Prestige And Honor Quotes

Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens--and honor its own previous commitments--by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel's right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories.

My friends, life is so serious that if you are not aware of whom you are, your "youniversity" will be prestigious but unknown!

Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they’re doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers—as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it’s all based on a lie—as, indeed, it is.

For sense gratification, a man in the mode of passion wants some honor in society, or in the nation, and he wants to have a happy family, with nice children, wife and house. These are the products of the mode of passion. As long as one is hankering after these things, he has to work very hard. Therefore it is clearly stated here that he becomes associated with the fruits of his activities and thus becomes bound by such activities. In order to please his wife, children and society and to keep up his prestige, one has to work. Therefore the whole material world is more or less in the mode of passion.

pre-Islamic period jahiliyyah, which is usually translated as “the time of ignorance.” But the primary meaning of the root JHL is “irascibility”—an acute sensitivity to honor and prestige, excessive arrogance, and, above all, a chronic tendency to violence and retaliation.4

​In this World, there is One Task, that 'Only You' can Do. Only You, Can Keep Your Word.

Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried. Those who work shit jobs tend to be the object of indignities; they not only work hard but also are held in low esteem for that very reason. But at least they know they're doing something useful. Those who work bullshit jobs are often surrounded by honor and prestige; they are respected as professionals, well paid, and treated as high achievers - as the sort of people who can be justly proud of what they do. Yet secretly they are aware that they have achieved nothing; they feel they have done nothing to earn the consumer toys with which they fill their lives; they feel it's all based on a lie - as, indeed, it is.

Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies; major politicians do not honor their sacrifices on the Senate floor or from the Rose Garden; they do not have bagpipe bands, fancy equipment, enduring icons, or other signifiers of honor verifying the importance of their activity.

And despite being seventeen - Hattori Mariko knew her place in life. She would marry Minamoto Raiden. Her parents would have the prestige of a daughter in the Heian Castle. And Mariko would be the only one to know the stain on that honor.

I mean, really ponder what God gave you breath for. Most of our suffering means nothing. What are we striving for? To make ourselves more comfortable? To add prestige or honor to our reputation? Buth then you find something - a cause, a person - worth dying for, and you realize that's the best gift God can give you, because until you know what you'd die for, you don't know what you're living for.

The career of dueling showcases a puzzling phenomenon we will often encounter: a category of violence can be embedded in a civilization for centuries and then vanish into thin air. When gentlemen agreed to a duel, they were fighting not for money or land or even women but for honor, the strange commodity that exists because everyone believes that everyone else believes that it exists. Honor is a bubble that can be inflated by some parts of human nature, such as the drive for prestige and the entrenchment of norms, and popped by others, such as a sense of humor.

What is so often said about the solders of the 20th century is that they fought to make us free. Which is a wonderful sentiment and one witch should evoke tremendous gratitude if in fact there was a shred of truth in that statement but, it's not true. It's not even close to true in fact it's the opposite of truth. There's this myth around that people believe that the way to honor deaths of so many of millions of people; that the way to honor is to say that we achieved some tangible, positive, good, out of their death's. That's how we are supposed to honor their deaths. We can try and rescue some positive and forward momentum of human progress, of human virtue from these hundreds of millions of death's but we don't do it by pretending that they'd died to set us free because we are less free; far less free now then we were before these slaughters began. These people did not die to set us free. They did not die fighting any enemy other than the ones that the previous deaths created. The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. Solders are paid killers, and I say this with a great degree of sympathy to young men and women who are suckered into a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of heroic to a man in costume who kills for money and the life of honor is accepting ordered killings for money, prestige, and pensions. We create the possibility of moral choice by communicating truth about ethics to people. That to me is where real heroism and real respect for the dead lies. Real respect for the dead lies in exhuming the corpses and hearing what they would say if they could speak out; and they would say: If any ask us why we died tell it's because our fathers lied, tell them it's because we were told that charging up a hill and slaughtering our fellow man was heroic, noble, and honorable. But these hundreds of millions of ghosts encircled the world in agony, remorse will not be released from our collective unconscious until we lay the truth of their murders on the table and look at the horror that is the lie; that murder for money can be moral, that murder for prestige can be moral. These poor young men and woman propagandized into an undead ethical status lied to about what is noble, virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent, and good to the point that they're rolling hand grenades into children's rooms and the illusion that, that is going to make the world a better place. We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why these people died. They did not die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because we are ruled by sociopaths. The only thing that can create a better world is the truth is the virtue is the honor and courage of standing up to the genocidal lies of mankind and calling them lies and ultimate corruptions. The trauma and horrors of this century of staggering bloodshed of the brief respite of the 19th century. This addiction to blood and the idea that if we pour more bodies into the hole of the mass graves of the 20th century, if we pour more bodies and more blood we can build some sort of cathedral to a better place but it doesn't happen. We can throw as many young men and woman as we want into this pit of slaughter and it will never be full. It will never do anything other than sink and recede further into the depths of hell. We can’t build a better world on bodies. We can’t build peace on blood. If we don't look back and see the army of the dead of the 20th century calling out for us to see that they died to enslave us. That whenever there was a war the government grew and grew. We are so addicted to this lie. What we need to do is remember that these bodies bury us. This ocean of blood that we create through the fantasy that violence brings virtue. It drowns us, drowns our children, our future, and the world. When we pour these endless young bodies into this pit of death; we follow it.

