Height Shaming Quotes

My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.

He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, 'till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompts to higher pursuits; and, instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavors to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

Don't tell me I'm "too tall" just because my height happens to threaten your rather fragile sense of masculinity. The fact that men cannot physically look down upon women who are taller than them is the very reason that many men find tall women so intimidating.

He leant his two elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands and remained rapt in dumb meditation. On my inquiring the subject of his thoughts, he answered gravely 'I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!' 'For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.' 'No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves….On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him.

For I have indeed been torn from all my roots, even from the earth that nourished them, more entirely than most in our times. I was born in 1881 in the great and mighty empire of the Habsburg Monarchy, but you would look for it in vain on the map today; it has vanished without trace. I grew up in Vienna, an international metropolis for two thousand years, and had to steal away from it like a thief in the night before it was demoted to the status of a provincial German town. My literary work, in the language in which I wrote it, has been burnt to ashes in the country where my books made millions of readers their friends. So I belong nowhere now, I am a stranger or at the most a guest everywhere. Even the true home of my heart’s desire, Europe, is lost to me after twice tearing itself suicidally to pieces in fratricidal wars. Against my will, I have witnessed the most terrible defeat of reason and the most savage triumph of brutality in the chronicles of time. Never—and I say so not with pride but with shame—has a generation fallen from such intellectual heights as ours to such moral depths.

While enjoying a month of fine weather at the sea-coast, I was thrown into the company of a most fascinating creature: a real goddess in my eyes, as long as she took no notice of me. I 'never told my love' vocally; still, if looks have language, the merest idiot might have guessed I was over head and ears: she understood me at last, and looked a return - the sweetest of all imaginable looks. And what did I do? I confess it with shame - shrunk icily into myself, like a snail; at every glance retired colder and farther; till finally the poor innocent was led to doubt her own senses, and, overwhelmed with confusion at her supposed mistake, persuaded her mamma to decamp. By this curious turn of disposition I have gained the reputation of deliberate heartlessness; how undeserved, I alone can appreciate.

When my reputation was at its height, classmates insulted me right to my face as I walked down the hall. When a teacher called on me, boys snickered and girls rolled their eyes. My body and face burned. I felt mortified. I contemplated suicide.

I have been able to solve a few problems of mathematical physics on which the greatest mathematicians since Euler have struggled in vain ... But the pride I might have held in my conclusions was perceptibly lessened by the fact that I knew that the solution of these problems had almost always come to me as the gradual generalization of favorable examples, by a series of fortunate conjectures, after many errors. I am fain to compare myself with a wanderer on the mountains who, not knowing the path, climbs slowly and painfully upwards and often has to retrace his steps because he can go no further—then, whether by taking thought or from luck, discovers a new track that leads him on a little till at length when he reaches the summit he finds to his shame that there is a royal road by which he might have ascended, had he only the wits to find the right approach to it. In my works, I naturally said nothing about my mistake to the reader, but only described the made track by which he may now reach the same heights without difficulty.

He gained height, grew thin, the hair on his temples had begun to grey, but, now as then, he had none of that useful sense of proportion, nor could he ever develop anything of the sort, which might have helped him distinguish between the continuous flux of the universe of which he constituted a part (though a necessarily fleeting part) and the passage of time, the perception of which might have led to an intuitive and wise acceptance of fate. Despite vain efforts to understand and experience what precisely his 'dear friends' wanted from each other, he confronted the slow tide of human affairs with a sad incomprehension, dispassionately and without any sense of personal involvement, for the greater part of his consciousness, the part entirely given over to wonder, had left no room for more mundane matters, and (to his mother's inordinate shame and the extreme amusement of the locals) had ever since then trapped him in a bubble of time, in one eternal, impenetrable and transparent moment. He walked, he trudged, he flitted - as his great friend once said, not entirely without point - 'blindly and tirelessly... with the incurable beauty of his personal cosmos' in his soul [...]

For shame, Heathcliff!’ said I. ‘It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.’ ‘No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,’ he returned.

What a damn shame, to have the best views in the world, only to cover your walls with mirrors and brocade curtains.

...with her self-esteem perilously balanced on her excellence, she could only interpret failure as catastrophic. Lilly shamed herself when she made a mistake, becoming upset not only about her performance but about who she was as a human being. ...She reached her heights at a steep internal price. Her Good Girl thinking forced her to walk an unforgiving line; one misstep would plummet her to the snapping jaws of failure. ...Her unreasonable expectations kept her shackled to failure, preventing her from shaking off a mistake and moving forward quickly.

I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was Mache dich mein Herze rein from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed? But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians—it was pretty much the only option in their time—but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe. And what a shame that we are deprived of Haydn’s Evolution Oratorio—but that does not stop us from enjoying his Creation.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cogwheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves....On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness; all his dullness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also, and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon him.

For shame, Heathcliff!' said I. 'It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.' 'No, God won't have the satisfaction that I shall,' he returned. 'I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I'll plan it out: while I'm thinking of that I don't feel pain.

He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks: ' ''T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath nut oe'red, und t' sahnd uh't gospel still i' yer lugs, and yah darr be laiking! shame on ye! sit ye dahn, ill childer! they's good books enough if ye'll read 'em; sit ye dahn, and think uh yer sowls!

