Egotism Quotes

If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.

Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.

Having a low opinion of yourself is not 'modesty.' It's self-destruction. Holding your uniqueness in high regard is not 'egotism.' It's a necessary precondition to happiness and success.

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. . . let us be above such transparent egotism.

Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul’s possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.

Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one “object” of love. If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet, most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty.

Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable." [ The Berlin Crisis: Radio and Television Address to the American People (The White House, July 25, 1961)]

Stay away from lazy parasites, who perch on you just to satisfy their needs, they do not come to alleviate your burdens, hence, their mission is to distract, detract and extract, and make you live in abject poverty.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity

I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts. Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all.

Simply minding one's own business is more offensive than being intrusive. Without ever saying a word one can make a person feel less-than.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.

LOVE of others is the appreciation of one's self. MAY your egotism be so gigantic that you comprise mankind in your self-sympathy.

One of all the terrible effects of grief is that we interpret its absence as egotism.

We’re so wrapped up with egotistical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks—we’re involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don’t get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?

Nobody wants to know how you feel, yet, they want you to do what they feel.

What’s this ” “A needle.” “What should I do with it ” He’d walked right into it. Too easy. “Please use it to pop your head. It’s obscuring my view of the room.

Self-pity is egotism undiluted, after all—self-centeredness in its purest form.

Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.

COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHT I was born the day I thought: What is? What was? And What if? I was transformed the day My ego shattered, And all the superficial, material Things that mattered To me before, Suddenly ceased To matter. I really came into being The day I no longer cared about What the world thought of me, Only on my thoughts for Changing the world.

Never allow your ego to diminish your ability to listen.

I bet it gets pretty lonely with only your ego for company.

Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.

[Dona Maria] saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

You want a friend in this city? [Washington, DC.] Get a dog!

People say of me, 'She's peculiar.' They do not understand me. If they did they would say so oftener and with emphasis.

Learn to understand others. Most people do not want to understand others, instead wanting others to understand them. This is egotism. We should try to think less of ourselves and more of others. Try to understand others better.

Everything is a contest. All dealings among men are a contest in which some will succeed and others fail. And some are failing quite spectacularly.

Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.

To be a champion, you must have no ego at all. You must not exist as a separate entity. You must give yourself over to the race. You are nothing if not for your team, your car, your shoes, your tires. Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism.

Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.

Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

The self-effacing person is soothing and gracious, while the self-promoting person is fragile and jarring. Humility is freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time, but egotism is a ravenous hunger in a small space—self-concerned, competitive, and distinction-hungry. Humility is infused with lovely emotions like admiration, companionship, and gratitude.

The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme -- thinking too much.

Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean--for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they've come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once--and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.

...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.

Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure ‘Victorian fictions.’ All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant.

There is, in lovers, a certain infatuation of egotism; they will have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it may.

Narcissists do not choose us because we are like them; they choose us because we are the light to their darkness; regardless of any of our vulnerabilities, we exhibit the gorgeous traits of empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence and authentic confidence that their fragile egotism and false mask could never achieve.

As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals.

A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.

Some people, who always talk about how busy they are, are really trying to claim how 'important' they are.

In literature mere egotism is delightful.

Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all.

What's wrong with selfishness and egotism? We live to die smiling, don't we?

The so-called sensitivity of neurotics develops along with their egotism; they cannot bear for other people to flaunt the sufferings with which they are increasingly preoccupied themselves.

I’m counting on greed and egotism, forces that are as reliable as gravity

Accept the long night patiently, quietly, humbly, and resignedly as intended for your true good. It is not a punishment for sin committed but an instrument of annihilating egoism.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good.

Self-assertion may deceive the ignorant for a time; but when the noise dies away, we cut open the drum, and find it was emptiness that made the music.

Today's Arab crisis is not one of money, men, morale, land or resources ... The real crisis is rather one of leadership, management and perennial egotism.

I think now the trace of egotism may have been the beginning of all his troubles

Yet none of these things gave him confidence. All they gave him was egotism, which is less the conviction of one's worth than the desire for that conviction.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

Patriotism is the narcissism of countries.

Love, love, love – all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.

No other being is lesser human than the one who thinks of others as such.

Art of Racing in the Rain--Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism.

Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism.

The full humanization of man requires the breakthrough from the possession-centered to the activity-centered orientation, from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism.

Don't show a friend your gift, or your bag of money if you still want to maintain your relationship, but if nay, go on, and all you'll see is hate and jealousy, and you'll fight with him in the street like a dog and all you'll feel is regret.

The enemy stays in the hearts of friends. Watch what your friends know about you and watch what you tell your friends, remember, egoism breeds jealousy and ends a relationship in discord.

Arrogant men with knowledge make more noise from their mouth than making a sense from their mind.

I was transformed the day My ego shattered, And all the superficial, material Things that mattered To me before, Suddenly ceased To matter.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

Fortunate indeed are those in which there is combined a little good and a little bad, a little knowledge of many things outside their own callings, a capacity for love and a capacity for hate, for such as these can look with tolerance upon all, unbiased by the egotism of him whose head is so heavy on one side that all his brains run to that point.

I may say, without undue egotism, that when I make up my mind to do something, it is done quickly.

Those fine eyes of hers had a disconcertingly direct gaze, and very often twinkled in a manner disturbing to male egotism. She had common-sense too, and what man wanted the plainly matter-of-fact, when he could enjoy instead Sophia's delicious folly?

The passage into mystery always refreshes. If, when we work, we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labor satisfies. We are lightened when our gifts rise from pools we cannot fathom. Then we know they are not a solitary egotism and they are inexhaustible.

Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without felony, stipulate for those interests and defend them. The present has its pardonable amount of egotism; momentary life has its claims, and cannot be expected to sacrifice itself incessantly to the future. The generation which is in its turn passing over the earth is not forced to abridge its life for the sake of the generations, its equals after all, whose turn shall come later on.

To seek truth requires one to ask the right questions. Those void of truth never ask about anything because their ego and arrogance prevent them from doing so. Therefore, they will always remain ignorant. Those on the right path to Truth are extremely heart-driven and childlike in their quest, always asking questions, always wanting to understand and know everything — and are not afraid to admit they don't know something. However, every truth seeker does need to breakdown their ego first to see Truth. If the mind is in the way, the heart won't see anything.

All love on this earth involves choice. When, for example, a young man expresses his love to a young woman and asks her to become his wife, he is not just making an affirmation of love; he is also negating his love for anyone else. In that one act by which he chooses her, he rejects all that is not her. There is no other real way in which to prove we love a thing than by choosing it in preference to something else. Word and signs of love may be, and often are, expressions of egotism or passion; but deeds are proofs of love. We can prove we love our Lord only by choosing Him in preference to anything else.

The moral climate of pathological self-absorption – hedonistic egotism – defines contemporary society.

