Scion Quotes

Even a stunted tree reaches for sunlight.

Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.

I would never see him again. But as I watched the tunnel race before my eyes, I was certain of one thing: I did trust him. Now I had only to trust in myself.

Khalil Gibran said that parents are like a bow, And children like arrows. The more the bow bends and stretches, the farther the arrow flies. I fly, not because I am special, but because they stretched for me.

They'd branded me like some kind of animal. Lower than an animal. A number.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want a woman who is better than I am; a woman who will compel me to bow my head in admiration.

Love child!" What else? You will find it and lose it, again and again. And with each finding and each loss, you will become more than before. What you make of it is yours to choose.

If I have the means, I have the responsibility to employ them.

The humans who love us never last long. Scions are tragedy magnets. It's safer for them if we leave before the trouble starts." ~ Daphne

They are gone now. Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone. Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses. No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains. On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust.

Not all of us know what we are. Some of us die without ever knowing. Some of us know, and never get caught. But we're out there. Trust me.

Most Bolton students were scions of the city's wealthiest families. My crewe stuck out like hooker at church. We werent part of their pampered, priveliged world, and many of our classmates were quick to remind us of that fact. Taunting the "boat kids" was practically a varsity sport.

Among them is a renegade king, he who sired five royal heirs without ever unzipping his pants. A man to whom time has imparted great wisdom and an even greater waistline, whose thoughtless courage is rivalled only by his unquenchable thirst. At his shoulder walks a sorcerer, a cosmic conversationalist. Enemy of the incurable rot, absent chairman of combustive sciences at the university in Oddsford, and the only living soul above the age of eight to believe in owlbears. Look here at a warrior born, a scion of power and poverty whose purpose is manifold: to shatter shackles, to murder monarchs, and to demonstrate that even the forces of good must sometimes enlist the service of big, bad motherfuckers. His is an ancient soul destined to die young. And now comes the quiet one, the gentle giant, he who fights his battles with a shield. Stout as the tree that counts its age in aeons, constant as the star that marks true north and shines most brightly on the darkest nights. A step ahead of these four: our hero. He is the candle burnt down to the stump, the cutting blade grown dull with overuse. But see now the spark in his stride. Behold the glint of steel in his gaze. Who dares to stand between a man such as this and that which he holds dear? He will kill, if he must, to protect it. He will die, if that is what it takes. “Go get the boss,” says one guardsman to another. “This bunch looks like trouble.” And they do. They do look like trouble, at least until the wizard trips on the hem of his robe. He stumbles, cursing, and fouls the steps of the others as he falls face-first onto the mud-slick hillside.

I like to imagine there were more of us in the beginning. Not many, I suppose. But more than there are now.

I preferred a hard truth to a well-meant lie.

Sometimes, truth causes pain and suffering. At such times, silence is preferred.

Kaitlyn froze and then said in a low tone, "That'd better be your gun." "Why yes, I always pack my gun where it'll blow my balls off."[Landon]

True friendship must be akin to romance, I think; only without all the anguish and anxiety.

When the axe entered the forest, the trees said to each other: do not worry, the handle in that axe is one of us”.

If karma is giving you a negative signal repeatedly, then it is not testing you, it is trying to teach you.

These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

There would be love, and while it was mine, I could cling to it. I could rejoice -- in life, in the existence of love. In the existence of people like Phedre and Joscelin. Although the standards they set were impossibly high, still, I could rejoice that such courage and compassion existed in the world. I could hope and aspire.

Truth does not become untruth simply because its existence upsets the scion of a High House.

What does it mean to be good?

Do not rush to the “right answer”,’ clarified Vashishta. ‘The key, always, is to ask the “right question”.

it’s more important to be right than to be first.

I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of the gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best born. My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.

Because for Terrasen, for Erilea, Elena would walk into the eternal darkness lurking across the valley to buy them all a chance. Elena sent up a final prayer on a pillar of smoke rising from the valley floor that the unborn, faraway scions of this night, heirs to a burden that would doom or save Erilea, would forgive her for what she was about to do.

The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you.

Even honourable men sometimes prove to be terrible leaders. Conversely, men of questionable character can occasionally be exactly what a nation requires.

Death is inevitable. Life is too. Even if Scion succeeds, there will be some who remain, because they hid well enough, because they aren’t interesting or different enough to kill. Life, death, a binary.

Swagruhe Pujyate Murkhaha; Swagraame Pujyate Prabhuhu Swadeshe Pujyate Raja; Vidvaansarvatra Pujyate. A fool is worshipped in his home. A chief is worshipped in his village. A king is worshipped in his kingdom. A knowledgeable person is worshipped everywhere.

