Rg Quotes

Regardless of the situation, don’t let the bastards win … and have no regrets … for it will be a good day! -Richard Wakinyan (Martian Fleet Commander)

War is nothing more than organized insanity. That's why crazy and unexpected tactics work most of the time. When they don't, we won't live to tell about it.

Nothing is more painful than to wander in the world without the one you love.

Smart as a whip, kinky enough to own one.

History is for human self-knowledge…the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

Bone Daddy. That's what they called him. A walking talking well-hung pleasure factory who, with a few easy orgasms, could bring you whatever your heart desired. Your boyfriend would propose, your boss would give you a raise. Rumor had it he could heal your scars, inside and out. If you satisfied his lust.

Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.

zoegirl: have u named the chicks? SnowAngel:yes, but i keep getting them mixed up. so now i call all of them "squishy." they're the collective squishy. zoegirl: *r* they squishy? SnowAngel: when you squeeze them,yes. but not in a yucky way. SnowAngel: they're growing on me, the little squishies. altho 1 of them pooped on my pillow. zoegirl: u let them on your bed? SnowAngel: they like it when i bounce them.

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.

He wore a gray hoodie with the green Jakob’s Quest logo across the front. Dear God, I thought. The RG had a Jeff.

Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, The only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

The progressive intellectualization of language, its progressive conversion by the work of grammar and logic into a scientific symbolism, ... represents not a progressive drying-up of emotion, but its progressive articulation and specialization. ... We are acquiring new emotions and new means of expressing them.

Thus natural science is not a way of knowing the real world; its value lies not in its truth but in its utility; by scientific thought we do not know nature, we dismember it in order to master it.

The chief business of twentieth-century philosopy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.

Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. From its ether of manifestation that is garlanded in perpetual darkness, it not only influences and seeks the ruination and destruction of everything that resides in our universe, but rushes to embrace its own oblivion as well. To accomplish this, however, it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain. For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate. This then becomes the condition of evil’s existence: the baneful ideologies of those who wantonly chose to ignore the needs and rights of others, inducing oppression, fear, pain, and even death throughout the cosmos. And by these means, evil seeks to supplant the balance of the universe with its perverse nature. And once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself. And within that terrible instant of unimaginable exploding quantum fury, it will burn brighter than a trillion galaxies to herald its moment of ultimate triumph. But a moment is all that it shall be. And a micro-second later when the last amber burns and flickers out to the demise of dissolving ash, evil will leave its legacy of a totally devoid universe as its everlasting monument to eternal death.

there's something about a woman with a load mind that sits in silence, smiling knowing she can crush you with the truth.

Every kind of language is... specialized form of bodily gesture, and in this sense it may be said that the dance is the mother of all languages... an original language of total bodily gesture. This "original" language of total bodily gesture is thus the one and only real language, which everybody who is in any way expressing himself is using all the time. What we call speech and the other kinds of language are only parts of it which have undergone specialized development.

The universe is not a stagnant place where technology stands still and only the few govern its destiny. Rather, it is a multidimensional dynamic entity that interacts with all things, even the very smallest. And what part we each place in it and the effect we have on it is a matter of our own choice.

As you have been on the road, what have you been hearing from readers about A RELIABLE WIFE? RG: The most interesting question came from a young man in his 30s who asked me to discuss the relationship between love and aging. We think when we’re young that, as we get older, our passions and enthusiasms will fade, will lose their hold on us, and we will enter into some more gentle phase. I don’t find it to be true. Our passions, in fact, intensify, like a sauce that has been reduced to its essence by long slow simmering over a low flame.

The problem with Happily Ever After is that when you live far beyond the terms of most Ever After’s there is just too much time for it to go wrong.

Frank's phone beep-beeped and vibrated before he’d put it back in his pocket: Love to! xx Man. Two kisses already. The woman was a nymphomaniac.