Our society is afflicted by a spirit of thoughtless arrogance unbecoming those who have been so magnificently blessed. How grateful we should be for the bounties we enjoy. Absence of gratitude is the mark of the narrow, uneducated mind. It bespeaks a lack of knowledge and the ignorance of self-sufficiency. It expresses itself in ugly egotism and frequently in wanton mischief.... Where there is appreciation, there is courtesy, there is concern for the rights and property of others. Without appreciation, there is arrogance and evil. Where there is gratitude, there is humility, as opposed to pride.

... a man doesn't like to have his ego popped, especially when he prides himself on his sagacity, and then to be proved wrong by a man who claims he doesn't know anything.

The ego is what drives a self-serving individual who hates to admit they are wrong.

Friends can become enemies, and enemies can become friends. Ego and pride can turn what is good into bad, and kind words can turn what is bad into something good.

The fatigue I've gathered year after year and stored inside now heaves a muted cry of helplessness. Nothing but fatigue, rounding my shoulders, heavier than ever on this late autumn day with a useless sun, a world of unforgiving disasters. So many struggles and tragedies, so much sorrow and egotism in this dark, in this rotting century of hate.

In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you leave them alone. In good company, the individuals merge their egotism into a social soul exactly coextensive with the several consciousnesses there present. No partialities of friend to friend, no fondnesses of brother to sister, of wife to husband, are there pertinent, but quite otherwise. Only he may then speak who can sail on the common thought of the party, and not poorly limited to his own. Now this convention, which good sense demands, destroys the high freedom of great conversation, which requires an absolute running of two souls into one.

In this America, too, the Christian teaching that every human soul is unique and precious has been stressed, by the prophets of self-fulfillment and gurus of self-love, at the expense of the equally important teaching that every human soul is fatally corrupted by original sin. Absent the latter emphasis, religion becomes a license for egotism and selfishness, easily employed to justify what used to be considered deadly sins. The result is a society where pride becomes 'healthy self-esteem', vanity becomes 'self-improvement', adultery becomes 'following your heart', greed and gluttony become 'living the American dream'.

However low he may fall, a man can never deny himself the delight of feeling cleverer, more powerful or even better fed than his companions.

Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers.

One of all the terrible effects of grief is that we interpret its absence as egotism. It’s impossible to explain what you have to do in order to carry on after a funeral, how to put the pieces of a family back together again, how to live with the jagged edges. So what do you end up asking for? You ask for a good day. One single good day. A few hours of amnesia.

You'll make bundle of blunders if you consider yourself too clever to look at anothers work.

Ego got you thinkin' you're workin' somebody to your advantage; you're just playin' yourself.

The spirit of deception, you see,” Father Maximos explained, “has egotism and pride as its primary attribute.

Egotism itself, which is so necessary to a proper sense of human dignity, is entirely the result of indoor life. 

Egotism - usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.

Perhaps it is a very good thing that we cannot wholly rule our minds and that they force on us ideas and images which we would ignobly prefer to dismiss; thus truth makes its way in spite of egotism and unconsciousness.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature. If a writer can make people live there may be no great characters in his book, but it is possible that his book will remain as a whole; as an entity; as a novel. If the people the writer is making talk of old masters; of music; of modern painting; of letters; or of science then they should talk of those subjects in the novel. If they do not talk of these subjects and the writer makes them talk of them he is a faker, and if he talks about them himself to show how much he knows then he is showing off. No matter how good a phrase or a simile he may have if he puts it in where it is not absolutely necessary and irreplaceable he is spoiling his work for egotism. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature. People in a novel, not skillfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him. If he ever has luck as well as seriousness and gets them out entire they will have more than one dimension and they will last a long time. A good writer should know as near everything as possible. Naturally he will not. A great enough writer seems to be born with knowledge. But he really is not; he has only been born with the ability to learn in a quicker ratio to the passage of time than other men and without conscious application, and with an intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge. There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave. Every novel which is truly written contributes to the total of knowledge which is there at the disposal of the next writer who comes, but the next writer must pay, always, a certain nominal percentage in experience to be able to understand and assimilate what is available as his birthright and what he must, in turn, take his departure from. If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing. A writer who appreciates the seriousness of writing so little that he is anxious to make people see he is formally educated, cultured or well-bred is merely a popinjay. And this too remember; a serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows.

Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man. In fact it seemed to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism -

Genuinely good manners are, after all, essentially a way of moderating one’s own egotism, often in the service of considering the egos of others. Even if it’s done mainly for show, it’s still a start.

Religion is not the place where the problem of man's egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God's grace takes place. Human pride may win the battle, and then religion can and does become one more instrument of human sin. But if there the self does meet God and His grace, and so surrenders to something beyond its self-interest, then Christian faith can prove to be the needed and rare release from human self-concern.

Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something is to become one with God.”—Gandhi

Nevertheless, his very superiority kept him from being a success in college--the independence was mistaken for egotism, and the refusal to accept Yale standards with the proper awe seemed to belittle all those who had.

Social Media is a shared delusion of grandeur.

No act is so private it does not seek applause.

Knowledge is as infinite as the universe. The man who claims to know all, only reveals to all that he really knows nothing.

Consider an achievement accidental if it is not coupled with modesty. Because if the achiever had endeavoured for it, it would certainly have killed their pride.

Egotism plays many parts, even that of altruism.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else, an absolute ignorance.

Egotism fears its own self.

Loneliness is an aspect of natural human egotism.

It is not female egotism to say that the future of mankind may very well be ours to determine. It is a fact. The warmth, gentleness, and compassion that are part of the female stereo- type are positive human values, values that are becoming more and more important as the values of our world begin to                                shatter and fall from our grasp.

The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomiants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. (Cannery Row)

Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hardworking. What on earth were men for? Michael wondered as he watched sunlight play across the closed curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular function, but for centuries now, men served no useful purpose. For the most part, they assuaged their boredom playing squash, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to change history - which expressed itself in leading a revolution or starting a war somewhere. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and war destroyed the achievements of the past, forcing societies to build again. Without the notion of continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men (with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their volatile nature and their violent tendencies) were directly to blame. A society of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slow, unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, towards a general happiness.

The alleged 'sensitivity' of neurotic people is matched by their egotism; they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an ever-increasing attention in themselves.

But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate.

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

Consider intentions carefully. Karma gives a damn about ego, awards allegiance to none, and its justice is truly blind.

Throughout their friendship Deronda had been used to Hans' egotism, but he had never before felt intolerant of it: when Hans, habitually pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, had soon forgotten it

Having gone through it all had changed our outlooks. You can't be as much of a bitch as you were before, you can't be as much as an egomaniac, you can't feel as much like the world owed you something, you can't be the 'where's mine?' guy.

The ego taunts truth with sarcasm.

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men: kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest: sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self interest are the traits of success.

Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism." "I was thinking about that time when Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word," said Adam. "What was that word?" "Now I see. The word was timshel." "Timshel-and you said-" "I said that word carried a man's greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it." "I remember Sam Hamilton felt good about it." "It set him free," said Lee. "It gave him the right ot be a man, seperate from every other man." "That's lonely." "All great and precious things are lonely.

It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” “Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?” said Richard Frost. “Oh, it isn’t a matter of hunger. It’s something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous—but not quite. Everywhere in the world there are Mack and the boys….

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs. Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place where daughters love their mothers; the other attributes of Heaven you could have for a song. Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay to Peru. And when on the balcony her thoughts reached this turn, her mouth would contract with shame for she knew that she too sinned and that though her love for her daughter was vast enough to include all the colors of love, it was not without a shade of tyranny: she loved her daughter not for her daughter's sake, but for her own. She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond; but the passion was too fierce to cope with.

There is nothing to suggest a trangression of the universal laws of egotism and malice. It is ridiculous to imagine that at the edge of the cosmos, other well-intentioned and wise beings await to guide us toward some sort of harmony. In order to imagine how they might treat us were we to come into contact with them, it might be best to recall how we treat "inferior intelligences" such as rabbits and frogs. In the best cases they serve as food for us, sometimes also, often in fact, we kill them for the sheer pleasure of killing. Thus, [Author: Lovecraft] warned, would be the true picture of our future relationship to those other intelligent beings. Perhaps some of the more beautiful human species would be honored and would end up on a dissection table - that's all.

That was the simple objective, being airborne, up longer, up higher, more casually & with more fuck off elegance than anyone else in the world. I never understood the rules or the science of it but I recognized the single-mindedness it took to match risk with nerve come what may. Some endeavours require a kind of egotism, a near autistic narrowness. Everything conspires against you – the habits of physics, the impulse to flee - & you’re weighed down by every dollop of commonsense dished up. Everyone will tell you your goal is impossible, pointless, stupid, wasteful so you hang tough. You back yourself & only yourself. This idiot resolve is all you have.

It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc. “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness. So Dickens's wife and mistress had to suffer so that dickens could make his novels and his fortune. At least a bank manager's money is not so tainted by egotism. Mine was not a destructive profession. A bank manager doesn't leave a trail of the martyred behind him.

With self-denial and economy now, and steady exertion by-and-by, an object in life need not fail you. Venture not to complain that such an object is too selfish, too limited, and lacks interest; be content to labour for independence until you have proved, by winning that prize, your right to look higher. But afterwards, is there nothing more for me in life -- no true home -- nothing to be dearer to me than myself and by its paramount preciousness, to draw from me better things than I care to culture for myself only? Nothing, at whose feet I can willingly lay down the whole burden of human egotism, and gloriously take up the nobler charge of labouring and living for others? I suppose, Lucy Snowe, the orb of your life is not to be so rounded: for you the crescent-phase must suffice. Very good. I see a huge mass of my fellow- creatures in no better circumstances. I see that a great many men, and more women, hold their span of life on conditions of denial and privation. I find no reason why I should be of the few favoured. I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.

Being ‘all about myself’ is the surest way that I can end up being ‘all by myself.

Politicians look for interests not people

The ego cannot survive without judgment. The ego seeks to divide and separate. Spirit seeks to unify and heal.

But the ones who go posing as moralists are the worst. Cost-free morals. Full of great ways for others to improve without any expense to themselves. There's an ego thing in there, too. They use the morals to make someone else look inferior and that way look better themselves. It doesn't matter what the moral code is -- religious morals, political morals, racist morals, capitalist morals, feminist morals, hippie morals -- they're all the same. The moral codes change but the meanness and the egotism stay the same.

They love their bodies. We neglected ours. They love to travel. We stayed put. They love adventure. We spent all our time at meetings. They love jazz. We were satisfied with pale imitations of folk music. They're interested in themselves. We wanted to save the world and with our messianic vision nearly destroyed it. Maybe they with their egotism will be the ones to save it.

The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression.

But when you get down to it, it’s all a lie. You sit here writing and writing, but no one can see it—that’s arrogant, I told you so before. And you aren’t even honest enough to let yourself be what you are—everything’s divided off and split up. So what’s the use of patronising me and saying: You’re in a bad phase. If you’re not in a bad phase, then it’s because you can’t be in a phase, you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that’s what they are. I don’t think there’s a pattern anywhere—you are just making patterns, out of cowardice. I think people aren’t good at all, they are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. All the best people can be good to one other person or their families. But that’s egotism, it isn’t being good. We aren’t any better than the animals, we just pretend to be.

God's religion is love and the light of love sees no walls. Anybody who unconditionally loves another human being for the goodness of their heart and nothing more is already on the right side of God. True honor is being truthful, humble, selfless and compassionate towards all living creatures. Those filled with discrimination, prejudice, hatred, egotism, and pride stand the furthest away from God.

Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathise with the entirety of life, not with life's sores and maladies merely, but with life's joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand stated that there's no such thing as real altruism. She espoused the principle of ethical egotism, meaning that a person's moral obligation is to promote their own welfare. Translation? I still have the musical sensibilities of a teenage girl and I kind of want to see a shitty pop concert in the guise of doing something nice for my pal's kid, so I need to find a way to make it happen.

The most spiritually credible people I know are humble and soft-spoken. They don’t strut around like peacocks, enchanted by how wonderful they are. My heroes are the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Rosa Parks—gentle persuaders to a more noble path, not power-hungry egomaniacs. Don’t get me wrong. I advocate a healthy ego. It’s our conscious sense of self, the “I” of the human equation. However, egotism is having an inflated identity, a strain of negativity that infects spirituality and the liberation it brings.

Solemnity, I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor. It somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity. The self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That's why they see it as a threat! And so, dishonestly, they pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial.

Well, suppose there’s a slight doubt that the boy should be in the army and we send him and he gets killed.” “I see. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?” “I don’t want blame.” “Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn’t carry any pleasant egotism.

What is the proper justification of a mathematician’s life? My answers will be, for the most part, such as are expected from a mathematician: I think that it is worthwhile, that there is ample justification. But I should say at once that my defense of mathematics will be a defense of myself, and that my apology is bound to be to some extent egotistical. I should not think it worth while to apologize for my subject if I regarded myself as one of its failures. Some egotism of this sort is inevitable, and I do not feel that it really needs justification. Good work is no done by "humble" men. It is one of the first duties of a professor, for example, in any subject, to exaggerate a little both the importance of his subject and his own importance in it. A man who is always asking "Is what I do worth while?" and "Am I the right person to do it?" will always be ineffective himself and a discouragement to others. He must shut his eyes a little and think a little more of his subject and himself than they deserve. This is not too difficult: it is harder not to make his subject and himself ridiculous by shutting his eyes too tightly.

Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

To recognize this situation is not to call for a less calculated kind of leadership: It is always the cunning, not the naïve, who rise to power, and leaders must use artfulness to make any organization whatsoever work well. Yet they must never be guided by cynical and self-serving counsels. If they don’t call upon their higher selves, they will descend further into petty egotism and tyrannical behavior.