In flawed families, a scion appears who dedicates himself to the truth and who ruins himself in its pursuit.

Well you stick the dynamite in the keyhole and you don't damage the safe, only sometimes you put a little too much in and blow the safe door up, but other times you're lucky and the safe just comes open. Thus the scion of a great banking dynasty learned how to rob a bank.

People are suffering all around the world. We ignore what’s happening elsewhere every second of every day, focusing only on our country, our city, our neighborhood, or on the people we see daily. We only really care about the pain and unhappiness of our loved ones, our friends and families, because we couldn’t stay sane if we tried to support and save everyone. Nobody could try to do anything like that, except maybe Scion. I’m applying that concept to a smaller scale. My family and my team, they take priority, and they take priority in that order.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing.

It’s rare that a story begins at the beginning. In the grand scheme of things, I really turned up at the beginning of the end of this one. After all, the story of the Rephaim and Scion started almost two hundred years before I was born - and human lives, to Rephaim, are as fleeting as a single heartbeat. Some revolutions change the world in a day. Others take decades or centuries or more, and others still never come to fruition. Mine began with a moment and a choice. Mine began with the blooming of a flower in a secret city on the border between worlds. You’ll have to wait and see how it ends. Welcome back to Scion.

She has that something, like the thread in a crystal-bead necklace. She holds it all together.

One of the few advantages of being disliked is that you don’t need to fret over what others think about you.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so viscious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived as noble and godlike.

Humans crave knowledge. It’s a defining element in our species. Something we don’t see in animals in that same way, something we don’t see in Scion, unless it’s a craving that takes a very different form in execution.

O son of Kunti, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.

Infallible perception was definitely a downside of dating a Scion.

Do you mind it?” I asked softly. “Being linked to me?” The silence rang with something I recognized. “No.” His voice was a shadow. “It roots me again. You remind me what it is to have a home.” A laugh escaped me. “Dreamwalkers are rootless. Scion wants me dead because I have no anchor.” I traced his stone-cut features. “If you make me your home, you’ll wander forever.” “I am not known for my wide choices, Paige Mahoney.

Oh Mario, and Dylan, and Joan Baez, oh Free Speech and Anti-Vietnam—who in his right mind would have ever dreamed it could come to this in twelve months—abandoned to the supermarket and the breezeway scions—a bunch of fraternity men in Mustangs—and it is, unbelievably, all as the provocateur Kesey has prophesied it, droning

Some good can emerge from the most horrific of events. There is something positive hidden in every negative, and something negative in every positive. Life is complicated, and a balanced person can see both sides.

If you are a fish charging at bait, then it usually doesn’t end well.

Passionate children have strong emotions that insist on finding expression. They laugh loudly. They cry even more loudly.

only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I’m successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish.

Withholding the truth is different from lying

It is passing strange, what a fluid thing is one's own identity.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike.

The Naga laughed softly, 'There's a thin line that separates courage from stupidity.' 'And that line is only visible in retrospect, my friend. If I'm successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish. Let ,me do what I think is right. I'll leave the verdict to the future.

The masculine way of life is defined by truth, duty and honour. At its peak, masculine civilisations are efficient, just and egalitarian. But as they decline, they become fanatical, rigid and especially harsh towards the weak.

Events and circumstances sometimes conspire against us; if we insist on inflexibility for the purpose of maintaining our beliefs, we end up compromising ourselves nevertheless. We salvage one set of principles only to forsake another.

While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords? Why should the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, "good" wizard for something useful, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.

Tell me your favourite color, Daphne, and I’ll paint the sky with it.

If you compromise the prospects of the strong, and lean too much towards the interests of the weak, then your society itself goes into decline.

Sometimes, truth causes pain and suffering. At such times, silence is preferred. In fact, there may be times when a white lie, could actually lead to a good outcome.

If I’m successful, people will call me brave. If I fail, I will be called foolish. Let me do what I think is right. I’ll leave the verdict to the future.

we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts; whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or scion.

It had seemed to him an evil fate, a geographical accident, that had forced them to take up arms in what was, to him, a war to secure the rich man’s wealth. Beyond what was strictly required for their care, he would talk to them, to better know their minds. But after a time, he had stopped seeking such dialogue. They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard—denial—of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail—all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence.

Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm.

You live in Ram’s kingdom, hold your head high. Fight for justice. Treat all as equal. Protect the weak. Know that dharma is above all. Hold your head high, You live in the kingdom of Ram.