Secrets rarely stay secret for long, so you may as well be honest from the start,” Seamus said. “And love is a blessing, no matter what form it takes.

True love is not supposed to be easy; it’s not supposed to be convenient, but it’s so powerful and overwhelming that it makes all the rest insignificant.

‎..:What you feed yourself with, will eventually grow. Whether be good or bad, it will grow. It will affect your entire mood, enviroment, and the way of thinking... Most of all, it will affect your entire outcome of your today. (Not to mention your tomorrow) "You will only get in life what you only put in…" Or not… Is essential we RENEW OUR MINDS and be very careful with what we feed ourselves with… Have a great day y'all:.. -R.G-

You know…God needs businessmen as well as preachers and missionaries.” Reverend Devol

Societies may die a violent death, like the Inca and Aztec societies which the Spaniards destroyed with gunpowder in the sixteenth century; and it is sometimes thought by people who have been reading historical thrillers that the Roman Empire died in the same way, at the hands of barbarian invaders. That theory is amusing but untrue. It died of disease, not of violence, and the disease was a long-growing and deep-seated conviction that its own way of life was not worth preserving.

I volunteer as tribute. Or born again virgin sacrifice. Does Zeus like virgins? What about younger men who are ready, willing and able to worship at his shrine? Or bend over and call him daddy. Whatever he’s into. I’m easy.

Mengajukan tanya yang, kau tahu, kelak tak berjawab adalah dosa mendasar dalam sains, layaknya memberi perintah yang kau pikir akan diabaikan dalam bidang politik, atau memohon sesuatu yang kau rasa tak 'kan dikabulkan Tuhan dalam agama

The question what presuppositions underlie the 'physics' or natural science of a certain people at a certain time is a purely historical question as what kind of clothes they wear. And this is the question that metaphysicians have to answer.

Tyrants are willing to commit to anything…including mass murder to maintain their domination over every human being alive. They abuse the lives of the people they are entrusted with by the perverse dictates that they, themselves, would never live by. And they feel justified in this by their own self-righteous elite morality, which sets them high above everyone else in their own minds. You and I, however, are made of quite different stuff. Our words are filled with our true beliefs and backed by the honesty of our actions. We take great pride in not only who we are…but overcoming the struggle it took to make us this way. We are men and women of character…principles…and courage!

..: When the darkest hours and days come, one should always remember that they only come to grant us wisdom, knowledge and new opportunities for our lives… They only come to preprare us for the new levels we are to be promoted to... One must always remeber and keep in mind that It is only when one suffers that one can truly meet God as our comforter… It is when one seems to have come to the end of one's hope that one sees and experience the fullness of God in extremely new ways… It is then that one realizes that one can no longer rely on one's own self and that one must trust solely in God, who possesses the power to raise the dead. The dead dreams, passions, desires, goals and the broken families… Have a great day:.. -R.G-

Kids reminded her of cats. You always had the sneaking suspicion that they knew something you didn’t and they believed it made them superior.

You're enough, my son. No, that's not true. You're not enough, you're everything. My moon, my sun, my life, my heart.

I’m learning about how a properly applied Taser can thoroughly discourage pests of the private dick variety.

Admit you’re gay, everyone else knows anyway.

Sexy as hell and stubborn as a mule.

He could write an epic poem about her ass. And all the ways he wanted to defile it.

العبيد يميلون إلى تعلم الرغبات التي نبذها سادتهم

‎..:When we don't have the have the right mindset, we only see a dim and blurry picture of things. It is as if we were staring into a polished metal:.. -R.G-

‎..:Knowing what needs to be done is not enough. We are to get up and act upon those things and make the changes necessary in order to succeed in life:.. -R.G-

Never judge a book by its cover.... If you do then don't start to worry you had missed a excellent book.

The man has stick-up-his-ass-itis.

How could she get a good hate on for someone she wanted to lick?

If he ever got his hands on Scott, Jeremy would be drawing his comics from prison.

