Lowering Dignity Quotes

Your dignity can be mocked, abused, compromised, toyed with, lowered and even badmouthed, but it can never be taken from you. You have the power today to reset your boundaries, restore your image, start fresh with renewed values and rebuild what has happened to you in the past.

If it were true love, he would never make you sacrifice your dignity to be with him. He would respect you and treat you as if you were sacred to his heart. If he loved you as dearly as he professes to love Christ, then he would never let anyone that loved him suffer or lower their self worth to be with him. True love is compassion, respect and honorable acts that prove love.

The Knowing Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise- comaed and woken, we lie a long time looking at each other. I do not know what he sees, but I see eyes of surpassing tenderness and calm, a calm like the dignity of matter. I love the open ocean blue-grey-green of his iris, I love the curve of it against the white, that curve the sight of what has caused me to come, when he’s quite still, deep inside me. I have never seen a curve like that, except the earth from outer space. I don’t know where he got his kindness without self-regard, almost without self, and yet he chose one woman, instead of the others. By knowing him, I get to know the purity of the animal which mates for life. Sometimes he is slightly smiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing, his entire face lit. I love to see it change if I cry–there is no worry, no pity, no graver radiance. If we are on our backs, side by side, with our faces turned fully to face each other, I can hear a tear from my lower eye hit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth, and then the upper eye’s tears braid and sluice down through the lower eyebrow like the invention of farmimg, irrigation, a non-nomadic people. I am so lucky that I can know him. This is the only way to know him. I am the only one who knows him. When I wake again, he is still looking at me, as if he is eternal. For an hour we wake and doze, and slowly I know that though we are sated, though we are hardly touching, this is the coming the other coming brought us to the edge of–we are entering, deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze, this place beyond the other places, beyond the body itself, we are making love.

We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature [...]. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.

The world must be romanticized. In this way its original meaning will be rediscovered. Romanticization is nothing but a qualitative realization of potential. The lower self is identified, in this operation, with a better self. As we are ourselves are such a qualitative series of empowerings. This operation is as yet quite unknown. Insofar as I give a higher meaning to what is commonplace, and a mysterious appearance to what is ordinary, the dignity of the unknown to what is known, a semblance of infinity to what is finite, I romanticize it.

Nnaife did not realise that Dr Meers's laughter was inspired by that type of wickedness that reduces any man, white or black, intelligent or not, to a new low; lower than the basest of animals, for animals at least respected each other's feelings, each other's dignity.

What I learned best at Miss White's school was that I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.

When female stories are muted, we are teaching our kids that their dignity is second class and the historical accounts of their lives [are] less relevant. This lowered value carries over when women face sexual objectification and systemic brutalization from inside and outside the community.

Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we must take earnest care about this, so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beasts.... Above all, we should not make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be to our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it. Let us disdain earthly things, and despise the things of heaven, and, judging little of what is in the world, fly to the court beyond the world and next to God. In that court, as the mystic writings tell us, are the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones in the foremost places; let us not even yield place to them, the highest of the angelic orders, and not be content with a lower place, imitate them in all their glory and dignity. If we choose to, we will not be second to them in anything.

All women have the same value. Every woman could have been born to different circumstances, in a different country, to different parents, to a different government... prostitutes are not "special kinds" of women, nor are they "lower kinds of women." All women are women and we are born into different circumstances in life, we go through different things in life, and we turn out differently. The prostitute that a man so easily dismisses as someone to be "used and forgotten" is a woman who's circumstances have put her there, no matter what those circumstances are. Any baby girl could have been born into those very same circumstances. Everything is all a matter of chance. So do I find it fundamentally immoral for men to classify women into "worthy" and "unworthy"? Yes, I do. But what I find to be worse than that, is the fact that we are all of the same value and yet we are all born unequally. But no man should ever take advantage of that. Prostitution shouldn't ever have to be an option, it shouldn't even exist.

She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes. She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white-trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of black niggers in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away. She lowered her hands and gripped the rail of the hog pen, her eyes small but fixed unblinkingly on what lay ahead. In a moment the vision faded but she remained where she was, immobile.

It is mere ignorance that leads then to the supposition that connection of art and esthetic perception with experience signifies a lowering of their significance and dignity.

All companies are built as hierarchies, no matter what that holacracy adepts are saying now. It's always a boss on the top and then people who report to him down to the lowest level. Staying on the lowest level is what I always try to avoid. Not only because I have some dignity, but mostly because I am lazy. The lower you are in the hierarchy, the more work you have to do and the less money you get for it. This is how the division of labor works, not only in the software industry.

Yes," Tanner nodded. "I have great appreciation for neoclassical architecture. The ten pillars in the portico give the building a remarkable feeling of dignity and charm." Bethany lowered her eyes and stifled a giggle. When Tanner put on an act, he put it on well.

in the great Sperm Whale, this high and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely amplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one distinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face; he has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a forehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats, and ships, and men. Nor,

Thus we arrive at the problem of the relation of religion to the negation of sexual desire. Sexual debility results in a lowering of self-confidence. In one case it is compensated by the brutalization of sexuality, to maintain sexual repression, in the other by rigid character traits. The compulsion to control one's sexuality, to maintain sexual repression, leads to the development of pathologic, emotionally tinged notions of honor and duty, bravery and self-control. But the pathology and emotionality of these psychic attitudes are strongly at variance with the reality of one's personal behavior. The man who attains genital satisfaction, is honorable, responsible, brave, and controlled, without making much of a fuss about it. These attitudes are an organic part of his personality. The man whose genitals are weakened, whose sexual structure is full of contradictions, must continually remind himself to control his sexuality, to preserve his sexual dignity, to be brave in the face of temptation, etc. The struggle to resist the temptation to masturbate is a struggle that is experienced by every adolescent and every child, without exception. All the elements of the reactionary man's structure are developed in this struggle. It is in the lower middle classes that this structure is reinforced most strongly and embedded most deeply. Every form of mysticism derives it's most active energy and, in part, also it's content from this compulsory suppression of sexuality.

Without self-discipline a man drifts lower and lower, approximating more and more nearly to the beast, until at last he grovels, a lost creature, in the mire of his own befoulment. By self-discipline a man rises higher and higher, approximating more and more nearly to the divine, until at last he stands erect in his divine dignity, a saved soul, glorified by the radiance of his purity. Let a man discipline himself, and he will live; let a man cease to discipline himself, and he will perish.

These acts of ritualized destruction are known by anthropologists as “degradation ceremonies.” Their purpose is to allow the public to single out and denounce one of its members. To lower their status or expel them from the group. To collectively take out our anger at them by stripping them of their dignity. It is a we-versus-you scenario with deep biological roots. By the end of it the disgraced person’s status is cemented as “not one of us.” Everything about them is torn down and rewritten.

Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. "If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to want to understand and help those things. "Poor souls!

The King looked keenly at him from under his frosty brows. “Hers are ill deeds; and an unloving mother violates the Ancient Harmonies. Yet you have made her a mother against her will. And that is a thing that has seldom happened in the world before, but will happen often again in the ages that begin. You have done it for love’s sake, in pure longing for a child. But many of those men who are to come will do it for pride’s sake and lust’s; and this breeding of her like a beast will lower the rank and degrade the ancient dignity of woman. Nor will the world go well while that fades, my nephew.

