keep both, your loyalty can only lie with one.

A prince and a witch, willing to kill each other for you," she rasped in her scratchy voice. "If it was me, I'd feel flattered." She watched the rodents disembowel the lizard and lifted her hooded red eyes. "Thankfully I don't have feelings.

And he knew, without knowing how he knew it, that the phoenix had gone, had left Hogwarts for good, just as Dumbledore had left the school, had left the world ... had left Harry.

Xie Lian whipped his head over, and a biting chill flashed before his face. He straightened and stated solemnly: “You ask who I am? LISTEN WELL! ——I, AM THE EMINENT HIGHNESS THE CROWN PRINCE! You riotous radicals, BOW DOWN BEFORE ME!” His voice boomed like thunder in clear skies. There were actually a few who almost dropped to their knees, and didn’t snap out of it until their companions pulled them up. “What are you doing? Are you actually kneeling?” “Th-that’s weird, I did it before I realized it…” Xie Lian proclaimed sharply: “I, AM OVER EIGHT HUNDRED. OLDER THAN ALL OF YOU COMBINED. I’VE CROSSED MORE BRIDGES THAN ALL THE ROADS YOU’VE WALKED. “I, POSSESS SHRINES AND TEMPLES ACROSS THIS LAND; MY DEVOTEES AND WORSHIPPERS ARE SPREAD TO ALL FOUR SEAS. IF YOU DON’T KNOW MY NAME, IT’S BECAUSE YOU ARE IGNORANT AND UNLEARNED OF THE WORLD! “I, DO NOT WORSHIP GODS. “I, AM GOD!” When the mob heard this speech, that was so shameless yet spoken with an incomparably impressive air, they were all stunned, and dropped their jaws. “…HUH???” Xie Lian made up all that nonsense because he was waiting for this very moment. He flung that plate in his hand, and all those little white meatballs shot out through the air like iron pellets, scattering in all directions. Without any misses, they were hurled right into the open mouths of all those people in shock. Then he wiped away his sweat. “Will everyone please forget everything I just said? I’m actually only just a scrap collector!

And a pink spell?” Anadil said, her three rats looking just as befuddled. “You definitely saw wrong. If a boy’s using a pink curse, it’d be serious black magic.

how many like Antoine were roaming the world, weak, afraid, without comrades or the consolation of love, clinging to existence as he did?

Who would end up the villain?

Sophie, however, remained in place, buffing her ragged nails until she heard the deafening crash. Nonchalant, she crawled over the mass of moaning bodies at the door, wondering how boys had ever survived this long in nature if they didn’t even have the common sense to take turns going down stairs.

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.

honor and valor that's what good is

There is no doubt that here below matter and evil exercise 'all the causality which belongs to them'; the spectacle of the innumerable horrors of history is enough to prove that the kingdom of God is not of this world (does not Scripture describe the devil as the prince of this world?). Nevertheless God remains mysteriously present in creation: without in any way changing the calamities which weigh upon us, his grace plays upon the laws of gravity like the sun's rays in the clouds.

Sophie bristled. “About to die with your beloved prince and still thinking about me. My story will go on without you, Agatha. I don’t need you anymore or your pity, like one of your decrepit cats. I’m no longer your Good Deed.” “But I’m still yours,” said Agatha. “Because without your love, I’d never have become who I really am. So even if I die, I’ll always be your Good Deed, Sophie. And no Evil in the world will ever erase that.

God does not look for success as the world understands it. He looks for faithfulness. “Who is that faithful servant?” Success is accomplishing faithfully the task allotted to you by the Lord.

The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance: When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.' Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.

Since you left, Leon, the valet, is always drunk, the rice is undercooked, and my underwear is being stolen. I will come to get you and marry you in any country in the world and you'll arrange a lovely room for me, but without a cask with a golden spigot, because that's been stolen, too. I'm not writing anymore. I'm making my mother cry because I'm in despair. Our separation is driving me mad.

ONE WHO WRAPS HIMSELF God called the Prophet Muhammad Muzzammil, "The One Who Wraps Himself," and said, "Come out from under your cloak, you so fond of hiding and running away. Don't cover your face. The world is a reeling, drunken body, and you are its intelligent head. Don't hide the candle of your clarity. Stand up and burn through the night, my prince. Without your light a great lion is held captive by a rabbit! Be the captain of the ship, Mustafa, my chosen one, my expert guide. Look how the caravan of civilization has been ambushed. Fools are everywhere in charge. Do not practice solitude like Jesus. Be in the assembly, and take charge of it. As the bearded griffin, the Humay, lives on Mt. Qaf because he's native to it, so you should live most naturally out in public and be a communal teacher of souls.

To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to enquire and answer enquiries, is the business of a scholar. He wanders about the world without pomp or terror, and is neither known nor valued but by men like himself.

There's this mental illness, right? It's called 'anhedonia.' It means 'without pleasure.' You can look it up, though all you really need to do is look around." She motioned to the door the other women had disappeared through, and to the world at large. "A good deal of people, mostly women, spend their entire lives in this state. It's a sort of half-death. But if you recognize this, you can fix it...You focus on bliss. Small pleasures. Fill your day with as many as you can fit into twenty-four hours. You devote every possible moment not to fulfilling another person-a man-but yourself."-Suzanne "Sounds hedonistic"- Joanna "But once you can do this, you start attracting everyone to you. You dont need compare yourself to some other girl, no matter how young or firm or perky she is.....Trust me. A woman like this, one at her best? We're the color of the world. We're the light and the beauty. So focus on your pleasure, and the man you want can't help but realize...that he may be a prince...but your a goddess.-Suzanne

A castle full of boys can end one of two ways. Either its inhabitants channel aggression into order, discipline, and productivity. Or they degenerate into hormonal apes.