It takes several right actions to build reputation and it takes just one wrong action to ruin it.

In the mid-1800s, Dr. Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis noticed that new mothers who were treated by midwives fared much better than those who were treated by trainee doctors, who also handled and dissected cadavers. He believed that sticking one’s hands into a dead body and then directly into a laboring woman was dangerous. So, Semmelweis issued a mandate that hands must be washed between the two activities. And it worked! Rates of infection dropped from one in ten to one in a hundred within the first few months. Unfortunately, the finding was rejected by much of the medical establishment of the time. One of the reasons it was so hard to get doctors to wash up? The stench of “hospital odor” on their hands was a mark of prestige. They called it “good old hospital stink.” Quite simply, decayed corpse smell was a badge of honor they had no intention of removing.

There are so many prostitutes out there. Those who are not just a profession. Those who prostitute anything. Ideas, hopes, ideals, testimony, appreciation, recognition, respect, dignity, rank, degree, honor, prestige, position, status, honesty, justice, anything that can still be sold and exchanged for money.

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!" We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in. "Get down! Get down!" he barked. "Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!" Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble. Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners. Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.

To prefer to be the servant rather than the lord of the household is the path of downward mobility in an upwardly mobile culture. To taunt the idols of prestige, honor, and recognition, to refuse to take oneself seriously or to take seriously others who take themselves seriously, and to freely embrace the servant lifestyle—these are the attitudes that bear the stamp of authentic discipleship.

Love was always dangerous territory; Maximus was well aware of that. Meanwhile, as the rest of his future remained uncertain, the one and only thing he knew with absolute certainty was that if his future didn’t include Violet, then none of this mattered. Not the war. Not the throne. Not the wealth. Not the honor or prestige. When it was all said and done, she was all that he cared about. All he wanted, in the end.

Washington is an example of the citizen-politician who goes to the capital of his state or nation, serves a few terms, and returns to civilian life – just as the Founding Fathers practiced and intended. Sadly, this has been almost completely disregarded by the pervasive career politicians of later generations. The current practice of politicians is to gain elected government positions and then refuse to honor voluntary term limits, thus obtaining lifetime security and prestige, exemption from laws legislated on others, and inappropriate padding of personal income through gifts from lobbyists, self-initiated increases in benefits, and lifetime pensions. Their lifestyles would shock and embarrass a selfless man like George Washington, who served eight years as commander in chief, accepting only expense reimbursements as his compensation. (See the stories on Haym Salomon and Dave Roever similar examples). On

In the first century BC, the funeral processions of members of the political elite, including females, even halted at the Forum, where an oration was delivered.99 The family also arranged for “living statues” to accompany the procession; these were actors wearing the masks of important ancestors who had themselves been honored with public statues. By these means, which endured into the Imperial Age, descendants created a publicly visible representation of their families and their position in society.100 How did surviving associates and relatives mark the exceptional nature of a funeral? On the one hand, they did it by ostentatiously neglecting their own outward appearance, leaving their hair unkempt (or at least without ornament), and wearing ragged, “dirty” (or at least dark) clothing. In sum, by renouncing signs of social distinction.101 At the same time, however, the opportunity for public exposure that the mourning ritual provided was not to be missed, for it was yet another opportunity to showcase the personal status or the prestige of the family or group.

How much are you asking for it?" "It is a durable and dependable storage device. Many of my customers appreciate items that are incognito. With the size and craftsmanship involved, the price should be eighty platinum, but I am only asking for sixty," Vuitton said. Hugo winced. He didn’t have that much. He said, "That might be reasonable for a ring with ten cubic feet of easily accessible space, but this is eight separate storage spaces. That really limits its usefulness. I was thinking twenty-five would be much more reasonable." "I am afraid reason has left you then. I couldn’t part with it for anything less than fifty," the impundulu said haughtily as sparks of lightning danced across his hair. "Ah, I understand. It must have some sentimental value to you. I couldn’t pay more than thirty for it, since I am not a sentimental man," Hugo said. "Storage items never lose value. You can buy this today and your grandson will thank you for it a hundred years from now. Why not pay the forty-five platinum now and invest in your future?" he replied. "My grandson will need to eat. Let me keep five plat for him and I will give you the forty," Hugo said with a smile. "You drive a hard bargain, honored customer. Forty will suffice

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.