Tonight, it’s my slumber party and I say we dine on mushrooms, pepperoni and cheese.” He sent him a hopeful grin. “And Xbox?

Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way; every new historian, not content with giving new answers to old questions, must revise the questions themselves.

Death isn't the end, you know. And we don't fade to black. We dissolve to the next scene.

Screw pride, anyway. At least for another day or two, give me a protective Alpha male that smells like sex in the woods and wants to make me dinner.

You decide what kind future you want to have, because you’re the one who’ll have to live in it.

Remember that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people.

When life gives you lemons, you don’t just sit back and whine. You put the pedal to the metal and make some damn amazing lemonade.

we can all leave our desired footprints on the sands of time, if only we are willing  to endure, to strive, to brave all odds and swim against the tide.

Once in your lifetime, try something. Work hard at something. Try to challenge the status quo. Nothing bad can happen, but you have to be willing to try .

If you don’t do it, nothing is possible. If you do it, at least, you have hope that there is a chance.” – Jack Ma.

you have hope that there is a chance.” – Jack Ma.

Your success in life might depend on your intellectual abilities to an extent, but the most important factor that would decide your success or your failure is your desperation to succeed.

14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall c be in him a well of water springing up into d everlasting life. 15

JD and I share a quick look of understanding, silently agreeing that women are to be respected and feared and we’re both thankful that those male werewolf pregnancy books are biologically impossible.

Franny?” Rosy held up the four little Franks. “Could I keep one of these?” Franny looked at her hard for a moment then nodded. “’Course you can, hen,” she said, “But that’s not your daddy.” Rosy gaped. “It’s not?” “That’s my wee darling. That’s my wee Frankie before the devil twisted him into a monster.” She poked her finger into another hole where Frank’s face should have been. Her eyes glinted.

Rosy ferried the drinks back to the table, slid the Guinness his way. “You said you have a show. Is it a comedy?” “No, but you will laugh, I hope, after hearing my qualifications.” His eyes glittered. “I do magic, with a twist. The twist is, my clothes are the first thing to disappear.” Rosy gaped. “Yes. I do magic… naked. I not only have a big ego.” Marek wiggled his middle finger. “I have a big wand.

For Hellenistic thought, self-consciousness is no longer, as it was for Hellenic thought, a power to conquer the world; it is a citadel providing a safe retreat from a world both hostile and intractable.

scars are badges of honors we wear proudly to show that we survived what life threw our way. You can try to beat us, kill us, but like the phoenix, we will rise from the ashes and rain motherfucking revenge on you

Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy. “Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.” Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer. “What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?” The customer stammered. “Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.

Rosy waited as long as she dared then sat forward and let her eye rove Franny’s lounge, up and down the shelves, looking for something, not even sure she could bring herself to act if she saw it again, already convinced this was her worst ever idea