I need you." He licked her bruised lip to soothe it. "I can't think straight without you. My world is all turned around, and I go through it in pain, wanting to hurt someone.

Walking. It ain’t hard,

And yet, everything in his eyes said he’d been tortured beyond what a boy could handle.

Evelyn’s always one step ahead.

There is an uneasiness that remains after your best friend tries to kill you.

Oh! Science! Everything has been revised. For the body and for the soul,--the viaticum,—there are medicine and philosophy,—old wives' remedies and popular songs rearranged. And the pastimes of princes and games they proscribed! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!... Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why shouldn’t it turn? It is the vision of numbers. We are going toward the Spirit. There’s no doubt about it, an oracle, I tell you. I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.

I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince Of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without a doubt Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided - oo la la! - to tell all. All? Some. I'm toying with that for a title: Some. Got a post-millennial modestry to it, don't you think? Some. My side of the story. The funk. The jive. The boogie. The rock and roll. (I invented rock and roll. You wouldn't believe the things I've invented. Anal sex, obviously. Smoking. Astrology. Money...Let's save time: Everything in the world that distracts you from thinking about God. Which...pretty much...is everything in the world, isn't it? Gosh.)

Oh! science! It has reconsidered everything. For thebody and the soul − the viaticum − we now have medicineand philosophy, old wives’ remedies and rearranged popular songs. And the diversions of princes and games they forbade! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry . . . Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why would it cease to turn? It is the vision of numbers. We are moving towards Spirit. What I say is certain, oracular. I understand, but not knowing how to explain myself without using pagan words, I prefer to hold my tongue.

Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow. “You came to the world,” unseen lips said, “and you saw that Men were like children.” Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters. “It is their nature to believe as their fathers believed,” the darkness continued. “To desire as they desired … Men are like wax poured into moulds: their souls are cast by their circumstances. Why are no Fanim children born to Inrithi parents? Why are no Inrithi children born to Fanim parents? Because these truths are made, cast by the particularities of circumstance. Rear an infant among Fanim and he will become Fanim. Rear him among Inrithi and he will become Inrithi … “Split him in two, and he would murder himself.” Without warning, the face re-emerged, water-garbled, white save the black sockets beneath his brow. The action seemed random, as though his father merely changed posture to relieve some vagrant ache, but it was not. Everything, Kellhus knew, had been premeditated. For all the changes wrought by thirty years in the Wilderness, his father remained Dûnyain … Which meant that Kellhus stood on conditioned ground. “But as obvious as this is,” the blurred face continued, “it escapes them. Because they cannot see what comes before them, they assume nothing comes before them. Nothing. They are numb to the hammers of circumstance, blind to their conditioning. What is branded into them, they think freely chosen. So they thoughtlessly cleave to their intuitions, and curse those who dare question. They make ignorance their foundation. They confuse their narrow conditioning for absolute truth.” He raised a cloth, pressed it into the pits of his eyes. When he withdrew it, two rose-coloured stains marked the pale fabric. The face slipped back into the impenetrable black. “And yet part of them fears. For even unbelievers share the depth of their conviction. Everywhere, all about them, they see examples of their own self-deception … ‘Me!’ everyone cries. ‘I am chosen!’ How could they not fear when they so resemble children stamping their feet in the dust? So they encircle themselves with yea-sayers, and look to the horizon for confirmation, for some higher sign that they are as central to the world as they are to themselves.” He waved his hand out, brought his palm to his bare breast. “And they pay with the coin of their devotion.

I wish I was as true an artist as you so that I could find a way to tell you what you’ve become to me. America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion. You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that's all it would manage to do. You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I've discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side.

Cinderella, until lately, has never been a passive dreamer waiting for rescue. The forerunners of the Ash-girl have all been hardy, active heroines who take their lives into their own hands and work out their own salvations .... Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent decisions, for she knows that wishing solves nothing without concomitant action. We have each been that child. (Even boys and men share thatdream, as evidenced by the many Ash-boy variants.) It is the longing of any youngster sent supperless to bed or given less than a full share at Christmas. And of course it is the adolescent dream. To make Cinderella less than she is, an ill-treated but passive princess awaiting her rescue, cheapens our most cherished dreams and makes a mockery of the magic inside us all—the ability to change our own lives, the ability to control our own destinies. [The Walt Disney film] set a new pattern for Cinderella: a helpless, hapless, pitiable, useless heroine who has to be saved time and time again by the talking mice and birds because she is “off in a world of dreams.” It is a Cinderella who is not recognized by her prince until she is magically back in her ball gown, beribboned and bejewelled. Poor Cinderella. Poor us.

You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!" said Dum-bledore loudly. "The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort's! In spite of all the temptation you have endured, all the suffering, you remain pure of heart, just as pure as you were at the age of eleven, when you stared into a mir-ror that reflected your heart's desire, and it showed you only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Harry, have you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what he was dealing with, but he did not! But he knows it now. You have flitted into Lord Voldemort's mind without damage to yourself, but he cannot possess you with-out enduring mortal agony, as he discovered in the Ministry. I do not think he understands why, Harry, but then, he was in such a hurry to mutilate his own soul, he never paused to understand the incomparable power of a soul that is untarnished and whole." "But, sir," said Harry, making valiant efforts not to sound argu-mentative, "it all comes to the same thing, doesn't it? I've got to try and kill him, or —" "Got to?" said Dumbledore. "Of course you've got to! But not because of the prophecy! Because you, yourself, will never rest until you've tried! We both know it! Imagine, please, just for a moment, that you had never heard that prophecy! How would you feel about Voldemort now? Think!" Harry watched Dumbledore striding up and down in front ol him, and thought. He thought of his mother, his father, and Sinus. He thought of Cedric Diggory. He thought of all the terrible deeds he knew Lord Voldemort had done. A flame seemed to leap inside his chest, searing his throat. "I'd want him finished," said Harry quietly. "And I'd want to do it." "Of course you would!" cried Dumbledore. "You see, the prophecy does not mean you have to do anything! But the prophecy caused Lord Voldemort to mark you as his equal. ... In other words, you are free to choose your way, quite free to turn your back on the prophecy! But Voldemort continues to set store by the prophecy. He will continue to hunt you . . . which makes it certain, really, that —" "That one of us is going to end up killing the other," said Harry. "Yes." But he understood at last what Dumbledore had been trying to tell him. It was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. Some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but Dumble-dore knew — and so do I, thought Harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents — that there was all the difference in the world.