Bereft of all social dignity, of all social charts contrived for man's guidance, of the fellowship that by right divine should belong to each breathing, living creature; abhorred, spat upon, from their earliest days the prey to ceaseless persecution, they were now even lower than their enemies knew, and more hopeless than the veriest dregs of creation. For since all that to many of them had seemed fine, a fine, selfless and at times even noble emotion, had been covered with shame, called unholy and vile, so gradually they themselves had sunk down to the level upon which the world placed their emotions.

What’s the point?” “Who can know?” answered Merrin. “Who can really hope to know? And yet I think the demon’s target is not the possessed; it is us … the observers … every person in this house. And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love: of accepting the possibility that God could ever love us.” Merrin paused, then continued more slowly and with an air of introspection: “Again, who really knows. But it is clear—at least to me—that the demon knows where to strike. Oh, yes, he knows. Long ago I despaired of ever loving my neighbor. Certain people … repelled me. And so how could I love them? I thought. It tormented me, Damien; it led me to despair of myself and from that, very soon, to despair of my God. My faith was shattered.” Surprised, Karras turned and looked at Merrin with interest. “And what happened?” he asked. “Ah, well … at last I realized that God would never ask of me that which I know to be psychologically impossible; that the love which He asked was in my will and not meant to be felt as emotion. No. Not at all. He was asking that I act with love; that I do unto others; and that I should do it unto those who repelled me, I believe, was a greater act of love than any other.” Merrin lowered his head and spoke even more softly. “I know that all of this must seem very obvious to you, Damien. I know. But at the time I could not see it. Strange blindness. How many husbands and wives,” Merrin uttered sadly, “must believe they have fallen out of love because their hearts no longer race at the sight of their beloveds. Ah, dear God!” He shook his head. And then he nodded. “There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves.

The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.

The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.

Conflict can explode when social pain becomes unbearable. When it becomes something worse than exclusion, when it becomes humiliation. Humiliation is “the nuclear bomb of the emotions,” the psychologist and physician Evelin Lindner wrote. That’s why it’s the third fire starter, following group identity and conflict entrepreneurs. Humiliation poses an existential threat that jeopardizes the deepest part of ourselves, our sense that we matter, that we are worth something. It is “the enforced lowering of a person or group,” Lindner writes, “a process of subjugation that damages or strips away their pride, honor and dignity.

It is an office for which Mr. Taft has conspicuous qualifications. But best of all, his nomination means the end of Roosevelt and Rooseveltism. It means the end of personal government, of autocratic régime, of militarism, of jingoism, of roughriderism, of administration by shouting and clamor, tumult and denunciation. It means the end of the Roosevelt reign of terror and the restoration of the Presidency to its historical dignity under the Constitution. Even Andrew Johnson, in his periods of sobriety, had more innate respect for the office itself, for its traditions and for appearances than Mr. Roosevelt has shown. Never before was there such a lawless President. Never before was the Presidency so deliberately lowered to gratify a love for studied and sensational theatricalism.

There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity and repose and tempts the troubled spirit and the tortured mind to seek shelter in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a spiritual quality. But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind of art for art's sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us.

You’re just going to throw the h-house wenches out into the streets?” she asked with forced calm. “They’ll be dismissed with generous parting sums as a reward for their labors on the club’s behalf.” “Do you intend to hire new ones?” Sebastian shook his head. “While I have no moral aversion to the concept of prostitution— in fact, I’m all for it— I’m damned if I’ll become known as a pimp.” “A what?” “A pimp. A cock bawd. A male procurer. For God’s sake, did you have cotton wool stuffed in your ears as a child? Did you never hear anything, or wonder why badly dressed women were parading up and down the club staircase at all hours?” “I always visited in the daytime,” Evie said with great dignity. “I rarely saw them working. And later, when I was old enough to understand what they were doing, my father began to curtail my visits.” “That was probably one of the few kind things he ever did for you.” Sebastian waved away the subject impatiently. “Back to the subject at hand… not only do I not want the responsibility of maintaining mediocre whores, but we don’t have the room to accommodate them. On any given night, when all the beds are occupied, the club members are forced to take their pleasures out in the stables.” “They are? They do?” “And it’s damned scratchy and drafty in that stable. Take my word for it.” “You—” “However, there is an excellent brothel two streets over. I have every expectation that we can come to an arrangement with its proprietress, Madame Bradshaw. When one of our club members desires female companionship, he can walk to Bradshaw’s, receive their services at a discounted price, and return here when he’s refreshed.” He raised his brows significantly, as if he expected her to praise the idea. “What do you think?” “I think you would still be a cock bawd,” Evie said. “Only by stealth.” “Morality is only for the middle classes, sweet. The lower class can’t afford it, and the upper classes have entirely too much leisure time to fill.

My confusion about the separation between the servant class and the upper middle class revealed a quintessentially American point of view. Status is much more fluid in America, at least within the wide range of the population that can loosely be characterized as middle-class. I wait tables at a restaurant, and after my shift is over, I go out to a lounge and someone waits on me. Even if I get a graduate degree and earn a six-figure salary, I don’t treat waiters like a permanently lower class. After all, I was one and know what it feels like. And who knows when someone serving me in this restaurant will get their own graduate degree and be my boss. Better to be friendly. My “American-ness” was starting to stare me in the face in India: not the America of big-screen televisions and Hummers, but the America that, despite its constant failings, managed to inculcate in its citizens a set of humanizing values—the dignity of labor, the fundamental equality of human beings, mobility based on drive and talent, the opportunity to create and contribute.

Oh, why is man not immortal? he thinks. Why brain centers and convolutions, why sight, speech, self-awareness, genius, if it is all doomed to sink into the ground and in the final end to cool down along with the earth’s crust and then whirl without sense or purpose, for millions of years, with the earth around the sun? For that cooling down and whirling around there was no need at all to bring man out of non-being, along to other his lofty, almost divine reason, and then, as if in mockery, turn him into clay. The life cycle! But what cowardice to comfort oneself with this surrogate of immortality! The unconscious processes that occur in nature are even lower than human stupidity, for in stupidity there is still consciousness and will, while in these processes there is nothing. Only a coward whose fear of death is greater than his dignity can comfort himself with the thought that in time his body will live in grass, a stone, a toad... To see one's own immortality in the life cycle is as strange as to prophesy a brilliant future to the case after the costly violin has been broken and made useless.

So God created man in his own image; ...male and female created he them.” here is clearly set forth the origin of the human race; and the divine record is so plainly stated that there is no occasion for erroneous [45] conclusions. God created man in his own image. Here is no mystery. There is no ground for the supposition that man was evolved by slow degrees of development from the lower forms of animal or vegetable life. Such teaching lowers the great work of the Creator to the level of man’s narrow, earthly conceptions. Men are so intent upon excluding God from the sovereignty of the universe that they degrade man and defraud him of the dignity of his origin. He who set the starry worlds on high and tinted with delicate skill the flowers of the field, who filled the earth and the heavens with the wonders of his power, when he came to crown his glorious work, to place one in the midst to stand as ruler of the fair earth, did not fail to create a being worthy of the hand that gave him life. The genealogy of our race, as given by inspiration, traces back its origin, not to a line of developing germs, mollusks, and quadrupeds, but to the great Creator. Though formed from the dust, Adam was “the son of God.” he was placed, as God’s representative,

You can have no idea what it feels like to live in an ordinary woman’s skin. From the moment a girl is born she is tutored by her mother on what she may and may not do. The list of what she is allowed to do keeps on shrinking as she grows older—cover your head, lower your neck, conceal your breasts, hide your ankles, don’t go to the river alone, don’t step out in the evening, don’t laugh loudly, don’t ask questions, don’t expect answers … Then she marries and it only gets worse. A mother-in-law takes over to enforce the rules. Wake up first, sleep last. Cook feasts, eat leftovers. Feed sons, starve daughters. And when finally she grows older and the baton passes on to her, she starts battering the next generation with it, having seen nothing else in her life!’ ‘So are you saying women oppress women?’ I was surprised that her tirade was directed at mothers and mothers-in-law rather than at men. ‘Yes, precisely. Why blame the men alone? Why will they try to change an existing order in which they get a bonded slave to cook their food, wash their clothes, clean their homes, warm their beds, look after their aging parents and bear them children? But what reason do women have? Why do they fall all over themselves to tyrannise other women? Women can rescue each other. Women can refuse to starve, scare and suppress their daughters. They can be friends and comrades with their daughters-in-law. Women can look out for the safety of their house maids and farm labourers. Women can insist that other women be treated with respect and dignity. But for that they first need to stop feeling helpless and scared themselves. They need to stop needing a man to protect them. The price of that protection is just too high.