Your name is not sufficient for your identity

I don’t know where you think you men are, but if you expect to become Rangers then I expect you to know our creed.” His eyes found me. “I know for a fact Old Navy here doesn’t know the Ranger Creed.” I’d been studying it for months and could have recited it while standing on my head. For effect, I cleared my throat and got loud. “Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high spirit de corps of the Rangers!” “Very surpri…” He tried to cut me off, but I wasn’t done. “Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite Soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other Solider!” The RI nodded with a wry smile, but this time stayed out of my way. “Never shall I fail my comrades! I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight, and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, 100 percent and then some! “Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well-trained Soldier! My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow! “Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country! I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might! Surrender is not a Ranger word! I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country! “Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor! “Rangers lead the way!” I recited all six stanzas, and afterward he shook his head in disbelief, and mulled the ideal way to get the last laugh. “Congratulations, Goggins,” he said, “you are now first sergeant.

Nobility of birth was held in the lowest esteem of all the material advantages. It was certainly deemed by far less valuable than intellectual merit as proved by the possession of knowledge: The learned, intelligent person who is his own man Has no need of (noble) family origins by virtue of the quality of his knowledge. Be whose son you want to be, and be perfect! The outstanding keenness of his mind makes a man, nothing else. How great is the difference between a man honored for his origin And a man honored for his own sake! The verses echo the famous remark of Alî that “a man’s value consists in what he knows or does well.” Ignorance, on the other hand, lowers the prestige an individual may possess and annuls the advantages of noble birth: Knowledge lifts the lowly person to the heights. Ignorance keeps the youth of noble birth immobile.

THE “AWARENESS” SHIELD FEAT. According to the Bible, Joseph obtained enormous prestige in Egypt, when he was able to divine the dreams of the pharaoh, As Joseph earned that feat with a great social prestige, in different traditions the "awareness" of the future, or an inaccessible present, always proved a merit that produces social honor. Weber (1922) considers the prophets, along with the priests and magicians, as examples of charismatic leaders, and this is because "predict " or " perceive" the future has been, in different traditions, a strong feat that has given pride and social prestige those who perform. It postulates a "shield feat of awareness" that is intended to offset the impact on the pride of some future anti-feat. When the firepower that a possible future anti-feat has about pride and social prestige is too high and becomes unbearable, the person can go into that future equipped with a shield feat that will compensate. From that strategy, thinking badly of the future is a way of ensuring the "consolation prize" of having the merit of "prediction”. According to Steele (1988 ), when a person experiences a negative assessment of himself in a particular field, they can initiate a process of self-affirmation activating positive beliefs in another area, thus achieving a positive overall assessment of itself. The pessimistic shield feat "awareness of future failure”, would be a merit that safeguards to offset the impact of that failure on self- concept , an achievement an overall assessment that is not so negative.

The story of Jacob’s burial, in the end, is the story of two heroes. The first is Joseph, who risked everything to bury his father according to his wishes. He risked the loss of power, prestige—and perhaps most of all, his good standing in the eyes of Pharaoh. But the second hero, unlikely as it may seem, is Pharaoh himself. He resisted the urge to impose upon the venerated Jacob an exclusively Egyptian identity. He allowed Jacob to be who he was—Israelite, not Egyptian—and still he and the populace would cherish him; still he and Egypt would regard Jacob as royalty. They would accord him all the honor of a king, notwithstanding Jacob’s rather public decision that Canaan was his true home. The humility evinced by Pharaoh’s stance is nothing short of remarkable.