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side…

Hester beat Sophie with a pillow

Tedros.

heroines who cut off fingers to save birds,

1. Girls soften. Boys harden. 2. Girls reflect. Boys react. 3. Girls express. Boys suppress. 4. Girls desire. Boys hunt. 5. Girls caution. Boys ignore.

Both of their wishes granted.

I feel like I’m missing something—

Just ’cause we’re asleep don’t mean we can’t hear.

Agatha was gone. Her best friend. Her soulmate.

Perhaps he'd foreseen even before she'd arrived that he'd die for her. And still he'd smiled at her. Still he'd helped her

Death threat or no death threat, I’m not getting blackheads

Agatha gasped, and Sophie ran around the lectern like a headless chicken—

That would solve everything,” sighed Professor Dovey. Both girls turned. “Oh dear,” said their teacher. “Did I say that out loud?

Sophie’s eyes suddenly popped. “Here it comes,” Dot mumbled.

Helga’s gray pupils glued to the ground, unable to look at her student for a long time. Slowly, her long white hair retracted into her skull, growing scratchy and short. The grooves of her face magically deepened and the skin hardened to a leathery tan beneath a growing white beard. Her cheeks hollowed, her nose fattened, her eyebrows bushied, her body burlying to a barrel shape . . . until at last Yuba the Gnome gazed up at his former students, in the same lavender dress and wobbly heels. “Do you mind if I change?” he asked quietly. Sophie gawped at her old Forest Group teacher, morphed from a girl into a boy. She twirled to Agatha, appalled. “That’s how you want us to get in the boys’ school? By turning us into . . . gnomes?” Agatha banged her head against the wall.

the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. For without doubt the divine providence procures for her both consolation through prosperity, that she may not be broken by adversity, and trial through adversity, that she may not be corrupted by prosperity; and thus each is tempered by the other,

I wanted to be his world. I wanted him to look at me and feel like he couldn’t go on without me by his side. I wanted to be his everything. The yin to his yang. The light to his darkness. I wanted to be the one.

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more tame and cheap... and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angles going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy, stygian, fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the prince of Darkness was his surveyor.

We live in a world of pomp and muscle, of strutting that glorifies jet thrust and far-flying warheads. It is the same kind of strutting that produced the misery of the days of Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Hitler. In this kind of world it is not easy to recognize that— “A babe born in a stable of the village of Bethlehem, “A boy reared as a carpenter of Nazareth, “A citizen of a conquered and subdued nation, “A man whose mortal footsteps never went beyond a radius of 150 miles, who never received a school degree, who never spoke from a great pulpit, who never owned a home, who traveled afoot and without purse “Truly, his coming, ministry, and place in our eyes is as foretold by the ancient prophet Isaiah: ‘For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.’ (Isa. 9:6.)

Sophie gawped at her old Forest Group teacher, morphed from a girl into a boy. She twirled to Agatha, appalled. “That’s how you want us to get in the boys’ school? By turning us into . . . gnomes?” Agatha banged her head against the wall.

Despite her agitation, Camilla thought it was already rather lovely; it captured her as all the things she wished she could openly be. Soft, feminine, boldly powerful. Someone who owned her desire without apology, without pretending to humble herself for a world that oppressed.

The country was passing through turbulent times. British Raj was on its last legs. The World War had sucked the juice out of the British economy. Britain neither had the resources nor the will to hold on to a country the size of India. Sensing the British weakness and lack of resources to rule, different leagues of Indians sniffed different destinies in the air following the imminent exit of the British: a long stretch of Nehru Raj, Hindu Raj extending from Kashmir to Kerala not seen since Emperor Ashoka in third-century BCE before the emperor himself renounced Hinduism and turned a non-violent Buddhist, a Muslim-majority state carved out of two shoulders of India with a necklace-like corridor running through her bosom along Grand Trunk Road, balkanisation of the country with princes ruling the roost, and total chaos. From August 1946 onwards, chaos appeared to be the most likely destiny as it spurted in Bengal, Bihar, and United Provinces, ending in the carnage of minority communities at every place. The predicament of British government was how to cut their losses and run without many British casualties before the inevitable chaos spread to the whole country. The predicament of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, was how to achieve his dream of Muslim-majority Pakistan carved out of India before his imminent demise from tuberculosis he suffered from, about which—apart from his doctor—only a handful of his closest relations and friends knew about. The predicament of Jawaharlal Nehru, the heir apparent of the Congress Party anointed by Gandhiji, was how to attain independence of the country followed by Nehru Raj while Gandhiji, a frail 77-year-old at the time, was still alive, for God only knew who would be the leader of the party once Gandhiji’s soul and his moral authority were dispatched to heaven, and Nehru couldn’t possibly leave the crucial decision in the hands of a God he didn’t particularly believe in. Time was of the essence to all the three.