The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. And is he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable.

If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism. Yet most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. In fact, they even believe that it is proof of the intensity of their love when they do not love anybody except the "loved" person. This is the same fallacy which I have already mentioned above. Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object - and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.

Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armour of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.

Love of God thus becomes the dominant passion of life; like every other worth-while love, it demands and inspires sacrifice. But love of God and man, as an ideal, has lately been replaced by the new ideal of tolerance which inspires no sacrifice. Why should any human being in the world be merely tolerated? What man has ever made a sacrifice in the name of tolerance? It leads men, instead, to express their own egotism in a book or a lecture that patronizes the downtrodden group. One of the cruelest things that can happen to a human being is to be tolerated. Never once did Our Lord say, “Tolerate your enemies!” But He did say, “Love your enemies; do good to them that hate you” (Matt. 5:44). Such love can be achieved only if we deliberately curb our fallen nature’s animosities.

Most of us will. We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead: we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed. But what about those who plant such clues, for us to stumble on? Why do they bother? Egotism? Pity? Revenge? A simple claim to existence, like scribbling your initials on a washroom wall? The combination of presence and anonymity--confession without penance, truth without consequences--it has its attractions. Getting the blood off your hands, one way or another. Those who leave such evidence can scarcely complain if strangers come along afterwards and poke their noses into every single thing that would once have been none of their business. And not only strangers: lovers, friends, relations. We're voyeurs, all of us. Why should we assume that anything in the past is ours for the taking, simply because we've found it? We're all grave robbers, once we open the doors locked by others. But only locked. The rooms and their contents have been left intact. If those leaving them had wanted oblivion, there was always fire.

But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism (for there he stood, commanding then to attend to him); but most of all he hated the twang and twitter of his father's emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother's attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped. But, no. Nothing would make Mr. Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy.

By the end of medical school, most students tended to focus on "lifestyle" specialities - those with more humane hours, higher salaries, and lower pressures - the idealism of their med school application essays tempered or lost. As graduation neared and we sat down, in a Yale tradition, to re-write our commencement oath - a melding of the words of Hippocrates, Maimonides, Osler, along with a few other great medical forefathers - several students argued for the removal of language insisting that we place our patients' interests above our own. (The rest of us didn't allow this discussion to continue for long. The words stayed. This kind of egotism struck me as antithetical to medicine and, it should be noted, entirely reasonable. Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But thats the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling).

The cure for self-centeredness is found in our vision, in how we see people. I suppose we could say that self-centered people have 'I' trouble and need their vision corrected.

The lower a human being descends, the more asleep and inhumane he becomes. Those beings that lack Compassion, Love, and Peace are the true targets of the ego system...

Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. An army and navy represent the people's toys.

When he was creating this picture, Leonardo da Vinci encountered a serious problem: he had to depict Good - in the person of Jesus - and Evil - in the figure of Judas, the friend who resolves to betray him during the meal. He stopped work on the painting until he could find his ideal models. One day, when he was listening to a choir, he saw in one of the boys the perfect image of Christ. He invited him to his studio and made sketches and studies of his face. Three years went by. The Last Supper was almost complete, but Leonardo had still not found the perfect model for Judas. The cardinal responsible for the church started to put pressure on him to finish the mural. After many days spent vainly searching, the artist came across a prematurely aged youth, in rags and lying drunk in the gutter. With some difficulty, he persuaded his assistants to bring the fellow directly to the church, since there was no time left to make preliminary sketches. The beggar was taken there, not quite understanding what was going on. He was propped up by Leonardo's assistants, while Leonardo copied the lines of impiety, sin and egotism so clearly etched on his features. When he had finished, the beggar, who had sobered up slightly, opened his eyes and saw the picture before him. With a mixture of horror and sadness he said: 'I've seen that picture before!' 'When?' asked an astonished Leonardo. 'Three years ago, before I lost everything I had, at a time when I used to sing in a choir and my life was full of dreams. The artist asked me to pose as the model for the face of Jesus.

On the lower levels of consciousness, which are characterized by egotism, there is so much concern with self-gain that there is little energy or thought given to our effect on others. On the level of courage, we no longer identify solely with the small self. The world is no longer seen as the depriving or punishing bad parent. Instead, the world is seen as challenging and presenting opportunities for growth, development, and new experiences. Thus, this level is characterized by optimism and the feeling that with the correct facts, education, and orientation, sooner or later most problems can be worked out satisfactorily.

Illness especially, may be a blessed forerunner of the individual’s conversion. Not only does it prevent him from realizing his desires; it even reduces his capacity for sin, his opportunities for vice. In that enforced detachment from evil, which is a Mercy of God, he has time to search himself, to appraise his life, to interpret it in terms of larger reality. He considers God, and, at that moment, there is a sense of duality, a confronting of personality with Divinity, a comparison of the facts of his life with the ideal from which he fell. The soul is forced to look inside itself, to inquire whether there is more peace in this suffering than in sinning. Once a sick man, in his passivity, begins to ask, “What is the purpose of my life? Why am I here?” the crisis has already begun. Conversion becomes possible the very moment a man ceases to blame God or life and begins to blame himself; by doing so, he becomes able to distinguish between his sinful barnacles and the ship of his soul. A crack has appeared in the armor of his egotism; now the sunlight of God’s grace can pour in. But until that happens, catastrophes can teach us nothing but despair.

If there’s one place, then, where we can intervene in a way that will pay dividends for society down the road, it’s in the classroom. Yet that’s barely happening. All the big debates in education are about format. About delivery. About didactics. Education is consistently presented as a means of adaptation – as a lubricant to help you glide more effortlessly through life. On the education conference circuit, an endless parade of trend watchers prophesy about the future and essential twenty-first-century skills, the buzzwords being “creative,” “adaptable,” and “flexible.” The focus, invariably, is on competencies, not values. On didactics, not ideals. On “problem-solving ability,” but not which problems need solving. Invariably, it all revolves around the question: Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market – the market of 2030? Which is precisely the wrong question. In 2030, there will likely be a high demand for savvy accountants untroubled by a conscience. If current trends hold, countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland will become even bigger tax havens, enabling multinationals to dodge taxes even more effectively, leaving developing countries with an even shorter end of the stick. If the aim of education is to roll with these kinds of trends rather than upend them, then egotism is set to be the quintessential twenty-first-century skill. Not

I turned with an inward groan to look at him. Quackenbush wasn't going to let me just do the work for him like the automaton I wished to be. We were going to have to be pitted against each other. It was easy enough now to see why. For Quackenbush had been systematically disliked since he first set foot in Devon, with careless, disinterested insults coming at him from the beginning, voting for and applauding the class leaders through years of attaining nothing he wanted for himself. I didn't want to add to his humiliations; I even sympathized with his trembling, goaded egotism he could no longer contain, the furious arrogance which sprang out now at the mere hint of opposition from someone he had at last found whom he could consider inferior to himself. I realized that all this explained him, and it wasn't the words he said which angered me. It was only that he was so ignorant, that he knew nothing of the gypsy summer, nothing of the loss I was fighting to endure, of skylarks and splashes and petal-bearing breezes, he had not seen Leper's snails or the Charter of the Super Suicide Society; he shared nothing, knew nothing, felt nothing as Phineas had done.