Then under the indifferent sky his spirit left the body with its ripped flesh, its infections, its weak and damaged nature. While the rain fell on his arms and legs, the part of him that still lived was unreachable. It was not his mind, but some other essence that was longing now for peace on a quiet, shadowed road where no guns sounded. The deep paths of darkness opened up for it, as they opened up for other men along the lines of dug earth, barely fifty yards apart. Then, as the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. At this late stage he could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war; he could, if he made the effort of courage and will, come back to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice was calling him; it appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.

With rope-ladders learned I to reach many a window, with nimble legs did I climb high masts: to sit on high masts of perception seemed to me no small bliss; To flicker like small flames on high masts: a small light, certainly, but a great comfort to cast-away sailors and shipwrecked ones! By diverse ways and wendings did I arrive at my truth; not by one ladder did I mount to the height where mine eye roveth into my remoteness. And unwillingly only did I ask my way - that was always counter to my taste! Rather did I question and test the ways themselves. A testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling: and verily, one must also learn to answer such questioning! That, however - is my taste: Neither a good nor a bad taste, but my taste, of which I have no longer either shame or secrecy. "This is now my way - where is yours?" Thus did I answer those who asked me "the way." For "the way" - it doth not exist!

And I wondered if I’d die like this. Die flying, soaring, rocketing to heights higher than I’d ever been. Would this be the eternity I’d be allowed to dwell in? In this overwhelming pleasure, so abundant, so consuming, so amplified that there wasn’t room for anything else. No room for fear or doubt or worry or shame or grief. Just this.

While you're alive it's shameful to worm your way into the Calendar of Saints. Disbelief in yourself is more saintly. It takes real talent not to dread being terrified by your own agonizing lack of talent. Disbelief in yourself is indispensable. Indispensable to us is the loneliness of being gripped in the vise, so that in the darkest night the sky will enter you and skin your temples with the stars, so that streetcars will crash into the room, wheels cutting across your face, so the dangling rope, terrible and alive, will float into the room and dance invitingly in the air. Indispensable is any mangy ghost in tattered, overplayed stage rags, and if even the ghosts are capricious, I swear, they are no more capricious than those who are alive. Indispensable amidst babbling boredom are the deadly fear of uttering the right words and the fear of shaving, because across your cheekbone graveyard grass already grows. It is indispensable to be sleeplessly delirious, to fail, to leap into emptiness. Probably, only in despair is it possible to speak all the truth to this age. It is indispensable, after throwing out dirty drafts, to explode yourself and crawl before ridicule, to reassemble your shattered hands from fingers that rolled under the dresser. Indispensable is the cowardice to be cruel and the observation of the small mercies, when a step toward falsely high goals makes the trampled stars squeal out. It's indispensable, with a misfit's hunger, to gnaw a verb right down to the bone. Only one who is by nature from the naked poor is neither naked nor poor before fastidious eternity. And if from out of the dirt, you have become a prince, but without principles, unprince yourself and consider how much less dirt there was before, when you were in the real, pure dirt. Our self-esteem is such baseness.... The Creator raises to the heights only those who, even with tiny movements, tremble with the fear of uncertainty. Better to cut open your veins with a can opener, to lie like a wino on a spit-spattered bench in the park, than to come to that very comfortable belief in your own special significance. Blessed is the madcap artist, who smashes his sculpture with relish- hungry and cold-but free from degrading belief in himself.

Is there not some—I do not know the word. Some device. Some bargain with the Fates, some trick, some pharmaka—” It was the word Aeëtes had used, when he spoke of herbs with wondrous powers, sprung from the fallen blood of gods. The sea snake at my grandmother’s neck uncoiled and flicked a black tongue from its arrow mouth. Her voice was low and angry. “You dare to speak of that?” The sudden change surprised me. “Speak of what?” But she was rising, her full height unfurling before me. “Child, I have done as much for you as may be done, and there is no more. Go from here, and let me never hear you speak of that wickedness again.” My head was churning, my mouth sharp as though I had drunk raw wine. I walked back through the couches, the chairs, past the skirts of whispering, smirking naiads. She thinks just because she is daughter of the sun, she may uproot the world to please herself. I was too wild to feel any shame. It was true. I would not just uproot the world, but tear it, burn it, do any evil I could to keep Glaucos by my side. But what stayed most in my mind was the look on my grandmother’s face when I’d said that word, pharmaka. It was not a look I knew well, among the gods. But I had seen Glaucos when he spoke of the levy and empty nets and his father. I had begun to know what fear was. What could make a god afraid? I knew that answer too. A power greater than their own.

If you will make a man of the working creature, you can not make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turning precision is lost at once. Out comes all his roughness, all the dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause:but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark.

I thought of my primary and secondary education. I remembered feeling crippling guilt as I silently wondered why every enslaved person couldn’t simply escape like [Frederick] Douglass, [Harriet] Tubman, and [Harriet] Jacobs had. I found myself angered by the stories of those who did not escape. Had they not tried hard enough? Didn’t they care enough to do something? Did they choose to remain enslaved? This, I now realize, is part of the insidiousness of white supremacy; it illuminates the exceptional in order to implicitly blame those who cannot, in the most brutal circumstances, attain superhuman heights. It does this instead of blaming the system, the people who built it, the people who maintained it. In overly mythologizing our ancestors, we forget an all-too-important reality: the vast majority were ordinary people, which is to say they were people just like everyone else. This ordinariness is only shameful when used to legitimate oppression. This is its own quiet violence.