The ignorant (uninformed about Atma and without faith) waste their lives. Through their disbelief they alienate themselves from the Self and thus from true unity with others. As miserable people, they cannot be happy either in this world or any world beyond. People who really know Divinity, who have renounced attachment to the fruits of their work by offering it to the Divine, who have used the sword of knowledge to cut to pieces their doubts regarding the truth of their Atma — no bonds can hold these people. Though they are ever occupied with action, karma cannot taint them. O Prince, your ignorance of your True Self Within is the cause of your present reluctance to act, just as the opposite of ignorance, Self-knowledge, would bring fearless action. So with the sword of wisdom sever the doubts in your heart. Arise, O best of men, take your stand. Be a warrior!

Kai remembered he hadn’t delivered the most important information. He leaned close to Bashasa and whispered, “The water intention is flooding everywhere. I don’t know if it’ll stop. It’s so far underwater by now no one could reach it to make it stop.” “But we must leave this place where we were held against our will, and make our plans elsewhere,” Bashasa continued without hesitation. “The Fourth Prince has unleashed a powerful working which will leave it flooded, and confuse any pursuit. It will also prevent the other Hierarchs from retaking the Summer Halls, at least for a time.

The first paradox of Illuminism, then, was that it was a network that craved an elaborate hierarchical structure, even as it inveighed against existing hierarchies. In his 1782 ‘Address to the newly promoted Illuminati dirigenti’, Weishaupt set out his worldview. In the state of nature, man had been free, equal and happy; division into classes, private property, personal ambition and state formation had come later, as the ‘great unholy mainsprings and causes of our misery’. Mankind had ceased to be ‘one great family, a single empire’ because of the ‘desire of men to differentiate themselves from one another’. But Enlightenment, spread by the activities of secret societies, could overcome this stratification of society. And then ‘princes and nations would disappear from the earth without any need for violence, the human race would become one family, and the world would become the habitation of rational beings

Evergirls and Nevergirls huddled side by side, watching a ghostly scene unfold atop the pages of A Student’s Revised History of the Woods to finish an assignment. Above their heads, murals of an idyllic school of girls presiding over enslaved boys, watermarked with Sophie’s and Agatha’s deified faces, stretched down the long dormitory walls.

You and I, my son, are that “below.” That was true in 1776. It is true today. There is no them without you, and without the right to break you they must necessarily fall from the mountain, lose their divinity, and tumble out of the Dream. And then they would have to determine how to build their suburbs on something other than human bones, how to angle their jails toward something other than a human stockyard, how to erect a democracy independent of cannibalism. But because they believe themselves to be white, they would rather countenance a man choked to death on film under their laws. And they would rather subscribe to the myth of Trayvon Martin, slight teenager, hands full of candy and soft drinks, transforming into a murderous juggernaut. And they would rather see Prince Jones followed by a bad cop through three jurisdictions and shot down for acting like a human. And they would rather reach out, in all their sanity, and push my four-year-old son as though he were merely an obstacle in the path of their too-important day.

And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.' And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.' And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.

Filled with a reverent notion (for which he would have been put to death on any of the public squares of Christendom or the lands of Mohammed), he reflected that the most adequate symbols of a conjectural Supreme Good are those very ones which are held, absurdly, to be the most idolatrous: the fiery globe above is the only God visible for us creatures, who would perish without it. Likewise, the most real of angels was this seagull, which possessed what Seraphim and Thrones did not have, the clear evidence of existing. In this world unburdened by concepts, even ferocity was pure: the fish wriggling beneath the wave would soon be only a choice morsel, bleeding under the beak of the bird fishing here, but the bird was giving no false pretext for its hunger. Both fox and hare (trickery and fear) inhabited the dune where he slept, but the killer did not evoke laws promulgated long ago by some wise fox, or handed down by a fox-god. The victim did not suppose itself punished for its crimes or, when dying, protest to the end that it had remained loyal to its prince.

I loved her so much,” he mumbled behind her, almost to himself. “I tried to make her wish come true. I tried to fix the story like a prince is supposed to. Kill the witch, kiss his princess. That’s how fairy tales work. That’s what she asked for.” His voice broke. “But I would have let Sophie live if it meant having Agatha forever. I would have kissed her right there and we would have had The End.

Apologies for any insult this causes,' she said without peering out from around her easel, 'but I am not in the market for a husband, my lord. Please just go.' A beat of silence passed. With any luck, Vexley would be insulted by the bite in her tone and would turn right back around and leave for some faraway city at the edge of the world. 'Well, that's quite a relief considering I'm in want of a painting, not a wife.

The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death.

And meanwhile, even in spite of all my desire, I could never imagine to myself that there is no future life and no providence. Most likely there is all that, but we don't understand anything about the future life and its laws. But if it is so difficult and even completely impossible to understand it, can it be that I will have to answer for being unable to comprehend the unknowable? True, they say, and the prince, of course, along with them, that it is here that obedience is necessary, that one must obey without reasoning, out of sheer good behavior, and that I am bound to be rewarded for my meekness in the other world. We abase providence too much by ascribing our own notions to it, being vexed that we can't understand it. But, again, if it's impossible to understand it, then, I repeat, it is hard to have to answer for something it is not given to man to understand. And if so, how are they going to judge me for being unable to understand the true will and laws of providence? No, we'd better leave religion alone.

Embrace it. Accept it. Don’t resist it. Change is not only a part of life; change is a necessary part of God’s strategy. To use us to change the world, he alters our assignments. Gideon: from farmer to general; Mary: from peasant girl to the mother of Christ; Paul: from local rabbi to world evangelist. God transitioned Joseph from a baby brother to an Egyptian prince. He changed David from a shepherd to a king. Peter wanted to fish the Sea of Galilee. God called him to lead the first church. God makes reassignments.

Nor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind those forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself; incidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than they were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of his brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested; through those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an irresistible dictatorship. For be a man’s intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base. This it is, that for ever keeps God’s true princes of the Empire from the world’s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can give, to those men who become famous more through their infinite inferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than through their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass. Such large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one now alluded to.