What did we talk about? I don't remember. We talked so hard and sat so still that I got cramps in my knee. We had too many cups of tea and then didn't want to leave the table to go to the bathroom because we didn't want to stop talking. You will think we talked of revolution but we didn't. Nor did we talk of our own souls. Nor of sewing. Nor of babies. Nor of departmental intrigue. It was political if by politics you mean the laboratory talk that characters in bad movies are perpetually trying to convey (unsuccessfully) when they Wrinkle Their Wee Brows and say (valiantly--dutifully--after all, they didn't write it) "But, Doctor, doesn't that violate Finagle's Constant?" I staggered to the bathroom, released floods of tea, and returned to the kitchen to talk. It was professional talk. It left my grey-faced and with such concentration that I began to develop a headache. We talked about Mary Ann Evans' loss of faith, about Emily Brontë's isolation, about Charlotte Brontë's blinding cloud, about the split in Virginia Woolf's head and the split in her economic condition. We talked about Lady Murasaki, who wrote in a form that no respectable man would touch, Hroswit, a little name whose plays "may perhaps amuse myself," Miss Austen, who had no more expression in society than a firescreen or a poker. They did not all write letters, write memoirs, or go on the stage. Sappho--only an ambiguous, somewhat disagreeable name. Corinna? The teacher of Pindar. Olive Schriener, growing up on the veldt, wrote on book, married happily, and ever wrote another. Kate Chopin wrote a scandalous book and never wrote another. (Jean has written nothing.). There was M-ry Sh-ll-y who wrote you know what and Ch-rl-tt- P-rk-ns G-lm-an, who wrote one superb horror study and lots of sludge (was it sludge?) and Ph-ll-s Wh--tl-y who was black and wrote eighteenth century odes (but it was the eighteenth century) and Mrs. -nn R-dcl-ff- S-thw-rth and Mrs. G--rg- Sh-ld-n and (Miss?) G--rg-tt- H-y-r and B-rb-r- C-rtl-nd and the legion of those, who writing, write not, like the dead Miss B--l-y of the poem who was seduced into bad practices (fudging her endings) and hanged herself in her garter. The sun was going down. I was blind and stiff. It's at this point that the computer (which has run amok and eaten Los Angeles) is defeated by some scientifically transcendent version of pulling the plug; the furniture stood around unknowing (though we had just pulled out the plug) and Lady, who got restless when people talked at suck length because she couldn't understand it, stuck her head out from under the couch, looking for things to herd. We had talked for six hours, from one in the afternoon until seven; I had at that moment an impression of our act of creation so strong, so sharp, so extraordinarily vivid, that I could not believe all our talking hadn't led to something more tangible--mightn't you expect at least a little blue pyramid sitting in the middle of the floor?

How did you make it last?” “Love is the reason,” Shawn said with a shrug. “Sounds simple, but it’s true. We make sure to tell each other every day. To show each other every day. You can’t take something like love for granted. You can’t horde it and dole it out on holidays or when you’re in trouble for forgetting an anniversary. It’s every day, for the rest of your days. That’s the commitment. So my most important job is to make sure each one of them counts, and she never has to wonder how I feel.

Life will knock you down on your knees and it will keep you there if you allow it. Success is for the emotionally and mentally strong, not for the weak and cowardly. To succeed in life, you have to toughen up, develop a thick skin and conquer your fears.

my fantasies. “I think it’s time we changed that rule, and I’ll start. I have a request. Call it a birthday present. You do still owe me one, and as you said, you didn’t even get me a cake.” Owen paused and Jeremy felt his stomach knot. “I’d like to see it.

‎..:We must play with the hand God deals us. Not look for a new deck. We could bluff or draw, but we can't cheat. 'Coz if we are to cheat, we are only cheating ourselves and those around us. And that could affect our entire outcome. Our Divine Destiny:. -R.G-

28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, 29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the l resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of mdamnation. 30

The brunette was conducting tests on the collected blood when the older woman came into her laboratory to get the child’s photo. The old woman took the picture to a pale-skinned woman with red hair, who in turn fixed it with a morbidly curious look before handing it back.

R.G.: The more people think that they are realizing the Utopias dreamed up by their desire – in other words, the more they embrace ideologies of liberation – the more they will in fact be working to reinforce the competitive world that is stifling them. But they do not realize their mistake; and continue to systematically confuse the type of external obstacle represented by the prohibition and the internal obstacle formed by the mimetic partner... At the very moment the last prohibitions are being forgotten, there are still a number of intellectuals who continue to refer to them as if they were more and more crippling... G.L.: You are going to get yourself branded as a dreadful reactionary again. R.G.: That would not be at all fair. I do find it absurd that people should greet with a fanfare the liberation of a desire that is not being constrained by anyone. But I find it even more absurd to hear people calling for a return to constraints, which is impossible. From the moment cultural forms begin to dissolve, any attempt to reconstitute them artificially can only result in the most appalling tyranny.