And I did nothing, nothing but try to hide from the horror of dying." He stopped, for saying the truth aloud was unendurable. It was not shame that stopped him, but fear, the same fear. He knew now why this tranquil life in sea and sunlight on the rafts seemed to him like an after-life or a dream, unreal. It was because he knew in his heart that reality was empty: without life or warmth or color or sound: without meaning. There were no heights or depths. All this lovely play of form and light and color on the sea and in the eyes of men, was no more than that, a playing of illusions on the shallow void.

My life in this pit will soon enter its fifth year. For more than forty-two months, I have thought hate, have lain down with hate in my heart, have dreamed hate and awakened with hate. I suffocate in the knowledge that I am the prisoner of a horde of vicious apes, and I rack my brain over the perpetual riddle of how this same people which so jealously watched over its rights a few years ago can have sunk into this stupor, in which it not only allows itself to be dominated by the street-corner idlers of yesterday, but actually, height of shame, is incapable any longer of perceiving its shame for the shame that it is.

I am fain to compare myself with a wanderer on the mountains who, not knowing the path, climbs slowly and painfully upwards and often has to retrace his steps because he can go no further—then, whether by taking thought or from luck, discovers a new track that leads him on a little till at length when he reaches the summit he finds to his shame that there is a royal road by which he might have ascended, had he only the wits to find the right approach to it. In my works, I naturally said nothing about my mistake to the reader, but only described the made track by which he may now reach the same heights without difficulty.

In Beartown silence always goes hand in hand with shame. Kira recalls how Peter explained it when she asked him why everyone seemed to hate people from the big cities so much: “People in the big cities don’t feel enough shame.” He’s always been worried about what people think. Whenever they get asked out to dinner, he goes to pieces if Kira buys a bottle of wine that’s too expensive. That’s why he refuses to live in one of the expensive houses in the Heights, even though Kira’s salary would allow them to. They carry on living in their little house in the middle of town out of sheer politeness. Peter wouldn’t budge, even when Kira tried to entice him saying, “More space for your record collection.

The little wretch had done her utmost to hurt her cousin’s sensitive though uncultivated feelings, and a physical argument was the only mode he had of balancing the account, and repaying its effects on the inflictor. He afterwards gathered the books and hurled them on the fire. I read in his countenance what anguish it was to offer that sacrifice to spleen. I fancied that as they consumed, he recalled the pleasure they had already imparted, and the triumph and ever-increasing pleasure he had anticipated from them; and I fancied I guessed the incitement to his secret studies also. He had been content with daily labour and rough animal enjoyments, till Catherine crossed his path. Shame at her scorn, and hope of her approval, were his first prompters to higher pursuits; and instead of guarding him from one and winning him to the other, his endeavours to raise himself had produced just the contrary result.

The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery; and the newly-arrived suffered most. For, having no houses of their own, but inhabiting in the height of summer stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water.The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine.The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were universally violated, and they buried their dead each one as best he could. Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had been so numerous already, lost all shame in the burial of the dead.When one man had raised a funeral pile, others would come, and throwing on their dead first, set fire to it; or when some other corpse was already burning, before they could be stopped, would throw their own dead upon it and depart. (Book 2 Chapter 52)

To be one with Christ — that meant to have become, like Him, the destroyer of the Law; to be dead with Him — that meant likewise to be dead to the Law. Even if it were still possible to sin, it would not at any rate be possible to sin against the Law: “I am above the Law,” thinks Paul; adding, “If I were now to acknowledge the Law again and to submit to it, I should make Christ an accomplice in the sin”; for the Law was there for the purpose of producing sin and setting it in the foreground, as an emetic produces sickness. God could not have decided upon the death of Christ had it been possible to fulfill the Law without it; henceforth, not only are all sins expiated, but sin itself is abolished; henceforth the Law is dead; henceforth “the flesh” in which it dwelt is dead — or at all events dying, gradually wasting away. To live for a short time longer amid this decay! — this is the Christian's fate, until the time when, having become one with Christ, he arises with Him, sharing with Christ the divine glory, and becoming, like Christ, a “Son of God.” Then Paul's exaltation was at its height, and with it the importunity of his soul — the thought of union with Christ made him lose all shame, all submission, all constraint, and his ungovernable ambition was shown to be reveling in the expectation of divine glories. Such was the first Christian, the inventor of Christianity! Before him there were only a few Jewish sectaries.