I'm gonna take her away from you," he said. He did not sound like he was joking. The Boy could have fought for her, but the world is full of brave boys who limp home with their lips split and still no kiss good night. He was a rough fist-fighter himself and, my mother said, "could be mean as a scorpion." But my father's reputation, and his family's reputation, prevented a lot of violence in those days. A family that so routinely pulled knives on each other was not one you engaged without at least weighing the consequences.

—I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath!… Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say, generous self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millenniums of this madhouse of a world, call it “Christianity,” “Christian faith” or the “Christian church,” as you will—I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows better… . What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about me: not a word survives of what was once called “truth”; we can no longer bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any “sinner,” or any “Saviour”—that “free will” and the “moral order of the world” are lies—: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it… . All the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation… . We know, our conscience now knows—just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,—the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master… . Every one knows this, but nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians and go to the communion-table?… A prince at the head of his armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!… Whom, then, does Christianity deny? what does it call “the world”? To be a soldier, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud … every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now anti-Christian: what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian!—

Now circumcision was an external mark, by which God’s people were known in distinction from other nations; just as we see that every prince gives his people and army his standard and watchword, by which they are known among themselves and by which foreigners can tell, to what lord they belong. Thus God has never left his people without such a sign or watchword, by which it can outwardly be known in the world where his people are to be found. Jews are known by circumcision: that was their divine mark. Our mark is baptism and the body of Christ.

Almost to a man, the Men of Eärwa adhered without thought or knowledge to the customs of their people. A Conriyan didn’t shave because bare cheeks were effeminate. A Nansur didn’t wear leggings because they were crude. A Tydonni didn’t consort with dark-skinned peoples—or picks, as they called them—because they were polluted. For world-born men, such customs simply were. They gave precious food to statues of dead stone. They kissed the knees of weaker men. They lived in terror of their wanton hearts. They each thought themselves the absolute measure of all others. They felt shame, disgust, esteem, reverence … And they never asked why.

THE GOAL IS CHRISTLIKENESS, NOT WARFARE There is a time, which we will speak of later in this book, when the Lord will call us to pull down the strongholds of hell over our churches and our communities. There is another time, however, when to engage in much spiritual warfare is actually a distraction from your obedience to God. Jesus defeated Satan in Gethsemane and the cross, not by directly confronting the devil but by fulfilling the destiny to which He had been called at Calvary. The greatest battle that was ever won was accomplished by the apparent death of the victor, without even a word of rebuke to His adversary! The prince of this world was judged and principalities and powers were disarmed not by confrontational warfare but by the surrender of Jesus Christ on the cross. There are occasions when your battle against the devil is actually a digression from the higher purpose God has for you. Intercessors and warfare captains take note: there is a demon whose purpose is to lure one's mind into hell. Its name is "Wrong Focus." If you are continually seeing evil spirits in people or in the material world around you, you may actually be fighting this spirit. The ultimate goal of this demon is to produce mental illness in saints who move in deliverance. Listen very carefully: we are not called to focus on the battle or the devil, except where that battle hinders our immediate transformation into Christ's likeness. Our calling is to focus on Jesus. The work of the devil, however, is to draw our eyes from Jesus. Satan's first weapon always involves luring our eyes from Christ. Turn to Jesus and almost immediately the battle vanishes. I knew a man once who owned a record company. Besides running the operation, he also spent many hours in production listening to the "mother disk," which was the record from which all subsequent records were pressed. Over the years, his ears became adept at catching the "pops and sizzles," the imperfections that had to be eliminated in the master disk. I remarked one day

And Satan spoke unto a certain prince, saying: 'Fear not to use the sword, for the wise men have deceived you in saying that the world would be destroyed thereby. Listen not to the counsel of weaklings, for they fear you exceedingly, and they serve your enemies by staying your hand against them. Strike, and know that you shall be king over all.' "And the prince did heed the word of Satan, and he summoned all of the wise men of that realm and called upon them to give him counsel as to the ways in which the enemy might be destroyed without bringing down the wrath upon his own kingdom. But most of the wise men said, 'Lord, it is not possible, for your enemies also have the sword which we have given you, and the fieriness of it is as the flame of Hell and as the fury of the sun-star from whence it was kindled.' " 'Then thou shalt make me yet another which is yet seven times hotter than Hell itself,' commanded the prince, whose arrogance had come to surpass that of Pharaoh. "And many of them said: 'Nay, Lord, ask not this thing of us; for even the smoke of such a fire, if we were to kindle it for thee, would cause many to perish.' "Now the prince was angry because of their answer, and he suspected them of betraying him, and he sent his spies among them to tempt them and to challenge them; whereupon the wise men became afraid. Some among them changed their answers, that his wrath be not invoked against them. Three times he asked them, and three times they answered: 'Nay, Lord, even your own people will perish if you do this thing.' But one of the magi was like unto Judas Iscariot, and his testimony was crafty, and having betrayed his brothers, he lied to all the people, advising them not to fear the demon Fallout. The prince heeded this false wise man, whose name was Blackeneth, and he caused spies to accuse many of the magi before the people. Being afraid, the less wise among the magi counseled the prince according t pleasure, saying: "The weapons may be used, only do not exceed such-and-such a limit, or all will surely perish.

I really believe that people don’t understand how much I learned from watching Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-air and A Different World. Dwayne Wayne’s character taught me that not matter how hard school gets or not matter what people say about your physical appearance, push through it and be yourself, and always give back to the place that gave to you. Steve Urkel’s character taught me how to love a girl and the importance of patience. The Fresh Price of Bel-air demonstrated how to be a good son, and even if you are without a father, there is still a bright future that lies ahead. I practice everything I learn from these shows in my daily life and I get positive results.