Aristotle very famously said in his Politics I.V.8 that some people are born to be slaves. He meant that some people are not as capable of higher rational thought and therefore should do the work that frees the more talented and brilliant to pursue a life of honor and culture. Modern people bristle with outrage at such a statement, but while we do not today hold with the idea of literal slavery, the attitudes behind Aristotle’s statement are alive and well. Christian philosopher Lee Hardy and many others have argued that this “Greek attitude toward work and its place in human life was largely preserved in both the thought and practice of the Christian church” through the centuries, and still holds a great deal of influence today in our culture.43 What has come down to us is a set of pervasive ideas. One is that work is a necessary evil. The only good work, in this view, is work that helps make us money so that we can support our families and pay others to do menial work. Second, we believe that lower-status or lower-paying work is an assault on our dignity. One result of this belief is that many people take jobs that they are not suited for at all, choosing to aim for careers that do not fit their gifts but promise higher wages and prestige. Western societies are increasingly divided between the highly remunerated “knowledge classes” and the more poorly remunerated “service sector,” and most of us accept and perpetuate the value judgments that attach to these categories. Another result is that many people will choose to be unemployed rather than do work that they feel is beneath them, and most service and manual labor falls into this category. Often people who have made it into the knowledge classes show great disdain for the concierges, handymen, dry cleaners, cooks, gardeners, and others who hold service jobs.

Only twice in literary history has there been a great period of tragedy, in the Athens of Pericles and in Elizabethan England. What these two periods had in common, two thousand years and more apart in time, that they expressed themselves in the same fashion, may give us some hint of the nature of tragedy, for far from being periods of darkness and defeat, each was a time when life was seen exalted, a time of thrilling and unfathomable possibilities. They held their heads high, those men who conquered at Marathon and Salamis, and those who fought Spain and saw the Great Armada sink. The world was a place of wonder; mankind was beauteous; life was lived on the crest of the wave. More than all, the poignant joy of heroism had stirred men’s hearts. Not stuff for tragedy, would you say? But on the crest of the wave one must feel either tragically or joyously; one cannot feel tamely. The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view. When humanity is seen as devoid of dignity and significance, trivial, mean, and sunk in dreary hopelessness, then the spirit of tragedy departs. “Sometime let gorgeous tragedy in sceptred pall come sweeping by.” At the opposite pole stands Gorki with The Lower Depths. Other poets may, the tragedian must, seek for the significance of life. An error strangely common is that this significance for tragic purposes depends, in some sort, upon outward circumstance, on pomp and feast and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry— Nothing of all that touches tragedy. The surface of life is comedy’s concern; tragedy is indifferent to it. We do not, to be sure, go to Main Street or to Zenith for tragedy, but the reason has nothing to do with their dull familiarity. There is no reason inherent in the house itself why Babbitt’s home in Zenith should not be the scene of a tragedy quite as well as the Castle of Elsinore. The only reason it is not is Babbitt himself. “That singular swing toward elevation” which Schopenhauer discerned in tragedy, does not take any of its impetus from outside things. The

As long as she lived Stephen never forgot her first impressions of the bar known as Alec's—that meeting-place of the most miserable of all those who comprised the miserable army. That merciless, drug-dealing, death-dealing haunt to which flocked the battered remnants of men whom their fellow-men had at last stamped under; who, despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation. There they sat, closely herded together at the tables, creatures shabby yet tawdry, timid yet defiant—and their eyes, Stephen never forgot their eyes, those haunted, tormented eyes of the invert. Of all ages, all degrees of despondency, all grades of mental and physical ill-being, they must yet laugh shrilly from time to time, must yet tap their feet to the rhythm of music, must yet dance together in response to the band—and that dance seemed the Dance of Death to Stephen. On more than one hand was a large, ornate ring, on more than one wrist a conspicuous bracelet; they wore jewellery that might only be worn by these men when they thus gathered together. At Alec's they could dare to give way to such tastes—what was left of themselves they became at Alec's. Bereft of all social dignity, of all social charts contrived for man's guidance, of the fellowship that by right divine should belong to each breathing, living creature; abhorred, spat upon, from their earliest days the prey to a ceaseless persecution, they were now even lower than their enemies knew, and more hopeless than the veriest dregs of creation. For since all that to many of them had seemed fine, a fine selfless and at times even noble emotion, had been covered with shame, called unholy and vile, so gradually they themselves had sunk down to the level upon which the world placed their emotions. And looking with abhorrence upon these men, drink-sodden, doped as were only too many, Stephen yet felt that some terrifying thing stalked abroad in that unhappy room at Alec's; terrifying because if there were a God His anger must rise at such vast injustice. More pitiful even than her lot was theirs, and because of them mighty should be the world's reckoning.

Now, who and what is this minstrel in reality? Where does he come from? In what respects does he differ from his predecessors? He has been described as a cross between the early medieval court-singer and the ancient mime of classical times. The mime had never ceased to flourish since the days of classical antiquity; when even the last traces of classical culture disappeared, the descendants of the old mimes still continued to travel about the Empire, entertaining the masses with their unpretentious, unsophisticated and unliterary art. The Germanic countries were flooded out with mimes in the early Middle Ages; but until the ninth century the poets and singers at the courts kept themselves strictly apart from them. Not until they lost their cultured audience, as a result of the Carolingian Renaissance and the clericalism of the following generation, and came up against the competition of the mimes in the lower classes, did they have, to a certain extent, to become mimes themselves in order to be able to compete with their rivals. Thus both singers and comedians now move in the same circles, intermingle and influence each other so much that they soon become indistinguishable from one another. The mime and the scop both become the minstrel. The most striking characteristic of the minstrel is his versatility. The place of the cultured, highly specialized heroic ballad poet is now taken by the Jack of all trades, who is no longer merely a poet and singer, but also a musician and dancer, dramatist and actor, clown and acrobat, juggler and bear-leader, in a word, the universal jester and maître de plaisir of the age. Specialization, distinction and solemn dignity are now finished with; the court poet has become everybody’s fool and his social degradation has such a revolutionary and shattering effect on himself that he never entirely recovers from the shock. From now on he is one of the déclassés, in the same class as tramps and prostitutes, runaway clerics and sent-down students, charlatans and beggars. He has been called the ‘journalist of the age’, but he really goes in for entertainment of every kind: the dancing song as well as the satirical song, the fairy story as well as the mime, the legend of saints as well as the heroic epic. In this context, however, the epic takes on quite new features: it acquires in places a more pointed character with a new straining after effect, which was absolutely foreign to the spirit of the old heroic ballad. The minstrel no longer strikes the gloomy, solemn, tragi-heroic note of the ‘Hildebrandslied’, for he wants to make even the epic sound entertaining; he tries to provide sensations, effective climaxes and lively epigrams. Compared with the monuments of the older heroic poetry, the ‘Chanson de Roland’ never fails to reveal this popular minstrel taste for the piquant.