Good friendship, in Buddhism, means considerably more than associating with people that one finds amenable and who share one's interests. It means in effect seeking out wise companions to whom one can look for guidance and instruction. The task of the noble friend is not only to provide companionship in the treading of the way. The truly wise and compassionate friend is one who, with understanding and sympathy of heart, is ready to criticize and admonish, to point out one's faults, to exhort and encourage, perceiving that the final end of such friendship is growth in the Dhamma. The Buddha succinctly expresses the proper response of a disciple to such a good friend in a verse of the Dhammapada: 'If one finds a person who points out one's faults and who reproves one, one should follow such a wise and sagacious counselor as one would a guide to hidden treasure' If we associate closely with those who are addicted to the pursuit of sense pleasures, power, riches and fame, we should not imagine that we will remain immune from those addictions: in time our own minds will gradually incline to these same ends. If we associate closely with those who, while not given up to moral recklessness, live their lives comfortably adjusted to mundane routines, we too will remain stuck in the ruts of the commonplace. If we aspire for the highest — for the peaks of transcendent wisdom and liberation — then we must enter into association with those who represent the highest. Even if we are not so fortunate as to find companions who have already scaled the heights, we can well count ourselves blessed if we cross paths with a few spiritual friends who share our ideals and who make earnest efforts to nurture the noble qualities of the Dhamma in their hearts. When we raise the question how to recognize good friends, how to distinguish good advisors from bad advisors, the Buddha offers us crystal-clear advice. In the Shorter Discourse on a Full-Moon Night (MN 110) he explains the difference between the companionship of the bad person and the companionship of the good person. The bad person chooses as friends and companions those who are without faith, whose conduct is marked by an absence of shame and moral dread, who have no knowledge of spiritual teachings, who are lazy and unmindful, and who are devoid of wisdom. As a consequence of choosing such bad friends as his advisors, the bad person plans and acts for his own harm, for the harm of others, and the harm of both, and he meets with sorrow and misery. In contrast, the Buddha continues, the good person chooses as friends and companions those who have faith, who exhibit a sense of shame and moral dread, who are learned in the Dhamma, energetic in cultivation of the mind, mindful, and possessed of wisdom. Resorting to such good friends, looking to them as mentors and guides, the good person pursues these same qualities as his own ideals and absorbs them into his character. Thus, while drawing ever closer to deliverance himself, he becomes in turn a beacon light for others. Such a one is able to offer those who still wander in the dark an inspiring model to emulate, and a wise friend to turn to for guidance and advice.

Cinderella barely recognized her own voice. She sounded strong, firm- nothing like the girl she'd once been. "Stepmother. Anastasia. Drizella." They halted in their step, turning slowly to face her. Cinderella caught her breath, not at all surprised by Lady Tremaine's upturned nose and lifted chin. She used to fear that expression, used to fear displeasing her stepmother. She no longer had that fear. The crowds had gone silent, but even if they hadn't, Cinderella wouldn't have noticed the dozens of onlookers in the chamber. A strange sense of calm had flooded her; the words she was about to say were ones she'd never dared before, but she'd dreamed of them for years. No longer would they be fantasy. "I wish we could have been a family," she said, her voice strong yet quiet. "Ever since my father married you, it's what I wished for most. Instead, you neglected me, you made me serve you, and then you tried to sell me." She paused. "But I'm not angry with you." Now she had Lady Tremaine's attention. "I thought I would be," Cinderella admitted. "I was. But then I realized that it would only make me unhappy. And after being unhappy in your house for so long, I would never choose to feel that way again. I've accepted we aren't a family, and that we never will be. I've also accepted that I cannot forget those years that you were cruel to me." The height of Lady Tremaine's chin wilted ever so slightly. She wouldn't look at Cinderella, but her stepsisters lowered their eyes, shame tingeing their cheeks. "I forgive you, Stepmother, Anastasia, Drizella. I am not angry with you; if anything, I pity you. You can't know happiness if your life is built around resentment. For your sakes, I hope your hearts change.

And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like com-passes, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last - a heap of sawdust, so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned. saved only by its Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing, and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfiguration behind and within them. And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs of a slavery in our England.

I’d like to see some identification,” growled the inspector. I fully expected Barrons to toss O’Duffy from the shop on his ear. He had no legal compulsion to comply and Barrons doesn’t suffer fools lightly. In fact, he doesn’t suffer them at all, except me, and that’s only because he needs me to help him find the Sinsar Dubh. Not that I’m a fool. If I’ve been guilty of anything, it’s having the blithely sunny disposition of someone who enjoyed a happy childhood, loving parents, and long summers of lazy-paddling ceiling fans and small-town drama in the Deep South which-while it’s great—doesn’t do a thing to prepare you for live beyond that. Barrons gave the inspector a wolfish smile. “Certainly.” He removed a wallet from the inner pocket of his suit. He held it out but didn’t let go. “And yours, Inspector.” O’Duffy’s jaw tightened but he complied. As the men swapped identifications, I sidled closer to O’Duffy so I could peer into Barrons’ wallet. Would wonders never cease? Just like a real person, he had a driver’s license. Hair: black. Eyes: brown. Height: 6’3”. Weight: 245. His birthday—was he kidding?—Halloween. He was thirty-one years old and his middle initial was Z. I doubted he was an organ donor. “You’ve a box in Galway as your address, Mr. Barrons. Is that where you were born?” I’d once asked Barrons about his lineage, he’d told me Pict and Basque. Galway was in Ireland, a few hours west of Dublin. “No.” “Where?” “Scotland.” “You don’t sound Scottish.” “You don’t sound Irish. Yet here you are, policing Ireland. But then the English have been trying to cram their laws down their neighbors’ throats for centuries, haven’t they, Inspector?” O’Duffy had an eye tic. I hadn’t noticed it before. “How long have you been in Dublin?” “A few years. You?” “I’m the one asking the questions.” “Only because I’m standing here letting you.” “I can take you down to the station. Would you prefer that?” “Try.” The one word dared the Garda to try, by fair means or foul. The accompanying smile guaranteed failure. I wondered what he’d do if the inspector attempted it. My inscrutable host seems to possess a bottomless bag of tricks. O’Duffy held Barrons’ gaze longer than I expected him to. I wanted to tell him there was no shame in looking away. Barrons has something the rest of us don’t have. I don’t know what it is, but I feel it all the time, especially when we’re standing close. Beneath the expensive clothes, unplaceable accent, and cultural veneer, there’s something that never crawled all the way out of the swamp. It didn’t want to. It likes it there.