I’m doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I’ll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I’m being selfish. It’s perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss.

Telling the truth is a pretty hard thing. And in a young man's first attempt, with the distortions of his vanity, egotism, hot passion, and lacerated pride, it is almost impossible. "Home to Our Mountains" was marred by all these faults and imperfections...[Webber] did know that it was not altogether a true book. Still, there was truth in it. ... [from Randy] There were places where [your book] rubbed salt in. In saying this, I'm not like those others you complain about: you know damn well I understand what you did and why you had to do it. But just the same, there were some things that you did not have to do -- and you'd have had a better book if you hadn't done them.

I found myself all at once on the brink of panic. This, I suddenly felt, was going too far. Too far, even though the going was into intenser beauty, deeper significance. The fear, as I analyze it in retrospect, was of being overwhelmed, of disintegrating under a pressure of reality greater than a mind, accustomed to living most of the time in a cosy world of symbols, could possibly bear. The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the Mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the in-compatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God. Following Boehme and William Law, we may say that, by unregenerate souls, the divine Light at its full blaze can be apprehended only as a burning, purgatorial fire. An almost identical doctrine is to be found in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the Pure Light of the Void, and even from the lesser, tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as a beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality—anything!

He is the devotee who is jealous of none, who is a fount of mercy, who is without egotism, who is selfless, who treats alike cold and heat, happiness and misery, who is ever forgiving, who is always contented, whose resolutions are firm, who has dedicated mind and soul to God, who causes no dread, who is not afraid of others, who is free from exultation, sorrow and fear, who is pure, who is versed in action and yet remains unaffected by it, who renounces all fruit, good or bad, who treats friend and foe alike, who is untouched by respect or disrespect, who is not puffed up by praise, who does not go under when people speak ill of him, who loves silence and solitude, who has a disciplined reason. Such devotion is inconsistent with the existence at the same time of strong attachments. 18. We thus see that to be a real devotee is to realize oneself. Self-realization is not something apart. One rupee can purchase for us poison or nectar, but knowledge or devotion cannot buy us salvation or bondage. These are not media of exchange. They are themselves the thing we want. In other words, if the means and the end are not identical, they are almost so. The extreme of means is salvation. Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace.

On the whole I’m glad; you can’t mourn for unborn grandchildren when there never was a hope of them. This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble. If man is doomed to perish, then universal infertility is as painless a way as any. And there are, after all, personal compensations. For the last sixty years we have sycophantically pandered to the most ignorant, the most criminal and the most selfish section of society. Now, for the rest of our lives, we’re going to be spared the intrusive barbarism of the young, their noise, their pounding, repetitive, computer-produced so-called music, their violence, their egotism disguised as idealism. My God, we might even succeed in getting rid of Christmas, that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed. I intend that my life shall be comfortable, and, when it no longer is, then I shall wash down my final pill with a bottle of claret.

All you experience in the course of your life, all you observe and think, all that makes you happy or unhappy, all your regrets or satisfactions, all your love or hate, all you long for or avoid, all your achievements and failures, all you brought with you into this life at birth – your temperament, abilities, inclinations, whether they remain unfulfilled, underdeveloped or overdeveloped – all are part of the region of your so-called subconscious depth. There, being forgotten by you, or never known to you, they undergo the process of being purified of all egotism. They become feelings per se. Thus purged and transformed, they become part of the material from which your individuality creates the psychology, the illusory “soul” of the character.

Emotional exhaustion follows fast on the footsteps of physical and mental depletion. I feel my lifeblood draining away in an oily spigot of inner turmoil. Questions abound and personal survival hinges upon sorting through possible solutions and selecting the most fitting answers. Is my pain real or simply an illusion of a frustrated ego? What do I believe in? What is my purpose? I aspire to discover a means to live in congruence with the trinity of the mind, body, and spirit. Can I discover a noble path that frees me from the shallowness of decadent physical and emotional desires? Can I surrender any desire to seek fame and fortune? Can I terminate a craving to punish other persons for their perceived wrongs? Can I recognize that forgiving persons whom offended me is a self-initiated, transformative act? Can I conquer an irrational fear of the future? Can I accept the inevitable chaos that accompanies life? Can I find a means to achieve inner harmony by steadfastly resolving to live in the moment free of angst? Can I purge egotisms that mar an equitable perception of life by renunciation of the self and all worldly endeavors? Can I live a harmonious existence devoid the panache of vanities?

Let us not despise the woman who is neither mother nor daughter nor wife. Let us not limit our esteem to family life, narrow our tolerance to simple egotism. Given that heaven rejoices more at the repentance of one sinner than over a hundred good men who have never sinned, let us endeavor to make heaven rejoice. We may be rewarded with interest. Let us leave along the path the alms of our forgiveness for those whose earthly desires have marooned them, so that a divine hope may save them, and, as the wise old women say when they prescribe a remedy of their own invention, if it doesn't help, at least it can't hurt.

...the presence of others has become even more intolerable to me, their conversation most of all. Oh, how it all annoys and exasperates me: their attitudes, their manners, their whole way of being! The people of my world, all my unhappy peers, have come to irritate, oppress and sadden me with their noisy and empty chatter, their monstrous and boundless vanity, their even more monstrous egotism, their club gossip... the endless repetition of opinions already formed and judgments already made; the automatic vomiting forth of articles read in those morning papers which are the recognised outlet of the hopeless wilderness of their ideas; the eternal daily meal of overfamiliar cliches concerning racing stables and the stalls of fillies of the human variety... the hutches of the 'petites femmes' - another worn out phrase in the dirty usury of shapeless expression! Oh my contemporaries, my dear contemporaries... Their idiotic self-satisfaction; their fat and full-blown self-sufficiency: the stupid display of their good fortune; the clink of fifty- and a hundred-franc coins forever sounding out their financial prowess, according their own reckoning; their hen-like clucking and their pig-like grunting, as they pronounce the names of certain women; the obesity of their minds, the obscenity of their eyes, and the toneless-ness of their laughter! They are, in truth, handsome puppets of amour, with all the exhausted despondency of their gestures and the slackness of their chic... Chic! A hideous word, which fits their manner like a new glove: as dejected as undertakers' mutes, as full-blown as Falstaff... Oh my contemporaries: the ceusses of my circle, to put it in their own ignoble argot. They have all welcomed the moneylenders into their homes, and have been recruited as their clients, and they have likewise played host to the fat journalists who milk their conversations for the society columns. How I hate them; how I execrate them; how I would love to devour them liver and lights - and how well I understand the Anarchists and their bombs!