The second aspect of the moral appeal of the inner-child movement is consolation. Life is full of setbacks. People we love reject us. We don't get the jobs we want. We get bad grades. Our children don't need us anymore. We drink too much. We have no money. We are mediocre. We lose. We get sick. When we fail, we look for consolation, one form of which is to see the setback as something other than failure-to interpret it in a way that does not hurt as much as failure hurts. Being a victim, blaming someone else, or even blaming the system is a powerful and increasingly widespread form of consolation. It softens many of life's blows. Such shifts of blame have a glorious past. Alcoholics Anonymous made the lives of millions of alcoholics more bearable by giving them the dignity of a “disease” to replace the ignominy of “failure,” “immorality,” or “evil.” Even more important was the civil rights movement. From the Civil War to the early 1950s, black people in America did badly-by every statistic. How did this get explained? “Stupid,” “lazy,” and “immoral” were the words shouted by demagogues or whispered by the white gentry. Nineteen fifty-four marks the year when these explanations began to lose their power. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that racial segregation in schools was illegal. People began to explain black failure as “inadequate education,” “discrimination,” and “unequal opportunity.” These new explanations are literally uplifting. In technical terms, the old explanations—stupidity and laziness—are personal, permanent, and pervasive. They lower self-esteem; they produce passivity, helplessness, and hopelessness. If you were black and you believed them, they were self-fulfilling. The new explanations—discrimination, bad schools, lean opportunities are impersonal, changeable, and less pervasive. They don't deflate self-esteem (in fact, they produce anger instead). They lead to action to change things. They give hope. The recovery movement enlarges on these precedents. Recovery gives you a whole series of new and more consoling explanations for setbacks. Personal troubles, you're told, do not result as feared from your own sloth, insensitivity, selfishness, dishonesty, self-indulgence, stupidity, or lust. No, they stem from the way you were mistreated as a child. You can blame your parents, your brother, your teachers, your minister, as well as your sex and race and age. These kinds of explanations make you feel better. They shift the blame to others, thereby raising self-esteem and feelings of self-worth. They lower guilt and shame. To experience this shift in perspective is like seeing shafts of sunlight slice through the clouds after endless cold, gray days. We have become victims, “survivors” of abuse, rather than “failures” and “losers.” This helps us get along better with others. We are now underdogs, trying to fight our way back from misfortune. In our gentle society, everyone roots for the underdog. No one dares speak ill of victims anymore. The usual wages of failure—contempt and pity—are transmuted into support and compassion. So the inner-child premises are deep in their appeal: They are democratic, they are consoling, they raise our self-esteem, and they gain us new friends. Small wonder so many people in pain espouse them.

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.

So Travis must have been one of her informants, except he didn’t know it.” Miranda picked up the probably scenario. “And when he found out, he felt betrayed for himself and the Confederate army.” “And he wouldn’t have had a choice, really.” Gage’s expression was troubled. “He knew he’d have to turn her in. He knew she’d have to be executed…” Nodding at Gage, Ashley lowered her voice. “So he gave Ellena the choice.” “Some choice.” Parker grinned. “Either I kill you, or you kill you.” Despite Parker’s twisted attempt at humor, a heavy silence settled over the group. At last Etienne cleared his throat. “So Travis, I guess he musta loved her, yeah? To give her a way out like that?” “I can’t even imagine.” Ashley fixed Etienne with a sorrowful gaze. “The fear she would have felt…the shame and humiliation--” “But he let her die with some dignity. You gotta give him that.” “And then he burned down the opera house,” Miranda whispered. “He burned down the Rose.” Ashley’s gaze misted over. “Both Roses. He destroyed both Roses.” For a long moment, they all seemed lost in their own thoughts. Then Parker spoke up. “Yeah.” Tilting his chair back, he winked at Gage and Etienne. “That’s the way to a girl’s heart, all right. Give her poison, then burn down her house.” Roo’s stare was openly curious. “Tell us the truth, Parker. Are you really just a changeling in human form?

There is this drawback, though: If you give to that sort of a stranger the uncritical respect that you give to friends and relatives, you will also want to understand and help him. There is no way to avoid this. Be warned: If you allow yourself to see dignity in someone, you have doomed yourself to wanting to understand and help whoever it is. If you see dignity in anything, in fact--it doesn't have to be human--you will still want to understand it and help it. Many people are now seeing dignity in the lower animals and the plant world and waterfalls and deserts--and even in the entire planet and its atmosphere. And now they are helpless not to want to understand and help those things. "Poor souls!

I really must make a point of asking my geriatrician next time if there’s anything that can be done about the leaky part or if I’ll just have to resign myself to wearing diapers. Not so long ago I used to think that was when one lost one’s last shred of dignity, but I realize that I have now lowered the bar a bit.

We bear the image of God. We occupy a unique place in God's created order--"a little lower than the angels" according to the psalmist (Ps. 8:5). We bear the divine imprint in the sense that we posses, among other things, an eternal soul, the faculty of reason, and a "capacity for moral goodness." We're not just animals with a more developed cerebral cortex. There's a precious dignity inherent in our status as God's image bearers.

To complicate matters, the difficult employee often has similar problems away from work as well. The good things in his life are like dominos that have started to topple: Confidence has toppled into performance, which topples into identity, which knocks over self-esteem. The loss of his job may knock over the few remaining dominos, but the one that employers must be careful not to topple is the dignity domino, because when that falls, violence is most likely. Consider JACA: Justification: The employee can feel justified in using violence when the employer has taken everything away. Alternatives: He may perceive fewer and fewer alternatives to violence, particularly if he has exhausted all appeals processes. Consequences: His evaluation of the consequences of violence changes as he sinks lower. If he feels angry enough, particularly if he feels humiliated, the consequences of violence may become favorable. Ability: Often, angry current or former employees over-estimate their ability to deliver violence. This is dangerous because they are more likely to try grandiose attacks intended to “kill everyone,” or to “blow up everything.” Though they rarely succeed at quite the level they envision, they still hurt plenty of people.

It's almost pathetic, that you're so thoroughly lacking in charm that Lisavet could never lower herself to love you. A low-ranking casttoff in the House of your birth—a bastard son, beloved by no one—and now the only way for you to realize your ambition is to pick at the leavings of another's inheritance like a vulture stripping meat from a bloated corpse. At least, that's what's rumored. Tell us, Ivor, is it true? Or would you prefer to forfeit in the interest of protecting what little remains of your dignity?

By the start of the twentieth century, attitudes about war and what it could accomplish were bound up with a singular, overarching idea. Let’s call it “The Myth of Progress.” Perhaps the most widely held view in the years leading up to the Great War was that Western civilization was marching inexorably forward, that humanity itself was maturing, evolving, advancing—that new vistas of political, cultural, and spiritual achievement were within reach. The Renaissance message of Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), in which the Creator extols mankind’s fearsome possibilities, fairly captures the mood: “We have made you a creature neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.