Freedom is never the ally of law. You can have freedom to choose whether you want to join or leave a society based on the rule of law. But as long as you live in such a society you must obey the law.

They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard—denial—of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail—all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence. Scott had become convinced that a total obliteration of their rebellion was the only way forward.

I lie awake in my bed, clinging to the brightness I have known, fighting back the tide of darkness, the memories of blood and branding and horror, and the legacy of cruelty that runs in my own veins, shaping my own secret vow and wielding it like a brand against the darkness, whispering it to myself, over and over. I will try to be good.

The main vehicle for nineteenth-century socialization was the leading textbook used in elementary school. They were so widely used that sections in them became part of the national language. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of an elite New York family, schooled by private tutors, had been raised on the same textbooks as the children of Ohio farmers, Chicago tradesman, and New England fishermen. If you want to know what constituted being a good American from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, spend a few hours browsing through the sections in the McGuffey Readers.

How can the land belong to any of us? We belong to the land!

you can certainly learn from the successes of great men, you can learn even more from their failures and mistakes.

Marrying Cal, the scion of a family whose wealth dated to the Industrial Revolution and had multiplied through every turn of the American economy since, ought to have eased her worries about failing to climb as high as she believed she deserved. But the money was his, not theirs. The unspoken power this gave him kept her from asking: Why don't you stay home?

Treat something like a monster and it will certainly learn to become a monster. (pg. 325)

So, this is how Helen of Troy felt.

The strangest thing about drowning is how much it burns.

wir konnen warten. wissen macht frei [we can wait. knowledge liberates]. in these confident words the stalwart Ritter von Schmerling expressed the rationalistic expectations of the political process at the beginning of the liberal era in 1861. at the end of that era, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, scion of a cultivated middle-class family, offered a different formula for political success: politics is magic. he who knows how to summon the forces from the deep, him will they follow.

At best, we conceive happiness; never felicity, prerogative of civilizations based on the idea of salvation, on the refusal to savor one’s sufferings, to revel in them; but, sybarites of suffering, scions of a masochistic tradition, which of us would hesitate between the Benares sermon and Baudelaire’s Heautontimoroumenos? I am both wound and knife”—that is our absolute, our eternity.

When times change, as they inevitably do, one finds it impossible to give up on one’s faith; in fact, one clings to it with renewed vigour. Difficult times make men cling to their faith even more strongly.

You people- you treat us like we are not human. You replace our smiles with blood, our hearts with bullets. You destroy our innocence and our beings. And when you no longer have any use for us, you feed us to the earth.

A king need be judged solely on the basis of what he achieves for his people. His personal life is of no consequence. His public life, though, has one singular purpose: to provide for his people and improve their lives.

Sebastian, the Duke of Kingston, radiated the cool confidence of a man who had been born to privilege. Unlike most British peers, who were disappointingly average, Kingston was dashing and ungodly handsome, with the taut, slim physique pf a man half his age. Known for his shrewd mind and caustic wit, he oversaw a labyrinthine financial empire that included, of all things, a gentlemen's gaming club. If his fellow noblemen expressed private distaste for the vulgarity of owning such an enterprise, none dared criticize him publicly. He was the holder of too many debts, the possessor of too many ruinous secrets. With a few words or strokes of a pen, Kingston could have reduced nearly any proud aristocratic scion to beggary. Unexpectedly, rather sweetly, the duke seemed more than little enamored of his own wife. One of his hands lingered idly at the small of her back, his enjoyment in touching her covert but unmistakable. One could hardly blame him. Evangeline, the duchess, was a spectacularly voluptuous woman with apricot-red hair, and merry blue eyes set in a lightly freckled complexion. She looked warm and radiant, as if she'd been steeped in a long autumn sunset.

Sometimes, you just meet someone who reminds you of why people get up every day, despite the weight of the world pushing against them. When you come across someone who has the strength to keep going, based on something as small as hope. Even though they have nothing good in their lives. You want to be better for them. Sometimes, you meet someone who just makes you want to be a better you. So that maybe one day, you deserve to have their light in your life.

There was a case in which a youth named Haragobinda, scion of the wealthy Basak family of Calcutta, was sentenced to life imprisonment for torturing and raping a minor girl called Kshetramoni. That a boy whose father owned lakhs worth of property could be serving a sentence for raping a poor village girl was unheard of! Girls like Kshetramoni had been bought and sold for twenty or thirty tankas only a few years ago. Natives respected this aspect of British rule

A society should not forget that it thrives on the ideas and performance of the talented among its citizens. If you compromise the prospects of the strong, and lean too much towards the interests of the weak, then your society itself goes into decline.