Fuck, she was even hotter when she was furious. I seriously wouldn't have minded her taking that anger out on my body all night long. I'd be more than happy to angry fuck her until her body bent and bowed and finally gave in to the power play between us. I'd force her beneath me physically as well as with my power and maybe she'd find she liked it there just fine. Or maybe she'd stab me to death and cut my cock off for good measure because the look she was aiming my way said that was a whole lot more likely than me getting to spend the night ruining her. But it was a damn nice fantasy to indulge in for a few moments. ... She gave me a look of utter contempt and it made my cock throb as her nearness just compounded the desire I was already feeling for her and made me get all kinds of insane ideas about what I'd like to do with this little princess if I got her to myself for long enough. She made no attempt to cover herself, no sign of shame in her frosty features as she stalked forward to claim her key, a sneer touching those edible lips of hers. Her jaw was tight with rage which she was doing nothing to hide and as she reached out to snatch the key from my hand, I couldn't help but ache to bring her closer, draw her nearer, see just how far she'd go in this denial of my power over her. Her fingers curled around the brass key, but I didn't release it, instead using my hold on it to tug her a step closer so that only a breath of space divided our bodies. I looked down at her from my imposing height, dominating her space with the bulk of my body and making sure she took in every last inch of height I had over her. “Of course, if you’d rather just come on up to my room, I can give you a real welcome to the House of Fire,” I suggested my gaze dropping down to her body, the noticeable bulge in my pants making it clear enough how much I meant that offer. I probably shouldn't have been making it at all, but the beast in me couldn't help myself. Dragons saw something they wanted and they took it. And I hadn't seen something I wanted as much as this girl in as long as I could remember. Our gazes collided and the heat there was almost strong enough to burn, the tension between us crackling so loudly I was surprised the whole room couldn't hear it. But then her gaze shuttered and her lips pursed, her eyes dropping down to take me in, my skin buzzing everywhere they landed as I could feel the want in her while she assessed me. But as those deep green eyes met mine again and I gave her a knowing smirk, I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I didn't know if she was going to bow to this heat between us or just stoke the flames, and the fact that I didn't know had my heart thumping in anticipation deep in my chest. She shifted an inch closer to me, tilting her mouth towards my ear and making my flesh spark with the need to take her, own her, destroy her in all the best ways. But just as my cock began to get overexcited at the prospect of all the ways I could make her scream for me given enough time, she spoke and it wasn't in the sultry purr I'd been expecting, her voice coming out loud enough for everyone to hear instead. “I wouldn’t come near you even if someone held a knife to my heart and told me that the world would end if I didn’t,” she snarled, snatching the key out of my hand as my surprise at her words made me forget to keep my grip tight enough to keep it. “So why don’t you take a long, hard look while you can. Because I can promise you, you won’t be seeing this again.”(Darius POV)

But as she rounded the last turn before the hall landing, she nearly collided with Sir Ian, carrying his mother’s shawl. “Oh!” Lina exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt a step above his. “Rather careless of you to leave this behind,” he said. He was too close. “Aye, it was,” she agreed, stepping back up a step to gain more space. His eyes danced. “Mayhap I should demand a penance before returning it.” “You dare,” she said, stiffening and wishing he were not so fiendishly beguiling with that boyish gleam of mischief in his eyes. He was definitely not just a mischievous boy anymore, though. And, for a lady to encourage such behavior . . . He looked up, as if to heaven, and murmured, “Just one wee ki—” “Shame on you, Sir Ian Colquhoun,” she interjected, thinking she sounded just like her mother. “Galbraith cannot know that you are on this stairway.” “Once again, you are wrong, lass,” he said, his eyes still alight. “He is still with Lizzie on the dais—giving her a well-deserved scolding, I trust. I saw that you had left the shawl and offered to find a maidservant to return it to you. But this is much better. I do think you should thank me prettily for taking so much trouble.” “I will thank you. After you have returned it to me.” Cocking his head, he held the shawl higher, so she’d have to reach for it. When she did, he moved it back out of her reach. Lina lowered her outstretched hand to her side and eyed him sternly from her slightly superior height. “I thought you sought my approval.” He stepped up to the stair below hers, putting the shawl out of reach again. His face was now inches higher than hers and his body again much too close for comfort. “I’d prefer something else just now,” he said softly, looking into her eyes. Reaching with his left hand for her right wrist, he held it firmly. Apparently oblivious of her attempt to snatch it free, he pressed the shawl into her hand and let go of her wrist, his gaze never leaving hers. She waited to see what he would do next. He smiled then, wryly, as if he dared her to walk away. His lips were tantalizingly close. Lina shut her eyes. “Coward,” Ian murmured, enjoying himself. Her eyes flew open. Then, to his astonishment, she learned forward, brushed her lips against his right cheek, and whirled, snatching up her skirts in her free hand as first her right foot and then her left blindly sought the next stair upward. Reaching out, he easily caught her arm. “Not so fast,” he said, turning her back to face him. “You must not kiss and run, lass. That’s against the rules.” “The lady makes the rules, sir. Let go of me.” She was two steps above his again, looking disdainfully down her nose at him. She did not try to pull away. She was testing him, he knew. But she was right about who made the rules. Even so, the urge was strong to seize her and teach her what kissing was all about. However, he also wanted to make her desire that kiss enough to abandon her disapproval. And that was the greater challenge. Sakes, if he were seeking a wife and had no royal duty commanding him . . . Shifting his grip to her hand, he drew it to his lips and slowly kissed each knuckle. Then he kissed the silky skin above them, turned her trembling hand palm up long enough to breathe gently into that tender palm . . . and released her. With a barely discernable gasp, she turned away, her dignity apparently still—or again—intact. He enjoyed watching her move, so he stood where he was to savor the sight. His reward came when she stopped before vanishing around the next curve and looked back. Her lips parted slowly, invitingly, in surprise. He bowed and had the delight of seeing her whirl again and hurry away. “I shall win this battle, I think,” he murmured to himself.