Whatever you do, you need to realize that people will talk. People will complain. People will pass negative comments and criticize like anything. You can’t afford to allow these people to rule your mind. Live your life the way you want, but don’t lose sight of the bigger picture.

I mean, I love gay romance, I’m into the idea of werewolves and I’m a fan of the miracle of birth. All of those facts are separately true. But knowing gay werewolf pregnancy is a thing that’s out there is nearly tied with Jordan Peele movies on the list of Scary Shit I’ll Never Get

Rosy lifted her arm, tried to say something, then pointed at the cafe, held her head, covered her mouth and—humiliation of humiliations—she began to cry. Right there in the street. “I’m so confused,” she said but it came out as a great honking wail. “Come here, you silly girl,” Phyllis said. The woman put her arms around Rosy, patted her back, and for the first time in forever, Rosy allowed herself to just cry. A young mother with twins in a pram passed them. The children’s eyes tracked Rosy for a second before their faces crumpled and they started to cry too. “I’m sorry,” Rosy said, and flapped her arms. “I’m sorry.

Love is not the asking for, but the giving of, even when it means freedom.  It is not the formulation of expectations and the seeking of commitment, but something willingly given without reserve. It is the joy of letting one's needs take second place to those of the beloved's, but only when given without demand.

he’d wondered aloud if the Scottish-Japanese technophile wanted to be Batman. “You already have the lair, the finances and the right equipment,” he’d said. “Why do you ask? Do you have a fetish for rich men in masks?” Ken asked, smiling that angelic smile. “I don’t have fetishes,” Brady responded quickly. “But he isn’t my type. He’s got a cave full of baggage and relies on toys instead of natural talent. Give me Superman any day.

MSB: What difference, if any, do you think there is between a power such as katéchon, which postpones the end of time, and the scapegoat mechanism by which Satan casts out Satan? RG: Whereas the Satan who casts out Satan well and truly represents order, katéchon is situated in a Christian world, in a world freed from Satan's rule, a world that wants no part of it. At the same time, katéchon still retains a little of the old order, without which nothing would stand in the way of absolute violence. Katéchon holds back violence, which is to say what is left once Satan has been cheated, duped. It must be admitted that, in order to prevent violence, we cannot do without a certain amount of violence. We are therefore obliged to think in terms of least possible violence. But, as a practical matter, it's difficult to say how little the least violence would have to be. MSB

SUN TZU ON THE ART OF WAR THE OLDEST MILITARY TREATISE IN THE WORLD Translated from the Chinese with Introduction and Critical Notes BY LIONEL GILES, M.A. Assistant in the Department of Oriental Printed Books and MSS. in the British Museum First Published in 1910 -----------------------------------------------------------------To my brother Captain Valentine Giles, R.G. in the hope that a work 2400 years old may yet contain lessons worth consideration by the soldier of today this translation is affectionately dedicated.

MT: But you are. You are justifying it. RG: I'm trying to show that there's meaning at precisely the point where the nihilistic temptation is strongest today. I'm saying: there's a Revelation, and people are free to do with it what they will. But it too will keep reemerging. It's stronger than them. And, as we have seen, it's even capable of putting mimetic phenomena to work on its behalf, since today everyone is competing to see who is the most “victimized.” Revelation is dangerous. It's the spiritual equivalent of nuclear power. What's most pathetic is the insipidly modernized brand of Christianity that bows down before everything that's most ephemeral in contemporary thought. Christians don't see that they have at their disposal an instrument that is incomparably superior to the whole mishmash of psychoanalysis and sociology that they conscientiously feed themselves. It's the old story of Esau sacrificing his inheritance for a plate of lentils. All the modes of thought that once served to demolish Christianity are being discredited in turn by more “radical” versions of the same critique. There's no need to refute modern thought because, as each new trend one-ups its predecessors, it's liquidating itself at high speed. The students are becoming more and more skeptical, but, and above all in America, the people in power, the department chairs, the “chairpersons,” as they say, are fervent believers. They're often former sixties' radicals who've made the transition to administrative jobs in academia, the media, and the church. For a long time, Christians were protected from this insane downward spiral, and, when they finally dive in, you can recognize them by their naïve modernist faith. They're always one lap behind. They always choose the ships that the rats are in the midst of abandoning. They're hoping to tap into the hordes of people who have deserted their churches. They don't understand that the last thing that can attract the masses is a Christian version of the demagogic laxity in which they're already immersed. Today, it's thought that playing the social game, whether on the individual or the group level, is more indispensable than thinking…it's thought that there are truths that shouldn't be spoken. In America, it's become impossible to be unapologetically Christian, white, or European without running the risk of being accused of “ethnocentrism.” To which I reply that the eulogists of “multiculturalism” place themselves, to the contrary, in the purest of Western traditions. The West is the only civilization ever to have directed such criticisms against itself. The capital of the Incas had a name that I believe meant “the navel of the world.