Actually,” Matthew said mildly, “the available figures indicate that as soon as soap is mass-produced at an affordable price, the market will increase approximately ten percent a year. People of all classes want to be clean, Mr. Mardling. The problem is that good quality soap has always been a luxury item and therefore difficult to obtain.” “Mass production,” Mardling mulled aloud, his lean face furrowed with thought. “There is something objectionable about the phrase…it seems to be a way of enabling the lower classes to imitate their betters.” Matthew glanced at the circle of men, noting that the top of Bowman’s head was turning red—never a good sign—and that Westcliff was holding his silence, his black eyes unreadable. “That’s exactly what it is, Mr. Mardling,” Matthew said gravely. “Mass production of items such as clothing and soap will give the poor a chance to live with the same standards of health and dignity as the rest of us.” “But how will one sort out who is who?” Mardling protested. Matthew shot him a questioning glance. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Llandrindon joined in the discussion. “I believe what Mardling is asking,” he said, “is how one will be able to tell the difference between a shopgirl and a well-to-do woman if they are both clean and similarly dressed. And if a gentleman is not able to tell what they are by their appearance, how is he to know how to treat them?” Stunned by the snobbery of the question, Matthew considered his reply carefully. “I’ve always thought all women should be treated with respect no matter what their station.” “Well said,” Westcliff said gruffly, as Llandrindon opened his mouth to argue. No one wished to contradict the earl, but Mardling pressed, “Westcliff, do you see nothing harmful in encouraging the poor to rise above their stations? In allowing them to pretend there is no difference between them and ourselves?” “The only harm I see,” Westcliff said quietly, “is in discouraging people who want to better themselves, out of fear that we will lose our perceived superiority.

We should never lower our dignity by lowering our language.

On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it—or its representative, the state—deems this desirable. Fascism, said one of its leading spokesmen, Alfredo Rocco, stresses the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, in behalf of society. . . . For Liberalism [i.e., individualism], the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.5

Christopher went still. After a long hesitation, she heard him ask in a far more normal voice, “What are you doing?” “I’m making it easier for you,” came her defiant reply. “Go on, start ravishing.” Another silence. Then, “Why are you facing downward?” “Because that’s how it’s done.” Beatrix twisted to look at him over her shoulder. A twinge of uncertainty caused her to ask. “Isn’t it?” His face was blank. “Has no one ever told you?” “No, but I’ve read about it.” Christopher rolled off her, relieving her of his weight. He wore an odd expression as he asked, “From what books?” “Veterinary manuals. And of course, I’ve observed the squirrels in springtime, and farm animals, and--” She was interrupted as Christopher cleared his throat loudly, and again. Darting a confused glance at him, she realized that he was trying to choke back amusement. Beatrix began to feel indignant. Her first time in a bed with a man, and he was laughing. “Look here,” she said in a businesslike manner, “I’ve read about the mating habits of over two dozen species, and with the exception of snails, whose genitalia is on their necks, they all--” She broke off and frowned. “Why are you laughing at me?” Christopher had collapsed, overcome with hilarity. As he lifted his head and saw her affronted expression, he struggled manfully with another outburst. “Beatrix. I’m…I’m not laughing at you.” “You are!” “No I’m not. It’s just…” He swiped a tear from the corner of his eye, and a few more chuckles escaped. “Squirrels…” “Well, it may be humorous to you, but it’s a very serious matter to the squirrels.” That set him off again. In a display of rank insensitivity to the reproductive rights of small mammals, Christopher had buried his face in a pillow, his shoulders shaking. “What is so amusing about fornicating squirrels?” Beatrix asked irritably. By this time he had gone into near apoplexy. “No more,” he gasped. “Please.” “I gather it’s not the same for people,” Beatrix said with great dignity, inwardly mortified. “They don’t go about it the same way that animals do?” Fighting to control himself, Christopher rolled to face her. His eyes were brilliant with unspent laughter. “Yes. No. That is, they do, but…” “But you don’t prefer it that way?” Considering how to answer her, Christopher reached out to smooth her disheveled hair, which was falling out of its pins. “I do. I’m quite enthusiastic about it, actually. But it’s not right for your first time.” “Why not?” Christopher looked at her, a slow smile curving his lips. His voice deepened as he asked, “Shall I show you?” Beatrix was transfixed. Taking her stillness as assent, he pressed her back and moved over her slowly. He touched her with care, arranging her limbs, spreading them to receive him. A gasp escaped her as she felt his hips settle on hers. He was aroused, a thick pressure fitting against her intimately. Bracing some of his weight on his arms, he looked down into her reddening face. “This way,” he said, with the slightest nudge, “…is usually more pleasing to the lady.” The gentle movement sent a jolt of pleasure through her. Beatrix couldn’t speak, her senses filled with him, her hips catching a helpless arch. She looked up at the powerful surface of his chest, covered with a tantalizing fleece of bronze-gold hair. Christopher lowered further, his mouth hovering just over hers. “Front to front…I could kiss you the entire time. And the shape of you would cushion me so sweetly…like this…” His lips took hers and coaxed them open, wringing heat and delight from her yielding flesh. Beatrix shivered, her arms lifting around his neck. She felt him all along her body, his warmth and weight anchoring her.

It is the lowered head that makes her seem less noble than, say, a horse, or a deer surprised in the woods. More exactly, it is her lowered head and neck. As she stands still, the top of her head is level with her back, or even a little lower, and so she seems to be hanging her head in discouragement, embarrassment, or shame. There is at least a suggestion of humility and dullness about her. But all these suggestions are false.

The teaching that the imago Dei is about exercising authority is disclosed elsewhere in Scripture. For example, in Psalm 8:4–6 we read: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet. The supreme dignity of human beings is that they, like God, exercise authority over creation. This teaching is applied in a more particular fashion when Scripture refers to certain individuals who are given authority over others as God’s “sons.

The Battle of the Shearing Shed Ronald was a tough old ram, the biggest of his breed Daniel was a clipperman, renowned of shearing deed Many sheep were sheared that day and woolless they had fled Before those two met in affray and battled in the shed! Ronald, he had seen old Wallace wrestled to the floor, Mugged of his dignity and fleece, and knew that it was war And seeing that his turn was nigh, his hooves he dug in deep He'd fight and though perhaps he'd die, at least he'd die a sheep. Daniel had no time to waste, he'd quotas set to keep And unprepared, he reached in haste to take the waiting sheep But Ronald steeled himself as Daniel took him by the horn And, rearing, pulled himself away before he could be shorn. Off-balance, Daniel stumbled, to Ronald's great delight Onto his knees he tumbled as the shears flew out of sight And Ronald now unhanded felt his victory increase Protecting his sheep dignity and, likewise, his sheep fleece. But Daniel was not beaten yet, he knew that he'd faced worse His mind was still determined set, he rose up with a curse But still he was unsteady and Ronald was a ram His head was lowered ready and he charged the clipperman Ronald's head met Daniel's side and toppled him again This time headfirst and to collide his head against the grain. Leaving, stunned, the clipperman upon the wooden floor In final victory, the ram strolled out the open door. But, alas, 'tis not the way that sheep triumph at last And Daniel would not see the day that any sheep got past Despite Ram Ronald's victor's pride, the shearer would not yield So followed a less dignified pursuit around the field. Ronald, he was fast and he had four legs matched to two So Daniel was outclassed, if that was all that he could do, But he also had a sheepdog and so Ronald was defeated He would have had the victory, if Daniel hadn't cheated.