All these months, she’d thought verbalizing her guilty deeds would cause her misery to multiply. She assumed the shame would strangle her, leave her devastated like a discarded waif. But instead, a small bud peeked out its newborn head, finding root in her soul. Hope. She cautiously raised her eyes, and Tilly pulled Rosalie into her time-aged arms. It was hard to believe they’d just met. It was hard to believe she’d confessed all, and still this woman snuggled her close. The tears came, but with each cry she released, it seemed the wind picked the heartbreak up and carried it away like an old crusty leaf. Then, when her past lay before her, naked and stark, with no more accusations and regrets, an irresistible urge to pray captured Rosalie. Vic, Birdie, her family all had spoken the truth of how Jesus took her punishment when He suffered and died on the cross. She’d heard more than one sermon that had proclaimed we simply had to confess our sins, and God would be faithful to forgive them. More than that, He’d also take the punishment too. She didn’t understand a love like that, but it was worth trying out. Take my punishment, Jesus. Rosalie knew she deserved to be condemned for her sins; she’d always known that. But she thought she could somehow serve the sentence herself by doing good things, working hard, acting perfect. For the first time, she understood that her sin was too heavy for her to carry, too weighty for her to pay off. She needed someone else to carry it for her. Her mom had sung of Christ’s “vast, unmeasured, boundless, free” love, but Rosalie had never thought it was for her. She had too much sin, too much darkness, too much pride. But now she knew His forgiveness belonged to her. And she belonged to Jesus. “Jesus, thank You for accepting me when I don’t deserve it,” she whispered. “From this day forward I want to live for You.” She closed her eyes, soaking in the sun, which had returned to warm her. And as she enjoyed the warmth of Tilly’s hug, Rosalie pictured Jesus holding her in the same way.

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible.

Gagarin’s death was shameful not just because of the loss of a national hero in muddled circumstances, but because of the dangerous flaws revealed in the Soviet military technology of his time. Obviously their radar systems were not capable of simultaneous mapping of aircraft heights and positions, nor of positively identifying one target from another. The implications of this were highly alarming.

Trump has taken mafia government to heights unrivaled in this country’s history. His swiftness to trade U.S. policy concessions for personal advancement will be the most shameful legacy of his presidency.

Man has within him the divine power by which he can rise to the highest heights of spiritual achievement; by which he can shake off sin and shame and sorrow, and do the will of the Father, the Supreme Good; by which he can conquer all the powers of darkness within, and stand radiant and free; by which he can subdue the world, and scale the lofty pinnacles of Truth.

When converted into productive thought and action, the energy it takes to blame, shame, and game is enough to launch anyone into heights of real success and happiness.

…the imagination gives to everything that it touches a peculiarity, and it seems to me that the peculiarity of the imagination is nobility, of which there are many degrees. This inherent nobility is the natural source of another, which our extremely headstrong generation regards as false and decadent. I mean that nobility which is our spiritual height and depth; and while I know how difficult it is to express it, nevertheless I am bound to give a sense of it. Nothing could be more evasive and inaccessible. Nothing distorts itself and seeks disguise more quickly. There is a shame of disclosing it and in its definite presentations a horror of it. But there it is.

To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take another of Kumazawa: “When others blame thee, blame them not; when others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit”: “The Way is the way of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou comest not short of thine own mark.