Rosy’s mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny’s wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge. There on Franny’s coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects. “Please, may I have a biscuit?” Rosy says. “Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling,” Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy’s prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. “Help yourself, my wee hen.” Rosy settles for a reject. Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach.

MSB: The triumph of Christ marks the culmination of your work from a thematic point of view. But in the world itself, it also marks the culmination of the long journey of human violence. RG: I think that Saint Paul's letters, particularly Romans and Corinthians, have the form of a mimetic spiral. Everything we've been talking about constitutes a sort of exegesis of what Paul had to say about the centrality of the Cross. The Cross is not only knowledge of God, but first and foremost an understanding of mankind. Paul was perfectly aware of this. It seems to me essential that the notion of the crucified Christ as “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23) be examined more closely. I had thought that Jacob Taubes, in his book on Paul's political theology, would develop this idea, but he never really gets around to it.6 MSB: Your acquaintance with Paul seems to have deepened over the years. RG: I hope it has. In a way it is rather recent. I have come to better understand Paul through reading and talking with Protestants. Most Catholics speak mainly of the Gospels. Protestants, on the other hand, speak mainly of Saint Paul; they consider Saint Paul's letters to be the primary Christian documents. I would find nothing more interesting than to write on the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism. True ecumenicism would be exactly this, understanding what the Gospels and Saint Paul fundamentally have in common. The anthropological interpretation of Satan offers an opportunity for going further in this direction, it seems to me. MSB

MT: The arrival of Christ disturbs the sacrificial order, the cycle of little false periods of temporary peace following sacrifices? RG: The story of the “demons of Gerasa” in the synoptic Gospels, and notably in Mark, shows this well. To free himself from the crowd that surrounds him, Christ gets on a boat, crosses Lake Tiberias, and comes to shore in non-Jewish territory, in the land of the Gerasenes. It's the only time the Gospels venture among a people who don't read the Bible or acknowledge Mosaic law. As Jesus is getting off the boat, a possessed man blocks his way, like the Sphinx blocking Oedipus. “The man lived in the tombs and no one could secure him anymore, even with a chain. All night and all day, among the tombs and in the mountains, he would howl and gash himself with stones.” Christ asks him his name, and he replies: “My name is Legion, for there are many of us.” The man then asks, or rather the demons who speak through him ask Christ not to send them out of the area—a telling detail—and to let them enter a herd of swine that happen to be passing by. And the swine hurl themselves off the edge of the cliff into the lake. It's not the victim who throws himself off the cliff, it's the crowd. The expulsion of the violent crowd is substituted for the expulsion of the single victim. The possessed man is healed and wants to follow Christ, but Christ tells him to stay put. And the Gerasenes come en masse to beg Jesus to leave immediately. They're pagans who function thanks to their expelled victims, and Christ is subverting their system, spreading confusion that recalls the unrest in today's world. They're basically telling him: “We'd rather continue with our exorcists, because you, you're obviously a true revolutionary. Instead of reorganizing the demoniac, rearranging it a bit, like a psychoanalyst, you do away with it entirely. If you stayed, you would deprive us of the sacrificial crutches that make it possible for us to get around.” That's when Jesus says to the man he's just liberated from his demons: “You're going to explain it to them.” It's actually quite a bit like the conversion of Paul. Who's to say that historical Christianity isn't a system that, for a long time, has tempered the message and made it possible to wait for two thousand years? Of course this text is dated because of its primitive demonological framework, but it contains the capital idea that, in the sacrificial universe that is the norm for mankind, Christ always comes too early. More precisely, Christ must come when it's time, and not before. In Cana he says: “My hour has not come yet.” This theme is linked to the sacrificial crisis: Christ intervenes at the moment the sacrificial system is complete. This possessed man who keeps gashing himself with stones, as Jean Starobinski has revealed, is a victim of “auto-lapidation.” It's the crowd's role to throw stones. So, it's the demons of the crowd that are in him. That's why he's called Legion—in a way he's the embodiment of the crowd. It's the crowd that comes out of him and goes and throws itself off of the cliff. We're witnessing the birth of an individual capable of escaping the fatal destiny of collective violence. MT