When President Eisenhower accepted the responsibility for the U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, no one would have questioned that he did this for correct and honorable reasons. National Aeronautics and Space Administrator (NASA) Keith Glennan had already made a public statement that the U-2 was operating out of Turkey as a NASA high-altitude, flight-research aircraft and had strayed over Russian territory inadvertently in high winds. Then, Nikita Khrushchev produced the wreckage of the U-2 deep in Russia near Sverdlovsk, it made a mockery of the NASA cover story; and when he produced the pilot alive and well, it demolished the rest of the plausible disclaimer. The CIA was caught without a plausible cover story, and the President had to choose. He could either discredit Allen Dulles and the CIA for operating that clandestine flight and a long series of flights without his knowledge, or he could, as Eisenhower did, stand up and take the blame himself on the basis that he knew of and had ordered the flights and was in complete control of everything done in the foreign arena by this Government. The latter choice would mean that the President of the United States is Commander in Chief during peacetime clandestine operations as he is in time of war. This is a totally new doctrine born of the vicissitudes of the Cold War. Many have considered this a very noble stand on the part of President Eisenhower, and it was. However, this public admission by the Chief of State that he had directed clandestine operations within another state is exactly the type of thing that reduces the prestige and credibility of United States in the family of nations to the condition described by Arnold Toynbee.

Thucydides tells us that prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War an Athenian citizen informed the Spartan assembly that Athens was animated by three of the strongest motives - fear, interest, and honor. Among other things this is a statement on the enduring motivations of humanity. Fear and interest are understandably compelling; the idea of honor is less clear. Honor can be expressed in terms of reputation, respect, prestige, fame, pride, and esteem. When the ideas of fear, interest, and honor intersect people become exceptionally motivated. Fear of punishment produces only so much effort as to alleviate the threat of punishment. Monetary or other material interest engenders only enough effort to achieve the reward. When the ideas of honor become involved people are motivated to exceed expectations - they go "above and beyond the call of duty.

In the rein of ignorance, the constant state of war which lasted for twenty years did not stop a certain amount of rationality that allowed this writings. pg200 And young men are accustomed from the first to idleness, effeminacy and frivolity, coming eventually to the business of life with empty heads and hearts crammed with false ideals…less credit and wealth, less dignity and prestige. They display vanity, but legitimate pride never. The men of pleasure are well received in society because they are light-hearted, gay, witty, dissipated, easy-going, amateurs of every pleasure. Pg224 The fair dames of the period resorted to every means to stimulate their sensibilities. They seek excitement in dissecting dead bodies. “The young Contesse de Coigny was so passionately fond of this dreadful study (Anatomy), that she would never start on a journey without taking in the boot of her traveling carriage a corpse to dissect, just as one takes with one a book to read.” – Mme. de Gengis, Mémoires, vol I. This mania for dissection was for some time extremely fashionable with ladies of quality. Pg226 On these ridiculous types was built up the whole school of impotent and despairing lovers, who under a nauseous pretence of being so romantic and interesting, prolonged for half a century longer the silly affectation of sentimental melancholy, in other words, a green-sickness of skepticism complicated with pulmonary consumption! Pg227 A familiar axiom of economic science declares that “every vicious act is followed by diminution of force.” Pg229 The Mousquetaires had began by displaying a most laudable zeal, but it was soon discovered that these gentlemen were better at noise than real work. Pg230 “The deterioration of type among noble families,” says Moreau de Tours, “is noted in numerous writers; Pope remarks to Spencer on the sorry looks of members of the English aristocracy in his day; and in the same way physiologists had even earlier noted the short stature of the Spanish grandees at the court of Philip V.” As for Frenchmen, long before 1789, they were amongst the poorest specimens of humanity, according to the testimony of many witnesses. Pg237 The practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in. Thus ends the Sword. A progress of degradation with glowing phraseology, cajoleries and falsity. They put on exaggerated airs of mock-modesty, and assume a scornful pose before their admirers, all the time longing to be noticed. The old punctilious sense of honor have ceased to exist while finally the practices of the man of pleasure, the libertine modes, in full completeness, count at most only some forty years of life, – after which the reign of hypocrisy sets in.

The Pakistani military meets two essential criteria of kinship groups: (1) the ability to look after and protect the interests of the group and (2) affective investment in the group through ideas of honor and prestige.

I quit and joined him and went on strike,” said Hugh Akston, “because I could not share my profession with men who claim that the qualification of an intellectual consists of denying the existence of the intellect. People would not employ a plumber who’d attempt to prove his professional excellence by asserting that there’s no such thing as plumbing—but, apparently, the same standards of caution are not considered necessary in regard to philosophers. I learned from my own pupil, however, that it was I who made this possible. When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought—it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy’s basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance. In the same manner and for the same reason as a banker may not accept and pass counterfeit money, granting it the sanction, honor and prestige of his bank, just as he may not grant the counterfeiter’s demand for tolerance of a mere difference of opinion—so I may not grant the title of philosopher to Dr. Simon Pritchett or compete with him for the minds of men. Dr. Pritchett has nothing to deposit to the account of philosophy, except his declared intention to destroy it. He seeks to cash in—by means of denying it—on the power of reason among men. He seeks to stamp the mint-mark of reason upon the plans of his looting masters. He seeks to use the prestige of philosophy to purchase the enslavement of thought. But that prestige is an account which can exist only so long as I am there to sign the checks. Let him do it without me. Let him—and those who entrust to him their children’s minds—have exactly that which they demand: a world of intellectuals without intellect and of thinkers who proclaim that they cannot think. I am conceding it. I am complying. And when they see the absolute reality of their non-absolute world, I will not be there and it will not be I who will pay the price of their contradictions.