It’s like humping Leviathan: a fucking war of all against all, a shag of attrition. Eventually she goes off and I shoot my load and, save for a shaving of egotism, am completely unmoved by the experience. […] Contemplating the girl beneath me, I know that she could never be my friend. Her gasps as she came sounded like mocking laughter, as empty and pointless as I feel inside. Not only have I forgotten her name, I can’t remember if I ever asked it or if she bothered telling me. Prabaly not.

Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!

The Russian Revolution is a radical change in history. The abolition of private property has created a new world. You may like it or detest it, but it’s new. Hitler’s socialism was a sham to get a mob of gangsters into power. He’s frozen the German economy just as it was, smashed the labor unions, lengthened the working hours, cut the pay, and kept all the old rich crowd on top, the Krupps and Thyssens, the men who gave him the money to run for office. The big Nazis live like barons, like sultans. The concentration camps are for anybody who still wants the socialist part of National Socialism." [...] "I’m sorry. I’m impressed with Hitler’s ability to use socialist prattle when necessary, and then discard it. He uses doctrines as he uses money, to get things done. They’re expendable. He uses racism because that’s the pure distillate of German romantic egotism, just as Lenin used utopian Marxism because it appealed to Russia’s messianic streak. Hitler means to hammer out a united Europe.... He understands them, and he may just succeed. A unified Europe must come. The medieval jigsaw of nations is obsolete. The balance of power is dangerous foolishness in the industrial age. It must all be thrown out. Somebody has to be ruthless enough to do it, since the peoples with their ancient hatreds will never do it themselves. It’s only Napoleon’s original vision, but he was a century ahead of his time.

In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The

Our culture's response to egotism is as misguided as our approach to inadequacy. When people feel and act as if they're better than others—belittling those around them, for instance, or persistently interrupting to assert their own views—we're encouraged to "bring them down a peg." According to my guides, however, people who strive for superiority are wrestling with a deep internal conflict. Disconnected at a conscious level from the genuine magnificence of their Spirit, they retain an unconscious remembrance of this innate grandeur. Longing to realize the potential they sense within, but confused by identifying only with what is commonly referred to as the ego—the limited, human aspect of their being—they believe they can feel powerful and significant only through dominating and outshining others.

We have permitted cynical political reactionaries and the spokesmen of large corporations to pre-empt these basic libertarian American ideals. We have permitted them not only to become the specious "voice" of these ideals such that individualism has been used to justify egotism; the "pursuit of happiness" to justify greed, and even our emphasis on local and regional autonomy has been used to justify parochialism, insularism, and exclusivity -- often against ethnic minorities and so-called "deviant" individuals. We have even permitted these reactionaries to stake out a claim to the word "libertarian," a word, in fact, that was literally devised in the 1890s in France by Elisée Reclus as a substitute for the word "anarchist," which the government had rendered an illegal expression for identifying one's views. The propertarians, in effect -- acolytes of Ayn Rand, the "earth mother" of greed, egotism, and the virtues of property -- have appropriated expressions and traditions that should have been expressed by radicals but were willfully neglected because of the lure of European and Asian traditions of "socialism," "socialisms" that are now entering into decline in the very countries in which they originated.

When a soul in sin, under the impetus of grace, turns to God, there is penance; but when a soul in sin refuses to change, God sends chastisement. This chastisement need not be external, and certainly it is never arbitrary; it comes as an inevitable result of breaking God’s moral law. But the entrenched forces of the modern world are irrational, men nowadays do not always interpret disasters as the moral events they are. When calamity strikes the flint of human hearts, sparks of sacred fire are kindled and men will normally begin to make an estimate of their true worth. In previous ages this was usual: a disordered individual could find his way back to peace because he lived in an objective world inspired by Christian order. But the frustrated man of today, having lost his faith in God, living as he does, in a disordered chaotic world, has no beacon to guide him. In times of trouble he sometimes turns in upon himself, like a serpent devouring its own tail. Given such a man, who worships the false trinity of (1) his own pride, which acknowledges no law; (2) his own sensuality, which makes earthly comfort it goal; (3) his license, which interprets liberty as the absences of all restraint and law—then a cancer is created which is impossible to cure except through an operation or calamity unmistakable as God’s action in history. It is always through sweat and blood and tears that the soul is purged of its animal egotism and laid open to the Spirit … Catastrophe can be to a world that has forgotten God what a sickness can be to a sinner; in the midst of it millions might be brought not to a voluntary, but to an enforced crisis. Such a calamity would put an end to Godlessness and make vast numbers of men, who might otherwise lose their souls, turn to God.

you think, really, that there is something unnatural, something positively abnormal about a young man dancing around with tears in his eyes for such a reason? Don’t you see that in this condition you scarcely present that bulwark of strength and self-assurance which a woman has a right to look for in a man? Don’t you see that you really don’t want a woman at all, as a woman? That you only want a mother to hold your head on her shoulder and dry your dancing-tears and flatter your delicate little egotism and tend to your little physical necessities for you. This, my hypothetical young man, is very very bad, and you had best take immediate steps to correct it. You had better stop dancing with this poor unappreciated girl if you can’t amuse her any better than by spoiling her make-up with your messy tears, and you had better go out into the open air and realize that mother is far away and that no one is ever going to understand you and that it is not very important whether anyone ever does; you might even try to understand someone else for a change.)

Is this flesh of yours you? Or is it an extraneous something possessed by you? Your body—what is it? A machine for converting stimuli into reactions. Stimuli and reactions are remembered. They constitute experience. Then you are in your consciousness these experiences. You are at any moment what you are thinking at that moment. Your I is both subject and object; it predicates things of itself and is the things predicated. The thinker is the thought, the knower is what is known, the possessor is the things possessed. "After all, as you know well, man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a will-of-the-wisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland. But this, man will not accept of himself. He refuses to accept his own passing. He will not pass. He will live again if he has to die to do it. "He shuffles atoms and jets of light, remotest nebulae, drips of water, prick-points of sensation, slime-oozings and cosmic bulks, all mixed with pearls of faith, love of woman, imagined dignities, frightened surmises, and pompous arrogances, and of the stuff builds himself an immortality to startle the heavens and baffle the immensities. He squirms on his dunghill, and like a child lost in the dark among goblins, calls to the gods that he is their younger brother, a prisoner of the quick that is destined to be as free as they—monuments of egotism reared by the epiphenomena; dreams and the dust of dreams, that vanish when the dreamer vanishes and are no more when he is not.

The trait that astounded and confounded cynicism was his apparent unselfishness. Never, in any man who wielded such power, did Henry Adams meet anything like it. The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies; a diseased appetite, like a passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use expressions too strong to describe the violence of egotism it stimulates; and Turlow Weeds was one of the exceptions; a rare imune. He thought apparently not of himself, but of the person he was talking with. He held himself naturally in the background. He was not jealous. He grasped power, but not office. He distributed offices by handfuls without caring to take them. He had the instinct of empire: he gave, but he did not receive.