MT: Mimetic desire can only produce evil? RG: No, it can become bad if it stirs up rivalries but it isn't bad in itself, in fact it's very good, and, fortunately, people can no more give it up than they can give up food or sleep. It is to imitation that we owe not only our traditions, without which we would be helpless, but also, paradoxically, all the innovations about which so much is made today. Modern technology and science show this admirably. Study the history of the world economy and you'll see that since the nineteenth century all the countries that, at a given moment, seemed destined never to play anything but a subordinate role, for lack of “creativity,” because of their imitative or, as Montaigne would have said, their “apish” nature, always turned out later on to be more creative than their models. It began with Germany, which, in the nineteenth century, was thought to be at most capable of imitating the English, and this at the precise moment it surpassed them. It continued with the Americans in whom, for a long time, the Europeans saw mediocre gadget-makers who weren't theoretical or cerebral enough to take on a world leadership role. And it happened once more with the Japanese who, after World War II, were still seen as pathetic imitators of Western superiority. It's starting up again, it seems, with Korea, and soon, perhaps, it'll be the Chinese. All of these consecutive mistakes about the creative potential of imitation cannot be due to chance. To make an effective imitator, you have to openly admire the model you're imitating, you have to acknowledge your imitation. You have to explicitly recognize the superiority of those who succeed better than you and set about learning from them. If a businessman sees his competitor making money while he's losing money, he doesn't have time to reinvent his whole production process. He imitates his more fortunate rivals. In business, imitation remains possible today because mimetic vanity is less involved than in the arts, in literature, and in philosophy. In the most spiritual domains, the modern world rejects imitation in favor of originality at all costs. You should never say what others are saying, never paint what others are painting, never think what others are thinking, and so on. Since this is absolutely impossible, there soon emerges a negative imitation that sterilizes everything. Mimetic rivalry cannot flare up without becoming destructive in a great many ways. We can see it today in the so-called soft sciences (which fully deserve the name). More and more often they're obliged to turn their coats inside out and, with great fanfare, announce some new “epistemological rupture” that is supposed to revolutionize the field from top to bottom. This rage for originality has produced a few rare masterpieces and quite a few rather bizarre things in the style of Jacques Lacan's Écrits. Just a few years ago the mimetic escalation had become so insane that it drove everyone to make himself more incomprehensible than his peers. In American universities the imitation of those models has since produced some pretty comical results. But today that lemon has been squeezed completely dry. The principle of originality at all costs leads to paralysis. The more we celebrate “creative and enriching” innovations, the fewer of them there are. So-called postmodernism is even more sterile than modernism, and, as its name suggests, also totally dependent on it. For two thousand years the arts have been imitative, and it's only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that people started refusing to be mimetic. Why? Because we're more mimetic than ever. Rivalry plays a role such that we strive vainly to exorcise imitation. MT

had always told me that I should not judge the country from the people I met in Bucharest, but that it was the Rumanian peasant who counted. And really the Rumanian peasants were handsome in a lean, clean-cut, sunburnt way, very different from the pasty-faced gents in town. They worked hard and were humbly resigned to poverty; their eyes were kind and trusting, like children’s.

