Dung Defender Quotes

It is only in the heat of pain and suffering, both mental and physical, that real human character is forged. One does not develop courage without facing danger, patience without trials, wisdom without heart- and brain-racking puzzles, endurance without suffering, or temperance and honesty without temptations. These are the very things we treasure most about people. Ask yourself if you would be willing to be devoid of all these virtues. If your answer is no, then don’t scorn the means of obtaining them. The gold of human character is dug from torturous mines, but its dung and dirt are quite easily come by. And it should come as no surprise to us that in our time—the time of the great flight from pain—such virtues as these are conspicuous only by their absence. I’m

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest. All that is set forth in books, all that seems so terribly vital and significant, is but an iota of that from which it stems and which it is within everyone’s power to tap. Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge. Men are still being taught to create by studying other men’s works or by making plans and sketches never intended to materialize. The art of writing is taught in the classroom instead of in the thick of life. Students are still being handed models which are supposed to fit all temperaments, all kinds of intelligence. No wonder we produce better engineers than writers, better industrial experts than painters. My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters with other phenomena of life or thought. All encounters are configurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books are as much a part of life as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence for them per se. Nor do I put authors in any special, privileged category. They are like other men, no better, no worse. They exploit the powers given them, just as any other order of human being. If I defend them now and then — as a class — it is because I believe that, in our society at least, they have never achieved the status and the consideration they merit. The great ones, especially, have almost always been treated as scapegoats.

All have suffered shipwreck. The Church, unbending in this matter, has remained upright and entire. She orders the body to be silent, and the soul to suffer, and contrary to all probability, humanity listens to her, and sweeps away like a dung-heap the seductive joys proposed to her. Again, the vitality of the Church is decision, which preserves her in spite of the unfathomable stupidity of her sons. She has resisted the disquieting folly of the clergy, and has not even been broken up by the awkwardness and lack of ability in her defenders, a very strong point.

Perhaps, but you fail to see the folly of the Reishi,” Bragador said. “The concentration of power that allowed them to ensure peace for so long was the very thing that made them such a potent threat to peace when their power corrupted them, as power inevitably does.” “So what’s the solution?” Alexander asked, a bit more defiantly than he would have liked. “Simple … humans must learn to live without government,” Bragador said. “Government, organized force, is the repository of evil. It is the source of corruption, the enemy of civilization and the problem with the world. As long as there is a place where concentrated power resides, it will attract evil people like dung attracts flies. The only solution is to remove the pile of dung.” “What about crime? What about other countries with powerful governments bent on war? How can there be peace without authority?” Alexander asked. “Therein lies the human dilemma,” Bragador said. “There will always be those who call for greater and greater control, out of fear or ignorance or greed. Until humanity learns restraint in governance, learns how to limit the power it grants to its leaders, learns that those who crave power over others are always deceivers, your kind will know only war and despair.” “If we haven’t learned that lesson by now, I doubt we ever will,” Alexander said. “Some will, most won’t,” Bragador said. “Selfish interest is a powerful motivator. Governments can always be bought or manipulated or blackmailed to set rules that favor some at the expense of others. Evil people see government as a weapon to be used for their own purposes while spreading the lie that it exists to protect the innocent or ensure fairness or defend against some distant threat. The truth is, government has always existed for one single reason … the profit and power of those in government. Of course, there are always those working within government who are good and decent people. But those who vie for power, they can never be trusted.

Most of the liberal defenses of pornography are equally muddled. Writers and university professors feel quite heroic in taking the witness stand to avow that some outrageously immoral book is somehow supremely moral. These men usually display two contradictory motives. First, they oppose the censorship of any book on any grounds as a matter of principle. Anything and everything should be freely published. Some would impose restraints on things that are Nazi, racist, or similarly tabooed, but many are earnest champions of unlimited freedom of publication. Unlimited freedom is for them a supreme good. Second, since unlimited freedom is seen as a supreme good, it follows that the results of such an unlimited freedom must somehow be good. They therefore feel it necessary to defend the moral integrity of such books as are attacked for their use of this license. As a result, these scholars and writers place themselves in a most amusing position: they are ready to defend anything attacked on moral grounds, as though freedom makes all its adherents good. No doubt if some avant-garde writer issued a book empty of everything save a cake of cow dung between its covers, scholars would not be lacking to interpret for a court what a profound and redeeming social commentary was at stake.

THOMAS Guilty Of mankind. I have perpetrated human nature. My father and mother were accessories before the fact, But there’ll be no accessories after the fact, By my virility there won’t! Just see me As I am, like a perambulating Vegetable, patched with inconsequential Hair, looking out of two small jellies for the means Of life, balanced on folding bones, my sex No Beauty but a blemish to be hidden Behind judicious rags, driven and scorched By boomerang rages and lunacies which never Touch the accommodating artichoke Or the seraphic strawberry beaming in its bed: I defend myself against pain and death by pain And death, and make the world go round, they tell me By one of my less lethal appetites: Half this grotesque life I spend in a state Of slow decomposition, using The name of unconsidered God as a pedestal On which I stand and bray that I’m best Of beasts, until under some patient Moon or other I fall to pieces, Like a cake of dung. Is there a slut would Hold this in her arms and put her lips against it? JENNET Sluts are only human. By a quirk Of unastonished nature, your obscene Decaying figure of vegetable fun Can drag upon a woman’s heart, as though Heaven were dragging up the roots of hell. What is to be done? Something compels us into The terrible fallacy that man is desirable and there’s no escaping into truth. The crimes And cruelties leave us longing, and campaigning Love still pitches his tent of light among The suns and moons. You may be decay and a platitude Of flesh, but I have no other such memory of life. You may be corrupt as ancient applies, well then Corruption is what I most willingly harvest. You are Evil, Hell, the Father of Lies; if so Hell is my home and my days of good were a holiday: Hell is my hill and the world slopes away from it Into insignificance. I have come suddenly Upon my heart and where it is I see no help for.