In what act or thought of his has there ever been self? What was his aim in life? Greatness - in other people's eyes. Fame, admiration, envy - all which come from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that other believed he held them. Others were his motive power and his prime concern. He didn't want to be great, but be thought great. He didn't want to build, but to be admired as a builder. He borrowed from other in order to make an impression on others. It's his ego that he's betrayed and given up.

On Turgenev: He knew from Lavrov that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky's studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazarov. I frankly replied, 'Bazaraov is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as mush as you did your other heroes.' 'On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,' Turgenev replied, with an unexpected vigor. 'When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazarov's death.' Turgenev certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazarov. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazarov's point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. 'Analysis first of all, and then egotism, and therefore no faith,--an egotist cannot even believe in himself:' so he characterized Hamlet. 'Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber's plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the sarcasms of the majority, or even of persecutions, march straight forward, keeping their eyes fixed upon a goal which is seen, perhaps, by no one but themselves. They search, they fall, but they rise again and find it,--and by right, too. Yet, although Hamlet is a skeptic, and disbelieves in Good, he does not disbelieve in Evil. He hates it; Evil and Deceit are his enemies; and his skepticism is not indifferentism, but only negation and doubt, which finally consume his will.' These thought of Turgenev give, I think, the true key for understanding his relations to his heroes. He himself and several of his best friends belonged more or less to the Hamlets. He loved Hamlet, and admired Don Quixote. So he admired also Bazarov. He represented his superiority admirably well, he understood the tragic character of his isolated position, but he could not surround him with that tender, poetical love which he bestowed as on a sick friend, when his heroes approached the Hamlet type. It would have been out of place.

The point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. In was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,—because he loved much—that he was regarded as vulnerable by "serious men," "grave persons" and "reasonable people"; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain. He was indulgent towards God's creation. Every man, even the best, has within him a thoughtless harshness which he reserves for animals. The Bishop of D—— had none of that harshness, which is peculiar to many priests, nevertheless. He did not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: "Who knoweth whither the soul of the animal goeth?" Hideousness of aspect, deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did not arouse his indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them. It seemed as though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which is apparent, the cause, the explanation, or the excuse for them. He seemed at times to be asking God to commute these penalties. He examined without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is deciphering a palimpsest, that portion of chaos which still exists in nature. This revery sometimes caused him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard him say:—

Decadence in modern mass multicultural societies begins at a moment when there is not longer any discernible meaning within society. Meaning is destroyed by raising individualism above all other values because rampant individualism encourages the anarchical proliferation of egotism at the expense of the values that were once part of the national heritage, values that give form to the concept of nationhood and the nation state, to a state which is more than just a political entity, and which corresponds to a particular people who are conscious of sharing a common heritage for the survival of which they are prepared to make personal sacrifices. Man evolved in cooperating groups united by common cultural and genetic ties, and it is only in such a setting that the individual can feel truly free, and truly protected. Men cannot live happily alone and without values or any sense of identity: such a situation leads to nihilism, drug abuse, criminality, and worse. With the spread of purely egotistic goals at the expense of the altruistic regard for family and nation, the individual begins to talk of his rights rather than his duties, for he no longer feels any sense of destiny, of belonging to and being a part of a greater and more enduring entity. He no longer rejoices in the secure belief that he shares in a heritage which it is part of his common duty to protect - he no longer feels that he has anything in common with those around him. In short, he feels lonely and oppressed. Since all values have become personal, everything is now equal to everything; e.g., nothing equals nothing.

The hatred directed against the privileged in body and spirit: the revolt of the ugly and bungled souls against the beautiful, the proud, and the cheerful. The weapons used: contempt of beauty, of pride, of happiness: 'There is no such thing as merit,' 'The danger is enormous: it is right that one should tremble and feel ill at ease,' 'Naturalness is evil; it is right to oppose all that is natural — even 'reason' (all that is antinatural is elevated to the highest place). It is again the priests who exploit this condition, and who win the 'people' over to themselves. 'The sinner' over whom there is more joy in heaven than over 'the just person.' This is the struggle against 'paganism' (the pang of conscience, a measure for disturbing the harmony of the soul). The hatred of the mediocre for the exceptions, and of the herd for its independent members. (Custom actually regarded as 'morality.' The revulsion of feeling against 'egotism': that only is worth anything which is done 'for another.' 'We are all equal'; — against the love of dominion, against 'dominion' in general; — against privilege;—against sectarians, free-spirits, and sceptics; — against philosophy (a force opposing mechanical and automatic instincts); in philosophers themselves — 'the categorical imperative,' the essential nature of morality, 'general and universal.

We do not sufficiently distinguish between individualism and individuation. Individualism means deliberately stressing and giving prominence to some supposed peculiarity rather than to collective consideration and obligations. But individuation means precisely the better and more complete fulfillment of the collective qualities of the human being, since adequate consideration of the peculiarity of the individual is more conducive to a better social performance than when the peculiarity is neglected or suppressed. The idiosyncrasy of an individual is not to be understood as any strangeness in his substance or in his components, but rather as a unique combination, or gradual differentiation, of functions and faculties which in themselves are universal. Every human face has a nose, two eyes, etc., but these universal factors are variable, and it is this variability which makes individual peculiarities possible. Individuation, therefore, can only mean a process of psychological development that fulfils the individual qualities given; in other words, it is a process by which a man becomes the definite, unique being he in fact is. In so doing he does not become “selfish” in the ordinary sense of the word, but is merely fulfilling the peculiarity of his nature, and this, as we have said, is vastly different from egotism or individualism.

If there’s one thing I regret it’s not having told my father how much I admired and loved him. My only gesture of affection was a quick kiss on the forehead two days before he died. The kiss tasted like sugar and I felt like a thief who furtively stole something that no longer belong to anybody. Why do we hide our feelings? Out of cowardice? Out of egotism? With a mother it’s different: we cover her with flowers, gifts and sweet phrases. What is it that prevents us from affectionately confronting our father and telling him, face to face, how much we love or admire him? On the other hand, why do we curse him under our breath when he puts us in our place? Why do we react with wickedness and not affection when the occasion presents itself? Why are we brave with taunts and cowards with affection? Why did I never tell my father these things but I tell them to you, who are probably too young to understand them yet? One night I wanted to speak to my father ion his room but found him asleep. As I quietly began to leave the room, I heard my sleeping father, in a desperate voice, say: “No, papa, no!” What strange, agitated dream was my father experiencing with his father? And if one thing caught my attention, beyond the enigma of the dream, was that my father was seventy-eight years old at that time and my grandfather had been dead for at least a quarter of a century. Does a man have to die to speak to his father?

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved. To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing. But say you’ve inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it’s soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure. More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.