When in 1930 Maniu and his friends called Carol back, it was on one condition—that Lupescu stay abroad and that the affair be ended once and for all. Carol solemnly agreed to this condition; then, to the horror of the leaders who had arranged the coup, Lupescu stepped, so to speak, out of Carol’s luggage. This flagrant breach of a solemn promise estranged his most fervent champions and marked the beginning of the ever-growing void which surrounded Carol.

like they were a couple of stray dogs.

The critic must therefore work from within. His negative position is based on his positive: his primary work is to supplement his author's partial account of some matter by adding certain aspects which the author has overlooked ; but, since the parts of a philosophical theory never stand to one another in a relation of mere juxtaposition, the omission of one part will upset the balance of the whole and distort the remaining parts; so his additions will entail some correction even of those elements which he accepts as substantially true. 20. Criticism, when these two aspects of it are considered together, may be regarded as a single operation: the bringing to completeness of a theory which its author has left incomplete. So understood, the function of the critic is to develop and continue the thought of the writer criticized. Theoretically, the relation between the philosophy criticized and the philosophy that criticizes it is the relation between two adjacent terms in a scale of forms, the forms of a single philosophy in its historical development; and in practice, it is well known that a man's best critics are his pupils, and his best pupils the most critical.

The prose-writer's art is an art that must conceal itself, and produce not a jewel that is looked at for its own beauty but a crystal in whose depths the thought can be seen without distortion or confusion ; and the philosophical writer in especial follows the trade not of a jeweller but of a lens-grinder. He must never use metaphors or imagery in such a way that they attract to themselves the attention due to his thought ; if he does that he is writing not prose, but, whether well or ill, poetry; but he must avoid this not by rejecting all use of metaphors and imagery, but by using them, poetic things themselves, in the domestication of prose : using them just so far as to reveal thought, and no farther.

16. Hamilton DM, Haennel RG. Validity and reliability of the 6-minute walk test in a cardiac rehabilitation population; J of Cardiopulm Rehab. 2000; 20(3): 156-64.

We bonded over grief and ill-placed guilt. I guess it’s good to have someone understand how I feel without having to explain all the time.

He is intense, isn’t he?” “It depends what you mean by intense.” I replied throwing him a sidelong look. “He is very protective of you.” I nodded. “A bit like a pack of wolves.” “You mean like the alpha protecting his pack?” I chuckled “No, I mean Chago is a pack of wolves, alpha included.

At least the Middle East seemed quiet. Not too much going on, but because water's not boiling, don't mean it's not hot.

You decide what kind future you want to have, because you’re the one who’ll have to live in it. Alone or not.

Everything I ever accomplished in this life was because of these three words: Why not me?

I looked at him walking away, and the further he got from me, the more I could fee the first breaches forming in our relationship. I painfully started to understand that it was probably the beginning of the end for u.

I'm going to need a beer for this. The good stuff." "I only make the good stuff, Wyatt." "And she thinks I'm cocky.

The way he sat and spread out like the world owed him extra room.

Listen, child. If you knew that the most precious thing to you…was something that would bring tragedy, what would you do?” “I’d protect it. I’d hold onto it tight and protect it as long as I was alive.” “Then be strong for the thing most precious to you. Only then can you realize your destiny.

The power of the Ryuuga sword is not in its blade. In fact, it’s blunt and wouldn’t even cut a strand a hair. The key to it is the wielder’s spirit. The stranger your spirit, the more powerful its damage.