but in this stage the Hindu philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to its earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. Sound familiar? This is another description of being stuck on the fluid intelligence curve, chasing Aquinas’s four idols—money, power, pleasure, and honor—that lead to self-objectification, but that never satisfy. To break the attachment to these idols requires movement to a new stage of life, with a new set of skills—spiritual skills. The change can be painful, Acharya said, like becoming an adult for a second time. And it means letting go of things that defined us in the eyes of the world.

[Self-actualizers] have become strong enough to be independent of the good opinion of other people, or even their affection. The honors, the status, the rewards, the popularity, the prestige, and the love they can bestow must have become less important than self-development and inner growth.

Si Eul-che (Qin Er Shi n.n.) s’était conduit comme un souverain ordinaire et avait confié les charges aux hommes loyaux et sages, si les sujets et le souverain avaient eu les mêmes sentiments et avaient pris en pitié le malheur du monde, si, quand il était encore vêtu de blanc, (Eul-che) avait réparé les fautes de l’empereur son prédécesseur, s’il avait divisé son territoire et distribué son peuple de façon à donner des fiefs aux descendants des plus méritants entre ses sujets, s'il avait fondé des royaumes et établi des princes de manière à honorer l'empire, s'il avait vidé les prisons et épargné les supplices, relâché ceux qui avaient été condamnés comme parents complices' et ceux qui avaient été condamnés comme calomniateurs, et renvoyé chacun dans son village, s'il avait répandu le contenu de ses greniers et distribué ses richesses afin de secourir les personnes abandonnées et misérables, s'il avait restreint les taxes et diminué les corvées afin d'aider le peuple en détresse, s'il avait adouci les lois et modéré les châtiments afin de sauve- garder l'avenir, il aurait fait que tous les habitants de l'empire auraient pu se corriger, qu'ils auraient redoublé de vertu et auraient réformé leurs actions, que chacun aurait veille sur sa propre conduite, que les espérances de la multitude du peuple auraient été satisfaites; puis, grâce au prestige et à la bienfaisance qu'il aurait exercés sur l'empire, l'empire tout entier se serait rassemblé autour de lui. Alors, à l’intérieur des mers, tous auraient été contents et chacun se serait trouvé heureux de son sort ; on n’aurait eu qu’une crainte, celle d’un changement ; même s’il y avait eu des fourbes dans le peuple, ils n’auraient pu distraire le cœur du souverain ; même s’il y avait eu des ministres déshonnêtes, ils n’auraient pu décevoir son intelligence ; le fléau des cruautés et des troubles aurait donc pris fin. Eul-che ne suivit point cette ligne de conduite, mais aggrava la situation par son manque de raison. Il ruina le temple ancestral aux yeux du peuple ; il recommença à construire le palais Ngo-pang; il multiplia les châtiments et aggrava les supplices ; ses officiers gouvernèrent avec la dernière rigueur ; les récompenses et les punitions furent injustes; les taxes et les impôts furent immodérés ; l'empire fut accablé de corvée; les officiers ne purent maintenir l'ordre ; les cent familles se trouvèrent à toute extrémité et le souverain ne les recueillit pas et n'eut pas pitié d'elles. A la suite de cela, la perversité surgit de toutes parts et l’empereur et ses sujets se trompèrent mutuellement. Ceux qui avaient encouru des condamnations étaient en foule ; ceux qui avaient été mutilés et suppliciés s’apercevaient de loin les uns les autres sur les routes, et l’empire en souffrait. Depuis, les princes et les hauts dignitaires jus- qu'au commun peuple, tous étaient tourmentés de l’idée de leur propre danger et se trouvaient personnellement dans une situation très pénible. Aucun d’eux ne se sentait à l’aise dans la place qu’il occupait ; aussi était-il facile de les ébranler. C’est pourquoi Tch’en Ché (Chen Sheng n.n.) sans avoir besoin d’être sage comme T’ang et Ou' (Wu n.n.), sans être au préalable élevé en dignité comme les ducs ou les marquis, n’eut qu’à agiter, le bras à Ta-tsé pour que l’empire entier lui répondit comme l’écho, car son peu-pie était en danger.