I wondered how I would come to love a woman, and with both pleasure and terror, I would think that somewhere in the world there was some laughing, singing girl who would one day become my wife. In my mind, I could see her dancing and playing and flirting in preparation for that day of awe and wonder when we would meet and in mutual ecstasy declare, “I shall live with you forever.” How much of my father would I bring to that singing girl’s life? How much of my mother? And how many days would it take before I, Tom Wingo, child of storm, would silence her laughter and song for all time? How long would it take for me to end the dance of that laughing girl who would not know the doubts and imperfections I brought to the task of loving a woman? I loved the image of this girl long before I ever met her and wanted to warn her to beware the day when I would come into her life. Somewhere in America she was waiting out her childhood innocent of her destiny. She did not know that she was on a collision course with a boy so damaged and bewildered he would spend his whole life trying to figure out how love was supposed to feel, how it manifested itself between two people, and how it could be practiced without rage and sorrow and blood. I was thirteen years old when I decided that this wonderful girl deserved much better and I would warn her long before I interfered with her lovely passage and transfiguring dance.

Here there was a cheerful boy At least he created tales and lived in joy. Nursery rhymes his grandmother told, Songs and tales emerged gladly in gold. Caring heart, affection spoke loud as brighter, He made the decision: he would be a writer! Rising laughters, crying tears, many feelings, Inserted everything and nothing was in vain. So he transformed the ugly into beautiful, Tales to amuse and make everyone sane, In there he went, without daydreams or zeal. As such it was born the icon of literature still. No one denied he was exceedingly bountiful. A ballerina loves the soldier in his world, Nothing gets involved in his fairy tales, Dancing from a poor weak boy to a king, Eccentric prince of charm in winged corners! Rare star of sweet tenderness, Sensible and masterful in tenderness, Emchanted kingdom of dreams and candor, Now a divine fire of a soul he shines. Havia um menino alegre porem so Ao menos criava contos e deles vivia Nas historias que contava sua avo, Seus contos surgiam pois ele os via. Carinho nao faltava em seu coracao ator, Havia tomado a decisao: seria escritor! Risos, lagrimas, sentimentos saos, Inseria tudo e nada era em vao. Transformava ate o feio em belo, Inadvertia e divertia com seu elo, Adiante ia, sem devaneios e zelo. Nascia assim o icone da literatura. A bailarina ama o soldado em seu mundo, Nada se interpunha em seus contos de fadas, De pobre menino fraco e cogitabundo, Era principe de encantos em cantos alados! Rara estrela de doce brandura, Sensata e magistral em ternura, Em seu reino de sonhos e candura, No fogo divino de sua alma fulgura.

So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed. Naturally, I’d have preferred not to have that number on my military CV, on my mind, but by the same token I’d have preferred to live in a world in which there was no Taliban, a world without war. Even for an occasional practitioner of magical thinking like me, however, some realities just can’t be changed. While in the heat and fog of combat, I didn’t think of those twenty-five as people. You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. You can’t really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to “other-ize” them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering. Another

When therefore the people sets up an hereditary government, whether it be monarchical and confined to one family, or aristocratic and confined to a class, what it enters into is not an undertaking; the administration is given a provisional form, until the people chooses to order it otherwise. It is true that such changes are always dangerous, and that the established government should never be touched except when it comes to be incompatible with the public good; but the circumspection this involves is a maxim of policy and not a rule of right, and the State is no more bound to leave civil authority in the hands of its rulers than military authority in the hands of its generals. It is also true that it is impossible to be too careful to observe, in such cases, all the formalities necessary to distinguish a regular and legitimate act from a seditious tumult, and the will of a whole people from the clamour of a faction. Here above all no further concession should be made to the untoward possibility than cannot, in the strictest logic, be refused it. From this obligation the prince derives a great advantage in preserving his power despite the people, without it being possible to say he has usurped it; for, seeming to avail himself only of his rights, he finds it very easy to extend them, and to prevent, under the pretext of keeping the peace, assemblies that are destined to the re-establishment of order; with the result that he takes advantage of a silence he does not allow to be broken, or of irregularities he causes to be committed, to assume that he has the support of those whom fear prevents from speaking, and to punish those who dare to speak. Thus it was that the decemvirs, first elected for one year and then kept on in office for a second, tried to perpetuate their power by forbidding the comitia to assemble; and by this easy method every government in the world, once clothed with the public power, sooner or later usurps the sovereign authority.

Westley watched it all. He stood silently at the edge of the Fire Swamp. It was darker now, but the flame spurts behind him outlined his face. He was glazed with fatigue. He had been bitten, cut, gone without rest, had assaulted the Cliffs of Insanity, had saved and taken lives. He had risked his world, and now it was walking away from him, hand in hand with a ruffian prince. Then Buttercup was gone, out of sight. Westley took a breath. He was aware of the score of soldiers starting to surround him, and probably he could have made a few of them perspire for their victory. But for what point? Westley sagged. "Come, sir." Count Rugen approached. "We must get you safely to your ship." "We are both men of action," Westley replied. "Lies do not become us." "Well spoken," said the Count, and with one sudden swing, he clubbed Westley into insensitivity. Westley fell like a beaten stone, his last conscious thought being of the Count's right hand; it was six-fingered, and Westley could never quite remember having encountered that deformity before. . . .

I can’t remember any further back than this place on earth and Christendom. I never tire of seeing myself in that past. But always alone; without family. Even so, what language did I speak? I never see myself among the counselors of Christ; nor in the councils of the Lordly—representatives of Christ. What was I in the last century? I don’t find myself again until today. No more vagabonds, no more vague wars. The subordinate race has spread everywhere—we the people, it’s called, rationality; nationality and science. Oh! Science! Everything’s been made over. For your body and soul—the last rites—here’s medicine and philosophy—old wives’ remedies and popular songs rearranged. And the diversions of princes and the games that they prohibited! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry! . . . Science! the latest aristocracy! Progress. The world marches on! Why shouldn’t it make a turn? This is the vision of harmony. We’re headed for the Spirit. That’s for sure, it’s an oracle, I’m telling you. I understand it, and unable to explain myself without heathen speech, I’d rather keep silent.