I’m leaving the army,” he said. Lily felt hope leap within her breast. Maybe Caleb had changed his mind; maybe he wanted to be a farmer after all. She held her breath, waiting for him to go on. “I want to go back to Pennsylvania.” Lily’s hopes plummeted. She could only stare at Caleb in misery. “I see,” she said finally, with dignity. Caleb reached into the pocket of his uniform coat and brought out a small box. “I want you to go with me, Lily,” he told her, setting the box in front of her. She opened it, hands trembling, to find an exquisite diamond ring inside. The larger center stone glittered and winked at her from amid the surrounding smaller gems. Her finger fairly burned, waiting to wear that ring. “I can’t,” she said resolutely, snapping the box closed and shoving it back toward Caleb. He leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t care for me, Lily, because I know you do. Yesterday you gave yourself to me in a woodshed, remember?” Lily colored to recall the wanton way she’d behaved, and she lowered her eyes. “I do care,” she answered, “but I don’t want to leave my land, and I don’t want a husband.” “You’d marry me if I agreed to stay and farm that damnable land with you?” Again hope stirred in Lily’s heart. “Yes.” “You just said you didn’t want a husband.” Lily bit her lower lip. “If we were going to live in the same house, we’d have to be married, wouldn’t we?” Caleb pushed the ring box back across the table. “Has it ever occurred to you that I could promise to live on the farm, marry you, and then take you anywhere I damn well please, whether you want to go or not?” “You’re not making a very good case for marriage,” Lily answered, ignoring the ring box and taking a steadying sip of her coffee. The truth was, she had never once considered the possibility Caleb had suggested; she knew he was honest to a fault. “Damn it,” he whispered, “I should have done it. I should have told you I’d homestead with you and then married you!” “I would never have forgiven you, and you know it. It would have soured everything between us.” “Not everything,” Caleb argued, making Lily blush again. “Must every conversation we have come back to that?” Caleb took the ring from the box, and then he lifted Lily’s left hand and shoved the diamond unceremoniously onto her finger. “I think the fact that you would probably let me make love to you damn near anywhere has some bearing on what we’re talking about, yes!” Lily looked around furtively to see if anyone was listening. Fortunately, the restaurant was nearly empty, and the few other diners were sitting some distance away. “There is absolutely no need for you to be so arrogant,” she fretted, trying to pull the ring off. It was just a tiny bit too small and wouldn’t come over her knuckle. Caleb’s amber eyes were glittering with triumph when she looked up at him. “Perfect fit,” he said. Lily pushed back her chair. “I’ll get it off if I have to have my finger amputated,” she replied, preparing to leave. “Get out of that chair and there will be a scene you’ll remember until the day you die,” Caleb promised. Lily sat down again. “I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to go to Pennsylvania, so why can’t you just leave me alone?” “Because I love you,” Caleb answered, and he looked as surprised to find himself saying the words as Lily was to hear them. “I beg your pardon?” “You heard me, Lily.” “You said you loved me. Did you mean it?” Caleb drove one hand through his hair. “Yes.” Lily stared at him and stopped trying to get the ring off her finger. “You’re just saying that. It’s a trick of some kind.” Caleb laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Believe me, it’s no trick—it’s a fact I’m going to have to live with for the next fifty years.” In

What’s the matter, chile? The debil chasin’ after you?” Emma paused to take a deep breath and recover her dignity. “Yes,” she said. “Do you know where Chloe put Mr. Fair—Steven’s pistol?” “She done locked it up in her desk drawer with the derringer. Why? You gonna give it back to him?” Emma nodded, then proceeded toward the hallway. “I most certainly am.” “Why you wanna do that?” Daisy fussed, following her out of the kitchen and into Chloe’s study. Finding the key in its customary hiding place, Emma unlocked Chloe’s desk and lifted the formidable Colt .45 gingerly from its depths. “There’s always the hope that he’ll shoot himself,” she said cheerfully. Daisy shrank back against the doorway. “Miss Emma, you put that thing down right now, or I’s gonna take you over my knee and paddle you!” Emma raised the gun and sited in on a book shelf across the room. She wondered what it would be like to fire the weapon. In the next instant she found out, for the gun went off with no intentional help from Emma, and several of Chloe’s leatherbound books exploded into a single smoldering tangle of paper. Daisy screamed and so did Emma, who dropped the gun in horror only to have it fire again, this time splintering the leg of Big John’s favorite chair. “Don’t you dare touch that thing again!” Daisy shrieked, when Emma bent to retrieve it. Emma left the pistol lying on the rug and straightened up again, one hand pressed to her mouth in shock. The two women stood in their places for a long time, afraid to move. Emma, for her part, was busy imagining all the dreadful things that could have happened. She was amazed to see Steven stumble into the room, fully dressed except for his boots, drenched in sweat from the effort of making his way down the stairs in a hurry. The expression in his eyes was wild and alert, almost predatory. “What the hell’s going on in here?” he rasped. Emma pointed to the pistol as though it were a snake coiled to strike. “It went off—twice.” Steven was supporting himself by grasping the edge of Chloe’s desk. “Pick it up very carefully and hand it to me,” he said. Emma bit her lower lip, remembering what had happened when she’d handled the gun before. “You can do it,” Steven urged. “Just make sure you don’t touch the hammer or the trigger.” Emma crouched and picked it up cautiously. The barrel was hot against her palm. “Here,” Steven said, holding out his hand. Emma surrendered the gun, and leaning back against the desk, Steven spun the chamber expertly, dropping the four remaining bullets into his palm. He gave a ragged sigh, then just stood there, cradling the pistol in his hands like a kitten or a puppy. “I was going to bring it to you,” Emma confessed in a small voice. “She was hopin’ you’d blow your brains out with it,” Daisy muttered, before she turned and went back to the kitchen. Steven

It is also true that, whatever class of mankind we examine, we find many distinct troubles attached to it, exclusively of such kind of unhappiness as does not relate to any peculiar mode of life, or what may affect particular individuals; life itself beginning and ending in suffering, and, as it seems, generally continuing during its course also with a balance of suffering, caused the different difficulties, disappointments, and other evils to which it is subject, where he is continually exchanging some perfections in his body, for an infirmity; and losing the possession of his friends or of other things essential to his happiness; with the constant anxiety of an eternal futurity presented to his sight, and being entirely ignorant of what may be his fate in it. Some being doomed to practise a variety of hazardous employments; others to over exertion of their strength: Some to irksome sedentary occupations, or to constant and difficult manual operations and straining of attention: many allotted to spend their lives underground in mines, to breathe foul air: and numbers being compelled to follow trades which expose them to all inclemencies of weather, and to other circumstances that lay foundations for the most inveterate diseases. Among the most common evils are the ill treatment met with by apprentices from their masters, and women from their husbands, who frequently from neglect of education, and favoured by the laws of their own sex, exercise their authority as they think suitable to the dignity of themselves; and mistake their think suitable to the dignity of themselves; and mistake their superiority of strength, which was given to them partly for the purpose of defending their wives and labouring for them - for a privilege from God to exercise their tyranny towards them. It is known that generally the less society is civilized, the worse is the treatment of women. But it is strange in such a country as England, that women should still be degraded and ill treated, and confined to lower occupations than men are; that they should meet with less lenity in courts of justice, as well as more illiberality in private life; that the law should ever have subjected women to commit the crime of murder on their husbands to be burned alive for it, while men for a similar crime were only sentenced to be executed in the common way. But men made the laws; and as they thought

We are at war. Not across country borders, but in our very streets. The lower class must fight for everything. Food on their tables, employment, right of way, their very dignity.” Her voice was strained. “We even fight each other. If there’s one pattern history teaches us, it’s that the rich start wars and force the poor to soldier them.