That hunting by fire was still practiced by the natives on a large scale, and it had been his lot to stumble on six baby elephants, victims of a fire from which only fully grown animals had managed to escape thanks to their size and speed? That whole herds of elephants sometimes escaped from the blazing savanna with bums up to their bellies, and that they suffered for weeks? Many a night he had lain awake in the bush listening to their cries of agony. That the contraband traffic in ivory was still practiced on a large scale by Arab and Asiatic merchants, who drove the tribes to poaching? Thirty thousand elephants a year— was it possible to think for a moment of what that meant, without shame? Did she know that a man like Haas, who was the favorite supplier of the big zc^s, saw half the young elephants he captured die under his eyes? The natives, at least, had an excuse: they needed proteins. For them, elephants were only meat. To stop them, they only had to raise the standard of living in Africa: this was the first step in any serious campaign for the protection of nature. But the whites? The so-called “civilized” people? They had no excuse. They hunted for what they called “trophies,” for the excitement of it, for pleasure, in fact. The flame that attracted him so irresistibly burned him in the end. He was the first to recognize the enemy and to cry tally-ho, and he had gone on the attack with all the passion of a man who feels himself challenged by everything that makes too-noble demands upon human nature, as if humanity began somewhere around. thirty thousand feet above the surface of the earth, thirty thousand feet above Orsini. He was determined to defend his own height, his own scale, his own smallness. "Listen to me,” he said. "All right, you're a priest A missionary. As such, you've always had your nose right in it I mean, you have all the sores, all the ugliness before your eyes all day long. All right. All sorts of open wounds— naked human wretchedness. And then, when you’ve well and truly wiped the bottom of mankind, don’t you long to climb a hill and take a good look at something different, and big, and strong, and free?”“When I feel like taking a good look at something different and big and strong and free,” roared Father Fargue, giving the table a tremendous bang with his fist, “it isn't elephants I turn to, it's God I” The man smiled. He licked his cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. “Well, it isn't a pact with the Devil I'm asking you to sign. It's only a petition to stop people from killing elephants. Thirty thousand of them are killed each year. Thirty thousand, and that's a .small e.stimate. You can’t deny it . . . And remember—'* there was a spark of gaiety in his eyes— “and remember. Father, remember: they haven’t sinned.” He was stabbing me in the back, aiming straight at my faith. Original sin, and the whole thing— you know all that better than I do. You know me. I’m a man of action: give me a good case of galloping syphilis and I'm all right. But theory . . . this is between ourselves. Faith, God— I've got all that in my heart, in my guts, but not in my brain. I’m not one of the brainy ones. So I tried offering him a drink, but he refused.” The Jesuit’s face lit up for a moment, and its wrinkles seemed to disappear in the youthfulness of a smile. Fargue suddenly remembered that he was rather frowned upon in his Order; he had several times been forbidden to publish his scientific papers; it was even whispered that his stay in Africa was not entirely voluntary He had heard tell that Father Tassin, in his writings, represented salvation as a mere biological mutation, and humanity, in the form in which we still know it, as an archaic species doomed to join other vanished species in the obscurity of a prehistoric past. His face clouded over: that smacked of heresy.

And now, at the very height of corruption, when not a drop of conscience or shame remains in people, when insult and malice suffocate everyone, when lies have become so widespread it’s difficult not to lose your bearings, you’ve found the ‘boldness’ in yourself to present the bill to the disgraced Master.

Tell me, Pierce, why do you think she left?" "Why do---" He turned on her, his face a strange battle of anger and grief. "I don't know." "I think you do." She stood, her height no match for his, but she pretended that she did. "You hit her, Pierce." He was shamed into silence. "And more than that. My sister is intelligent, and compassionate, and talented. And you--- you squandered those things about her. You told her, in action if not words, that she was less than the Perrysburg Graftons until she learned to be like them. You fool--- she was more. She is the best person I have ever known, and I hope she stays far away from you." Alaine caught her breath, her heart racing. Pierce only stared at her, anger boiling behind his eyes. "I only ever wanted to help her." "Help her!" Alaine bit back laughter that was too close to hysterical. "Help her do what, Pierce? The only thing you wanted was for her to help you. To be a perfect Perrysburg Grafton, arranging your parties and making you look good. Well, she's worth more than that.

Yet Götterdämmerung is no apocalypse: it envisions a transfer of power, from gods to people. It is also the redress of a wrong, restoring the Ring from the illusory heights to the truthful depths. Wotan, very unlike Hitler, has repented of his megalomania: "I longed in my heart for power ... I acted unfairly… I did not return the ring to the Rhine... The curse that I fed will not flee from me now." The conductor Christoph von Dohnányi, whose father, Hans, was part of the anti-Nazi resistance, once told me: "When I really think about Wagner, I don't discover anything that had to lead to Hitler. And what happens here"—we were looking at the score of Walkure, at Wotan's cries of shame—"is not something that any fascist could have written. Because it is not simplifying. It is a 'giving up' thing. Wagner abused power but hated the state." "Götterdämmerung" is the wrong word for the scenes that unfolded in Berlin during the war's last days: the double suicide of Hitler and Eva Braun, the suicides of Josef and Magda Goebbels, the murder of the Goebbels children, the killing of Hitler's dogs.

The explosion came with the birth of the skyscraper. When structures began to rise not in tier on ponderous tier of masonry, but as arrows of steel shooting upward without weight or limit, Henry Cameron was among the first to understand this new miracle and to give it form. He was among the first and the few who accepted the truth that a tall building must look tall. While architects cursed, wondering how to make a twenty-story building look like an old brick mansion, while they used every horizontal device available in order to cheat it of its height, shrink it down to tradition, hide the shame of its steel, make it small, safe and ancient—Henry Cameron designed skyscrapers in straight, vertical lines, flaunting their steel and height. While architects drew friezes and pediments, Henry Cameron decided that the skyscraper must not copy the Greeks. Henry Cameron decided that no building must copy any other.

For girls, shame lay in wait at every turn. The verdict of too loomed large over their clothing and makeup: too short, long, low-cut, tight, flashy, etc. The height of their heels, whom they saw, what time they went out and came in, the crotch of their underwear, month after month, were subject to all-pervasive surveillance by society. For those obliged to leave the family fold, society provided the Young Ladies' Residence, separate from the boys' dorm, to protect them from men and vice. Nothing, not intelligence, education, or beauty mattered as much as a girl's sexual reputa-tion, that is, her value on the marriage market, which mothers scrupulously monitored as their mothers had done before them. "If you have sex before marriage, no one will want you," they said, the subtext of which was no one except a market reject of the male variety, an invalid, a madman, or worse, a divorcé. The unwed mother lost her entire worth and had nothing to hope for, except perhaps a man who would sacrifice himself and take her in, along with the fruit of her sin.