Yes indeed. I, too, have been very, very sad. This Christmas has come to me like a cloud. I can scarcely fancy England without that bright face and sympathetic hand, that princely nature, in which you might put your trust more reasonably than in princes. These ten years back he has stood to me almost in my father’s place; and now the place is empty — doubly. Since the birth of my child (seven years since) he has allowed us — rather, insisted on our accepting (for my husband was loth) — a hundred a year, and without it we should have often been in hard straits. His last act was to leave us eleven thousand pounds; and I do not doubt but that, if he had not known our preference of a simple mode of life and a freedom from worldly responsibilities (born artists as we both are), the bequest would have been greater still. As it is, we shall be relieved from pecuniary pressure, and your affectionateness will be glad to hear this, but I shall have more comfort from the consideration of it presently than I can at this instant, when the loss, the empty chair, the silent voice, the apparently suspended sympathy, must still keep painfully uppermost

Unlike babies, phenomena are typically born long before humans give them names. Zurara did not call Black people a race. French poet Jacques de Brézé first used the term “race” in a 1481 hunting poem. In 1606, the same diplomat who brought the addictive tobacco plant to France formally defined race for the first time in a major European dictionary, “Race…means descent,” Jean Nicot wrote in the Trésor de la langue française. “Therefore, it is said that a man, a hors, a dog or another animal is from a good or bad race.” From the beginning, to make races was to make racial hierarchy. Gomes de Zurara grouped all those peoples from Africa into a single race for that very reason: to create hierarchy, the first racist idea. Race making is an essential ingredient in the making of racist ideas, the crust that holds the pie. Once a race has been created it must be filled in-and Zurara filled it with negative qualities that would justify Prince Henry’s evangelical mission to the world. This Black race of people was lost, living “like beasts, without any custom of reasonable beings, “ Zurara wrote. “They had no understanding of good, but only knew how to live in a bestial sloth.

Tikkun olam. Repairing the world. Healing wastelands. Laboring to make a dying world livable again. This is the vision of the apostles and prophets. This is the prophetic paradigm the people of God are to coordinate their theology and lives with. We are not to be macabre Christians lusting for destruction and rejoicing at the latest rumor of war. It’s high time that a morbid fascination with a supposed unalterable script of God-sanctioned–end-time–hyperviolence be once and for all left behind. A secret (or not-so-secret) longing for the world’s violent destruction is grossly unbecoming to the followers of the Lamb. We are not hoping for Armageddon; we are helping build New Jerusalem. We will not complete it without the return of the King, but we will move in that direction all the same. We refuse to conspire with the beasts of empire who keep the world confined to the death culture of Babylon. There’s always another Armageddon looming on the horizon, threatening to perpetuate the bloody ways of Cain and throw more Abels in a mass grave. But we are not to cooperate with that vision. We are to resist it. We are to anticipate a future created by the Prince of Peace through the very lives we live. We are to work in concert with Jesus Christ

The Prime Minister, who was in close contact with the Queen and Prince Charles, captured the feelings of loss and despair when he spoke to the nation earlier in the day from his Sedgefield constituency. Speaking without notes, his voice breaking with emotion, he described Diana as a ‘wonderful and warm human being.’ ‘She touched the lives of so many others in Britain and throughout the world with joy and with comfort. How difficult things were for her from time to time, I’m sure we can only guess at. But people everywhere, not just here in Britain, kept faith with Princess Diana. They liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the People’s Princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in all our hearts and memories for ever.’ While his was the first of many tributes which poured in from world figures, it perfectly captured the mood of the nation in a historic week which saw the British people, with sober intensity and angry dignity, place on trial the ancient regime, notably an elitist, exploitative and male-dominated mass media and an unresponsive monarchy. For a week Britain succumbed to flower power, the scent and sight of millions of bouquets a mute and telling testimony to the love people felt towards a woman who was scorned by the Establishment during her lifetime. So it was entirely appropriate when Buckingham Palace announced that her funeral would be ‘a unique service for a unique person’. The posies, the poems, the candles and the cards that were placed at Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace and elsewhere spoke volumes about the mood of the nation and the state of modern Britain. ‘The royal family never respected you, but the people did,’ said one message, as thousands of people, most of whom had never met her, made their way in quiet homage to Kensington Palace to express their grief, their sorrow, their guilt and their regret. Total strangers hugged and comforted each other, others waited patiently to lay their tributes, some prayed silently. When darkness fell, the gardens were bathed in an ethereal glow from the thousands of candles, becoming a place of dignified pilgrimage that Chaucer would have recognized. All were welcome and all came, a rainbow of coalition of young and old of every colour and nationality, East Enders and West Enders, refugees, the disabled, the lonely, the curious, and inevitably, droves of tourists. She was the one person in the land who could connect with those Britons who had been pushed to the edges of society as well as with those who governed it.

A true eclectic, as it would be expressed nowadays, Gringoire was one of those firm and lofty, moderate and calm spirits, which always know how to bear themselves amid all circumstances (stare in dimidio rerum), and who are full of reason and of liberal philosophy, while still setting store by cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that is to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth century if we succeed in bestowing upon him the distinction which he deserves, it certainly was their spirit which animated Father du Breul, when he wrote, in the sixteenth, these naively sublime words, worthy of all centuries: "I am a Parisian by nation, and a Parrhisian in language, for parrhisia in Greek signifies liberty of speech; of which I have made use even towards messeigneurs the cardinals, uncle and brother to Monsieur the Prince de Conty, always with respect to their greatness, and without offending any one of their suite, which is much to say.