I froze. The grizzly paused, catching my movement, then lowered his head and with a sort of stiff-legged gait, ambled toward me swinging his head from side to side. I knew from having watched this bear interact with other animals that the worst thing I could do was run. The big bear stopped thirty feet in front of me. I slowly worked my hand into my bag and gradually pulled out the Magnum. I peered down the gun barrel into the dull red eyes of the huge grizzly. He gnashed his jaws and lowered his ears. The hair on his hump stood up. We stared at each other for what might have been seconds but felt like hours. I knew once again that I was not going to pull the trigger. My shooting days were over. I lowered the pistol. The giant bear flicked his ears and looked off to the side. I took a step backward and turned my head towards the trees. I felt something pass between us. The grizzly slowly turned away from me with grace and dignity and swung into the timber at the end of the meadow. I caught myself breathing heavily again, the flush of blood hot on my face. I felt life had been touched by enormous power and mystery.

A universal basic income or universal provision of public services or some combination of the two could furnish a new financial safety net. Ex-ante pre-distribution of assets rather the ex-post redistribution of wealth is an alternative option to reduce wealth inequality. Asset owners would benefit from ample returns, thus allowing everyone to pursue creative, entrepreneurial, or socially redeeming activities. Surrendering the “dignity of work” might not stir a protest if income subsidies open new doors to fulfillment. With UBI, workers in advanced and innovative economies will endure lower paychecks (but fattened by transfers) without the anger that propels voters toward populists with contempt for progressive liberal democracy.

His hand slid around to the nape of her neck. Slowly, inexorably, he forced her head down toward his. Shea closed her eyes, wanting, yet dreading his taking her blood. “I’d hate to have to feed you every day,” she muttered rebelliously. And then his mouth touched hers. Featherlight, a skimming brush Shea felt right down to her toes. His teeth scraped her lower lip, teasing, tempting, enticing. Darts of fire raced through her bloodstream. Her stomach muscles clenched. Open your mouth for me, stubborn little red hair. His teeth tugged; his tongue followed with a soothing caress. Shea gasped as much at the tender, teasing note as at the feel of his lips on hers. He took advantage immediately, fastening his mouth to hers, his tongue exploring every inch of her velvet-soft interior. Flames licked at her, swept through her like a storm. Electricity crackled, and Shea knew the full meaning of chemistry. Feeling. Pure and simple. There was nothing else but his mouth claiming hers, whirling her into another world she hadn’t known existed. The ground shifted, and Shea clutched at his shoulders to keep from floating to the clouds. He was sweeping aside every resistance, demanding her response, taking her response, all hunger and desire. Then he was in her mind, white-hot heat, possession. She was his, only his, always his. Smug male satisfaction. Shea shoved at his broad shoulders, then tumbled backward to the floor, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand. They glared at one another, until amusement crept into her mind. Low, male, taunting. Nothing showed on his face, not a flicker in the ice of his eyes, but she knew he was laughing at her. It took a moment to realize her robe was gaping open, giving him a generous view of her bare skin. With great dignity Shea dragged the lapels together. “I think we need to straighten something out here.” Sitting on the floor, struggling desperately to get her breathing under control, to throw ice water on the raging fire in her blood, Shea was afraid he wasn’t going to take her seriously. “I am your doctor. You are my patient. This…” She waved a hand, searching for the right words. “This sort of thing is unethical. And another thing. I am in charge here. You follow my orders, not the other way around. Absolutely never, under any circumstances, do that again.” Involuntarily she touched her fingers to her lower lip. “It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t infected me with some sort of, I don’t know, rabies strain.” She glared at him.

I am your doctor. You are my patient. This…” She waved a hand, searching for the right words. “This sort of thing is unethical. And another thing. I am in charge here. You follow my orders, not the other way around. Absolutely never, under any circumstances, do that again.” Involuntarily she touched her fingers to her lower lip. “It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t infected me with some sort of, I don’t know, rabies strain.” She glared at him. He simply watched her with his disconcertingly steady gaze. Shea inhaled, wrinkled her nose, desperate to change the subject to something safe. He was supposed to be half-dead. He should have been dead. No one should be able to kiss like that after the agony he had been through. She had never, ever responded to anyone the way she had to him. Never. It was shocking, the effect he had on her. There was a sudden glint in his eyes, somewhere between a flame dancing and amusement. No other man must ever make you respond to him. I would not be pleased. “Quit reading my mind!” Her cheeks flushed a bright red; she glared at him. “This is a totally improper conversation between a doctor and a patient.” Perhaps, but not between us. She clenched her teeth, her green eyes smoldering. “Shut up,” she said rudely, a little desperately. She had to find a way to get control back, and he wasn’t cooperating. She took a deep, calming breath to restore her dignity. “You need a bath. And your hair could use a good wash.” Shea stood up and gingerly touched his thick ebony hair, unaware that the gesture was curiously intimate.

Suddenly Morel had felt something strike against his cheek and fall at his feet. He lowered his eyes cautiously, taking care not to lose his balance. It was a may-beetle. It had fallen on its back and was waving its legs, trying in vain to turn over. Morel stopped and stared fixedly at the insect at his feet. He had been at the camp a year, and for the last three weeks he had been carrying the sacks of cement for eight hours a day on an empty stomach. But this was something impossible to let pass. He bent his knee, keeping the sacks balanced on his shoulder, and with a movement of his forefinger placed the insect on its feet again. He did so twice more in the course of that journey. [...] From that moment practically all the political prisoners assisted the insects, while the common criminals passed by with curses. During the twenty minutes’ break they were allowed, not one of the political prisoners gave way to exhaustion, and yet that was when they usually threw themselves to the ground and lay without stirring till the next whistle. But this time they seemed to have found new strength. They wandered about with their eyes fixed on the ground in search of insects to help. It did not last long, of course. Sergeant Gruber arrived on the scene. [...] Immediately he had understood what was happening. He had recognized the enemy. He had known immediately that he was face to face with a scandalous provocation, an affirmation of unbroken spirit and faith, a proclamation of dignity, totally inadmissible in men reduced to zero.

In the closed, addictive relationship with emphasis on emotional dependency, the worst fear was that the relationship would fail. A failure of the relationship was tantamount to psychological death for both participants, breeding real panic over every minor tremor. In an open relationship, however, the failure of the relationship would not spell “death” to the individuals involved. The loss of the individual’s own autonomy, and the forfeiture of personal dignity, would be seen as being far worse. The task of maintaining personal dignity and wholeness might therefore be experienced as a value transcending the potential end of a relationship. This lowered anxiety over personal survival if the relationship failed would serve, paradoxically, to reduce being so preoccupied with the possibility of there being such a failure. The sense of personal freedom for each of the partners in the relationship would be enhanced. Such a relationship might well stand a good chance of enduring.

I'd rather be a leader than a follower. I rather stand by myself than to degrade myself for the sake of obtaining false friendships. You don't have to lower your dignity to obtain people's respect,if your circle is a set of non-progressive element, then you need to mitigate your circle. People who have no sense of direction cannot help you in life.They can never offer positive encouragement,they can never give sound advice,they have no interest in elevating,they are comfortable with being mediocre.

Ignore people when you see them acting shady. Always ensure that you never stoop to their level. Whatever they say is a direct reflection of who they are,not who you are. Learn to control your anger and never succumb to their ignorance. Never allow anyone to make you become bitter. When they go low,continue to soar high. Sometimes you have to show them who is the smarter individual by retaliating with love and silence. Many will try to get you angry or try to test your faith but whatever it is,make sure that your reaction will benefit you rather than placing you in a position that is lower than your standard,a place way below your dignity. Just because the next person is petty and ignorant, doesn't mean you have to match their level of pettiness and ignorance.