I called the Keep, introduced myself to the disembodied female voice on the phone, and asked for the Beast Lord. In less than fifteen seconds Curran came on the line. “I’m going into hiding with Jim.” The silence on the other side of the phone had a distinctly sinister undertone. Perhaps he thought that his kissing superpowers had derailed me. Fat chance. I would keep him from having to kill Derek. That was a burden he didn’t need. “I thought about this morning,” I said, doing my best to sound calm and reasonable. “I’ve instructed the super to change the locks. If I ever catch you in my apartment again, I will file a formal complaint. I’ve taken your food, under duress, but I did take it. You rescued me once or twice, and you’ve seen me near naked. I realize that you’re judging this situation by shapeshifter standards, and you expect me to fall on my back with my legs spread.” “Not necessarily.” His voice matched mine in calmness. “You can fall on your hands and knees if you prefer. Or against the wall. Or on the kitchen counter. I suppose I might let you be on top, if you make it worth my while.” I didn’t grind my teeth—he would’ve heard it. I had to be calm and reasonable. “My point is this: no.” “No?” “There will be no falling, no sex, no you and me.” “I wanted to kiss you when you were in your house. In Savannah.” Why the hell was my heart pounding? “And?” “You looked afraid. That wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for.” Be calm and reasonable. “You flatter yourself. You’re not that scary.” “After I kissed you this morning, you were afraid again. Right after you looked like you were about to melt.” Melt? “You’re scared there might be something there, between you and me.” Wow. I struggled to swallow that little tidbit. “Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.” “You thought about dragging me into your bed this morning.” “I thought about stabbing you and running away screaming. You broke into my house without permission and slobbered all over me. You’re a damn lunatic! And don’t give me that line about smelling my desire; I know it’s bullshit.” “I didn’t need to smell you. I could tell by the dreamy look in your eyes and the way your tongue licked the inside of my mouth.” “Enjoy the memory,” I ground out. “That’s the last time it will ever happen.” “Go play your games with Jim. I’ll find you both when I need you.” Arrogant asshole. “I tell you what, if you find us before those three days run out, I’ll cook you a damn dinner and serve it to you naked.” “Is that a promise?” “Yes. Go fuck yourself.” I slammed the phone down. Well, then. That was perfectly reasonable. On the other side of the counter an older, heavyset man stared at me like I had sprouted horns. Glenda handed me the money I’d given her. “That was some conversation. It was worth ten bucks.

The truly wise are meek. Yet being small and meek do not make one weak. Arming oneself with true knowledge generates strong confidence and a bold spirit that makes you a lion of God. The Creator does not want you to suffer, yet we are being conditioned by society to accept suffering, weak and passive dispositions under the belief that such conditions are favorable by God. Weakness is not a virtue praised by God. How could he desire for you to be weak if he tells us to stand by our conscience? Doing so requires strength. However, there is a difference between arrogance when inflating your ego, and confidence when one truly gets closer to God. One feels large, while the other feels small. Why? Because a man of wisdom understands that he is just a small pea in a sea of infinite atoms, and that in the end — we are all connected. And did you not know that the smaller a creature is, the bolder its spirit?

Winter was come indeed bringing with it those pleasures of which the summer dreamer knows nothing—the delight when the fine and glittering day shows in the window, though one knows how cold it is outside; the delight of getting as close as possible to the blazing range which in the shadowy kitchen throws reflections very different from the pale gleams of sunlight in the yard, the range we cannot take with us on our walk, busy with its own activity, growling and grumbling as it sets to work, for in three hours time luncheon must be ready; the delight of filling one's bowl with steaming café-au-lait—for it is only eight o'clock—and swallowing it in boiling gulps while servants at their tasks come in and out with a, 'Good morning: up early, aren't you?' and a kindly, 'It's snug enough in here, but cold outside,' accompanying the words with that smile which is to be seen only on the faces of those who for the moment are thinking of others and not of themselves, whose expressions, entirely freed from egotism, take on a quality of vacillating goodness, a smile which completes that earlier smile of the bright golden sky touching the window-panes, and crowns our every pleasure as we stand there with the lovely heat of the range at our backs, the hot and limpid flavour of the café-au-lait in our mouths; the delight of night-time when, having had to get up to go shiveringly to the icy lavatory in the tower, into which the air creeps through the ill-fitting window, we later return deliciously to our room, feeling a smile of happiness distend our lips, finding it hard not to jump for sheer joy at the thought of the big bed already warm with our warmth, of the still burning fire, the hot-water bottle, the coverlets and blankets which have imparted their heat to the bed into which we are about to slip, walled in, embattled, hiding ourselves to the chin as against enemies thundering at the gates, who will not (and the thought brings gaiety) get the better of us, since they do not even know where we have so snugly gone to earth, laughing at the wind which is roaring outside, climbing up all the chimneys to every floor of the great house, conducting a search on each landing, trying all the locks: the delight of rolling ourselves in the blankets when we feel its icy breath approaching, sliding a little farther down the bed, gripping the hot-water bottle between our feet, working it up too high, and when we push it down again feeling the place where it has been still hot, pulling up the bedclothes to our faces, rolling ourselves into a ball, turning over, thinking—'How good life is!' too gay even to feel melancholy at the thought of the triviality of all this pleasure.

His life coiled back into the brown murk of the past like a twined filament of electric wire; he gave life, a pattern, and movement to these million sensations that Chance, the loss or gain of a moment, the turn of the head, the enormous and aimless impulsion of accident, had thrust into the blazing heat of him. His mind picked out in white living brightness these pinpoints of experience and the ghostliness of all things else became more awful because of them. So many of the sensations that returned to open haunting vistas of fantasy and imagining had been caught from a whirling landscape through the windows of the train. And it was this that awed him — the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time. There was one moment of timeless suspension when the land did not move, the train did not move, the slattern in the doorway did not move, he did not move. It was as if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute. Or like those motion-pictures that describe the movements of a swimmer making a dive, or a horse taking a hedge — movement is petrified suddenly in mid-air, the inexorable completion of an act is arrested. Then, completing its parabola, the suspended body plops down into the pool. Only, these images that burnt in him existed without beginning or ending, without the essential structure of time. Fixed in no-time, the slattern vanished, fixed, without a moment of transition. His sense of unreality came from time and movement, from imagining the woman, when the train had passed, as walking back into the house, lifting a kettle from the hearth embers. Thus life turned shadow, the living lights went ghost again. The boy among the calves. Where later? Where now? I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which, having for me no existence save that which I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cumulation of what I have been becoming. Why here? Why there? Why now? Why then? The fusion of the two strong egotisms, Eliza’s inbrooding and Gant’s expanding outward, made of him a fanatical zealot in the religion of Chance. Beyond all misuse, waste, pain, tragedy, death, confusion, unswerving necessity was on the rails; not a sparrow fell through the air but that its repercussion acted on his life, and the lonely light that fell upon the viscous and interminable seas at dawn awoke sea-changes washing life to him. The fish swam upward from the depth.