Here we are interested in the dynamics of a true loving relationship between sexual partners. They are by definition “equal,” for their surrender must be mutual. Of course, such mutual surrender presupposes great individual maturity. Starry-eyed teenagers who have “fallen” in love are incapable of this act, although to outsiders and to themselves, they may seem to be completely absorbed in one another; in fact, their “love” is a subconscious projection of themselves onto the partner. Strictly speaking, they love themselves in the other. Hence, when reality hits, they “fall out of” love again. That not only teenagers but also so-called adults succumb to this “falling in and out of” love is a commentary on their level of maturity. I am making so much of this because in spiritual surrender, the element of mature love is present as well. When the lover surrenders “body and soul” to the beloved, really what she or he yields up is the usual self-identification with the body and with bodily and emotional and even mental processes. There is a melting away of conventional propriety, shame, and guilt. Indeed, lovers delight in pouring their hearts out to one another, in confiding long-kept secrets or long-cherished hopes, and in “daring” each other to demonstrate their love by overcoming inhibitions and taboos. They are self-forgetful—or so it seems. At least they are on the way to being self-forgetful. That they never quite succeed is as obvious as it is subtle. Their surrender is necessarily incomplete, because their love is imperfect. This lies in the nature of ordinary human love, however extraordinary it may be by conventional standards. Perfect love is possible only with regard to a perfect “object” or, to be more precise, when love is without a specific object but includes all possible objects, the whole universe. This, again, means that perfect love is possible only when there is no ego to create the usual barrier—however tenuous—between an experiencing subject and an experienced object. A genuine loving relationship, especially at the height of its sexual expression, approximates this condition of subject-object transcendence. But it only approximates it. For this condition of near-genuine love to turn into genuine love, the lovers’ images of each other (and of themselves) would have to be sacrificed. In other words, it is only when they come to love the whole person that they love perfectly. Here “whole person” refers to the human being in his or her entirety, comprising both the visible aspects and the invisible dimension; as a manifestation of the Whole (or God) and as that unmanifest Whole itself.

To my shame, the name he gave was not one that conjured any feeling in me: not fear, nor revulsion, nor horror at a man who carried ill-luck with him wherever he went. On that bright summer day at the height of the world, I heard Aquila say ‘Lucius Caesennius Paetus’, and I shrugged and said, ‘He who was consul in Rome last year?

THE HE’S ARE SHE’S In 1847, three novels excite England’s readers. Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell tells a devastating tale of passion and shame. Agnes Grey by Acton Bell strips bare the hypocrisy of the family. Jane Eyre by Currer Bell exalts the courage of an independent woman. No one knows that the authors are female. The brothers Bell are actually the sisters Brontë. These fragile girls, virgins all, Emily, Anne, Charlotte, avenge their solitude by writing poems and novels in a village lost on the Yorkshire moors. Intruders into the male world of literature, they don men’s masks so the critics will forgive them for having dared. But the critics pan their works anyway, as “rude,” “crude,” “nasty,” “savage,” “brutal,” “libertine” . . .

You took advantage." She sounded as if she loathed him. Even on the first night, she'd never spoken to him with such rancor. "Sidonie, please..." All gifts of eloquence had abandoned him. Rolling out of the bed, hoping some physical distance would soothe her, he reached for her. She flinched away as though avoiding a blow. "I'm so stupid," she said in a broken voice, then set a great crack in his heart when she wiped her eyes with shaking hands. Sod it to hell and back. She was crying. He felt like the lowest worm ever to crawl upon this foul earth. "You're not," he said, even as his belly cramped with sick shame and misery. In an attempt to ease her grief, he dared to touch her arm. That was a mistake, too. She recoiled and scrambled from the bed. Panting as if she'd run a mile, she stood in the center of the room. She looked young and afraid and heartbreakingly vulnerable. Not at all like the siren who had measured the heights of pleasure only seconds before. The mirrors reflected a woman with eyes huge and dark as bruises. A woman who stood proudly even as her mouth twisted in humiliation.

Ain’t no shame in my game,

Eryx didn’t turn to watch her go. His gaze was on Esmond, dark with reproach. “This is unacceptable. Apologize to our guests at once.” “Why?” asked Esmond. “I haven’t said a thing that isn’t true. And it would be a shame to stop before the exciting bit.” He straightened up to his full height. “There’s a kidnapper, an extortioner, and at least two murderers in this room, and I’m not leaving until everyone knows who they are.

He stopped, for saying the truth aloud was unendurable. It was not shame that stopped him, but fear, the same fear. He knew now why this tranquil life in sea and sunlight on the rafts seemed to him like an afterlife or a dream, unreal. It was because he knew in his heart that reality was empty: without life or warmth or color or sound: without meaning. There were no heights or depths. All this lovely play of form and light and color on the sea and in the eyes of men, was no more than that: a playing of illusions on the shallow void.

The austerity of height shamed back the vulgar baggage of our cares. In the place of consequence it set freedom, power to be alone, to slip the escort of our manufactured selves; a rest and forgetfulness of the chains of being.