Page 118 As social organization progresses and the governing class begins to reap the benefits of an improved bureaucratic machine, its superiority in culture and wealth, and especially its better organization and firmer cohesion, may compensate to some extent for the lack of individual energy; and so it may come about that considerable portions of the governing class, especially the circles that give the society its intellectual tone and direction, lose the habit of dealing with people of the lower classes and command them directly. This state of affairs generally enables frivolousness, and a sort of culture that is wholly abstract and conventional, to supplant a vivid sense of realities and a sound and accurate knowledge of human nature. Thinking loses virility. Sentimental and exaggeratedly humanitarian theories come to the fore, theories that proclaim the innate goodness of men, especially when they are not spoiled by civilization, or theories that uphold the absolute preferableness, in the arts of government, of gentle and persuasive means to severe authoritarian measures. People imagine, as Taine puts it, that since social life has flowed blandly and smoothly on for centuries, like an impetuous river confined withing sturdy dikes, the dikes have become superfluous and can readily be dispensed with, now that the river has learned its lesson. … It would seem therefore that there is a frequent, if not a universal, tendency in very mature civilizations, where ruling classes have acquired highly refined literary cultures, to wax enthusiastic, by a sort of antithesis, over the simple ways of savages, barbarians and peasants (the case of Arcadia!), and to clothe them with all sorts of virtues and sentiments that are as stereotyped as they are imaginary. Invariably underlying all such tendencies is the concept that was so aptly phrased by Rousseau, that man is good by nature but spoiled by society and civilization. This notion has had a very great influence on political thinking during the past hundred and fifty years. … certain it is that when the ruling class has degenerated in the manner described, it loses its ability to provide against its own dangers and against those of the society that has the misfortune to be guided by it. So the state crashes at the first appreciable shock from the outside foe. Those who govern are unable to deal with the least flurry; and the changes that a strong and intelligent ruling class would have carried out at a negligible cost in wealth, blood and human dignity take on the proportions of a social cataclysm.

It is a widely accepted fact, that MEDICINE IS VOLUNTARY. Mask is a medical equipment. It has come to become a TOOL in the hands of unscrupulous people around the planet. It is used for IMPOSITION OF WILL, CRIME (eg: targeting unwary people with contamination), INVERSE ASSAULT (WEAR, when not required & DONOT WEAR, when required). WHY ENFORCE? First, I take precautions.If necessary, I make a request. CONSENT & DIGNITY. DO A SURVEY. 90 % population misuses it. Being used for IMPOSING ONESELF, Power, Control, Hegemony, Convenience, Crime, CREATING FEAR, as a substitute phrase. In its effect, it is psychologically more destructive than the pandemic itself. It touches dignity, lowers self esteem, devastates families. Anyone trying to reason, is taken as a CHALLENGE TO AUTHORITY, when, actually, it is just a VOLUNTARY MEDICAL EQUIPMENT. A TINY TOOL has become one of the most widespread ever, across the globe.

Alma could not feel the absurdity of this, and she merely said, "'Every Other Week' seems to be going on just the same as ever." "Yes, the trouble has all blown over, I believe. Fulkerson," said Beaton, with a return to what they were saying, "has managed the whole business very well. But he exaggerates the value of my advice." "Very likely," Alma suggested, vaguely. "Or, no! Excuse me! He couldn't, he couldn't!" She laughed delightedly at Beaton's foolish look of embarrassment. He tried to recover his dignity in saying, "He's 'a very good fellow, and he deserves his happiness." "Oh, indeed!" said Alma, perversely. "Does any one deserve happiness?" "I know I don't," sighed Beaton. "You mean you don't get it." "I certainly don't get it." "Ah, but that isn't the reason." "What is?" "That's the secret of the universe," She bit in her lower lip, and looked at him with eyes, of gleaming fun. "Are you never serious?" he asked. "With serious people always." "I am serious; and you have the secret of my happiness—" He threw himself impulsively forward in his chair. "Oh, pose, pose!" she cried. "I won't pose," he answered, "and you have got to listen to me. You know I'm in love with you; and I know that once you cared for me. Can't that time—won't it—come back again? Try to think so, Alma!" "No," she said, briefly and seriously enough. "But that seems impossible. What is it I've done what have you against me?" "Nothing. But that time is past. I couldn't recall it if I wished. Why did you bring it up? You've broken your word. You know I wouldn't have let you keep coming here if you hadn't promised never to refer to it." "How could I help it? With that happiness near us—Fulkerson—" "Oh, it's that? I might have known it!" "No, it isn't that—it's something far deeper. But if it's nothing you have against me, what is it, Alma, that keeps you from caring for me now as you did then? I haven't changed." "But I have. I shall never care for you again, Mr. Beaton; you might as well understand it once for all. Don't think it's anything in yourself, or that I think you unworthy of me. I'm not so self-satisfied as that; I know very well that I'm not a perfect character, and that I've no claim on perfection in anybody else. I think women who want that are fools; they won't get it, and they don't deserve it. But I've learned a good deal more about myself than I knew in St. Barnaby, and a life of work, of art, and of art alone that's what I've made up my mind to." "A woman that's made up her mind to that has no heart to hinder her!" "Would a man have that had done so?" "But I don't believe you, Alma. You're merely laughing at me. And, besides, with me you needn't give up art. We could work together. You know how much I admire your talent. I believe I could help it—serve it; I would be its willing slave, and yours, Heaven knows!" "I don't want any slave—nor any slavery. I want to be free always. Now do you see? I don't care for you, and I never could in the old way; but I should have to care for some one more than I believe I ever shall to give up my work. Shall we go on?" She looked at her sketch. "No, we shall not go on," he said, gloomily, as he rose. "I suppose you blame me," she said, rising too. "Oh no! I blame no one—or only myself. I threw my chance away.

For example, humanism, the central philosophy of our schools and society, teaches that man is above all else, that he alone is the center of meaning. Teaching that man has meaning totally apart from God, humanism leaves morality, justice, and behavior to the discretion of “enlightened” man and encourages people to worship man and nature rather than God. Living without God’s divine truth, humanity sinks lower and lower in depravity, blindly following a philosophy that intends to heighten the dignity of man but instead lowers him to the level of animals.

It is sometimes said that the American Founding, as an expression of modern (notably Lockean) political philosophy, lowers the ends of human life in order to make them more easily attainable. For Americans, comfortable self-preservation, implemented by free-market economics and the scientific enhancement of man's productive powers, replaces eternal salvation or contemplation as the end of man. Whatever may be true of the thought of John Locke, this is not the way in which the American Founding understood itself. The American Founding limited the ends of government. It did not limit the ends of man. The ends of the regime, considered as ends of government, were lowered. But the ends both of reason and revelation served by the regime, in and through the limitations on government, were understood to enhance, not to diminish, the intrinsic possibility of human excellence. As long as the idea of human excellence itself survived, as understood by the great tradition of Western civilization—the civilization of the Bible and of classical philosophy—the dignity of the American Founding remained that of man's highest ends. It is the outright denial—within the very citadels of learning, the universities—of the dignity of reason and of revelation that threatens the eclipse of the American Founding, and therewith of Western civilization itself.

when you adjust for inflation, the federal minimum wage is actually lower now than when Dr. King spoke of “starvation wages” in 1968. What does that say about how our country values the sanctity and dignity of work?