Damn it, Sir, I can’t fight a shadow. Without Your cooperation from a weather standpoint, I am deprived of accurate disposition of the German armies and how in the hell can I be intelligent in my attack? All of this probably sounds unreasonable to You, but I have lost all patience with Your chaplains who insist that this is a typical Ardennes winter, and that I must have faith. “Faith and patience be damned! You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You are on. You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to your Prince of Peace. “Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man; I am not going to ask You to do the impossible. I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather. “Give me four days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick out targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry this blasted mud, so that my tanks roll, so that ammunition and rations may be taken to my hungry, ill-equipped infantry. I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla. I am sick of this unnecessary butchering of American youth, and in exchange for four days of fighting weather, I will deliver You enough Krauts to keep Your bookkeepers months behind in their work. “Amen.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

Poem in a Straight Line:" I never knew a soul who ever took a licking. My friends have all been champions at everything. And I, so often vulgar, so often obscene, so often vile, I, so deliberately parasitical, Unforgivably filthy, I, so often without patience to take a bath, I, who’ve been so ridiculous, so absurd, Tripping up in public on the carpet of etiquette, I, so grotesque and mean, submissive and insolent, Who’ve been insulted and not said a word, And when putting a word in growing still more ridiculous, I who strike chambermaids as laughable, I who feel porters wink sarcastically, I who’ve been scandalous about money, borrowing and not paying it back, I, who when the time came to fight, ducked As far as I could out of punching range, I who go into a sweat over the slightest thing — I’m convinced no one’s better than I at this sort of game. No one I know, none of my speaking acquaintances, Ever acted ridiculous, ever took insults, Was ever anything but noble – yes, all of them princes, living their lives… How I’d love to hear a human voice, from any one of them. Confessing not to sins but to infamies, Speaking not of violent but of cowardly acts! But no, each one’s a Paragon, to hear them tell it. Is there no one in this world who’d confess to me he’s been vile just once? All you princes, my brothers, Enough – I’m fed up with demigods! Where are the real people in this world? Am I the only scoundrel and bungler alive? Maybe women don’t always fall for them. Maybe they’ve been betrayed. But ridiculous? Never! And I, who’ve been ridiculous but never betrayed, How do I speak to their Highnesses without stammering? I, who’ve been vile, literally vile, Vile in the meanest and rottenest possible sense of the word

I have been in many dugouts, Ludwig,” he goes on. “And we were all young men who sat there around one miserable slush lamp, waiting, while the barrage raged overhead like an earthquake. We were none of your inexperienced recruits, either; we knew well enough what we were waiting for and we knew what would come. —But there was more in those faces down in the gloom there than mere calm, more than good humour, more than just readiness to die. There was the will to another future in those hard, set faces; and it was there when they charged, and still there when they died. —We had less to say for ourselves year by year, we shed many things, but that one thing still remained. And now, Ludwig, where is it now? Can’t you see how it is perishing in all this pig’s wash of order, duty, women, routine, punctuality and the rest of it that here they call life? —No, Ludwig, we lived then! And you tell me a thousand times that you hate war, yet I still say, we lived then. We lived, because we were together, and because something burned in us that was more than this whole muck heap here!” He is breathing hard. “It must have been for something, Ludwig! When I first heard there was revolution, for one brief moment I thought: Now the time will be redeemed—now the flood will pour back, tearing down the old things, digging new banks for itself—and, by God, I would have been in it! But the flood broke up into a thousand runnels; the revolution became a mere scramble for jobs, for big jobs and little jobs. It has trickled away, it has been dammed up, it has been drained off into business, into family, and party. —But that will not do me. I’m going where comradeship is still to be found.” Ludwig stands up. His brow is flaming, his eyes blaze. He looks Rahe in the face. “And why is it, Georg? Why is it? Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. —They told us it was for Honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. —They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!” He takes Rahe by the shoulders and shakes him. “Can’t you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, with their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us as a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can’t you see, man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us! Can’t you see? Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land, believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don’t you see now? —There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors, the ruins. But the other is alive still—the fat, the full, the well content, that lives on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the dissatisfied, the eager, the storm troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!” His

Because we were duped, I tell you, duped as even yet we hardly realize; because we were misused, hideously misused. They told us it was for the Fatherland, and meant the schemes of annexation of a greedy industry. They told us it was for Honour, and meant the quarrels and the will to power of a handful of ambitious diplomats and princes. They told us it was for the Nation, and meant the need for activity on the part of out-of-work generals!... Can't you see? They stuffed out the word Patriotism with all the twaddle of their fine phrases, and their desire for glory, their will to power, their false romanticism, their stupidity, their greed of business, and then paraded it before us a shining ideal! And we thought they were sounding a bugle summoning us to a new, a more strenuous, a larger life. Can't you see man? But we were making war against ourselves without knowing it! Every shot that struck home, struck one of us! Can't you see? Then listen and I will bawl it into your ears. The youth of the world rose up in every land, believing that it was fighting for freedom! And in every land they were duped and misused; in every land they have been shot down, they have exterminated each other! Don't you see now? There is only one fight, the fight against the lie, the half-truth, compromise, against the old order. But we let ourselves be taken in by their phrases; and instead of fighting against them, we fought for them. We thought it was for the Future. It was against the Future. Our future is dead; for the youth is dead that carried it. We are merely the survivors the ruins. But the other is alive still - the fat, the full, the well content, that lies on, fatter and fuller, more contented than ever! And why? Because the dissatisfied, the eager, the storm troops have died for it. But think of it! A generation annihilated! A generation of hope, of faith, of will, of strength, ability, so hypnotised that they have shot down one another, though over the whole world they all had the same purpose!