Emperor Bharat's empire could be described as the apogee of the feminine way of life - of freedom, passion, beauty. At its best, it is compassionate, creative and especially nurturing towards the weak. But as feminine civilisations decline, they tend to become corrupt, irresponsible and decadent. The masculine way of life is defined by truth, duty and honour. At its peak, masculine civilisations are efficient, just and egalitarian. But as they decline, they become fanatical, rigid and especially harsh towards the weak.

Kissing Ajax is like kissing someone in a dream. It’s absolutely perfect and not nearly enough.

I know what it feels like to be robbed of something so precious to you. To feel helpless, broken, like you are not in control of your own body. These people- they thrive on taking power. Over our minds, our bodies, our emotions. They think because we are girls, that we are something to be preyed upon. They are wrong. We are not helpless; we are not broken. Despite what scars they leave behind, our bodies are our own. Everything we feel, everything we are, belongs to us and us alone. Yes, we are girls, but we are not prey. Tonight, we are alive.

You told me that a doctor used hypnotism to treat you, with the result that for a long time you lost the memory of your childhood and youth", he continued. "That is the characteristic—the stigma—of all those who have been 'bitten by the snake of the spiritual realm'. It seems almost as if, inside us, one life has to be grafted onto another, as a scion is grafted onto a wild tree, before the miracle of awakening can occur. The separation that usually comes with death is in our case achieved by erasing the memory, sometimes just by a sudden spiritual about-turn.

We criticise corruption in others, but are blind to our own dishonesty. We hate others who do wrong and commit crimes, blithely ignoring our own misdeeds, big and small. We vehemently blame Raavan for all our ills, refusing to acknowledge that we created the mess we find ourselves in.

…pretty much everything I do is for me. I’m trying to get as much as I can out of it all. Maybe I can leave something of value behind. We’ll see. But I read for me, because there’s no test at the end.

At Abraham's burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier. The text reports their union nearly without comment. "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites." But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished. Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They are brothers. They are mourners. In a sense they are us, forever weeping for the loss of our common father, shuffling through our bitter memories, reclaiming our childlike expectations, laughing, sobbing, furious and full of dreams, wondering about our orphaned future, and demanding the answers we all crave to hear: What did you want from me, Father? What did you leave me with, Father? And what do I do now?

If He is my God, if He picks my side over someone else’s, He is not the One God. The only true One God is the one who picks no sides, who belongs to everything, who doesn’t demand loyalty or fear; in fact, who doesn’t demand anything at all. Because the Ekam just exists; and His existence allows for the existence of all else.

According to a 2006 study, 90 percent of China’s billionaires (calculated in Chinese yuan) are the children of Communist Party officials. Roughly twenty-nine hundred of these party scions—known as “the princelings”—control $260 billion.54 It is a mirror of the corporatist state first pioneered in Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized political force. Today, this collaborative arrangement can be seen in the way that foreign multinational media and technology companies help the Chinese state to spy on its citizens, and to make sure that when students do Web searches on phrases like “Tiananmen Square Massacre,” or even “democracy,” no documents turn up. “The creation of today’s market society was not the result of a sequence of spontaneous events,” writes Wang Hui, “but rather of state interference and violence.

It doesn’t matter anymore. Here and gone. Put up a mural, someone paints over it. it’s not meant to last.” “Then why do it?” “For the few who see it. They really see it, because they know it’s not permanent.” “Like we’re not permanent.

(What counts as that which is is the present, the actual, to which the necessary and the possible are at first merely related—the usual example from the history of the first beginning.) The sheltering is itself carried out in and as Da-sein. That happens, and gains and loses history, in the steadfast care-taking which in advance pertains to the event though scarcely has knowledge of the event. This care-taking, conceived not on the basis of everydayness but from the selfhood of Dasein, abides in various mutually requisite modes: the fabrication of implements, the instituting of machinations (technology), the creation of works, the acts that form states, and thoughtful sacrifice. In all of these, in each one differently, a pre-forming and co-forming of cognition and of essential knowledge as the grounding of truth. “Science” only a remote scion of a determinate permeation of implement-production, etc.; nothing autonomous and never to be brought into connection with the essential knowledge of the inventive thinking of being (philosophy).

Family life, which is the Ashrama of the householder, can also take you in His direction, provided it is accepted as an asrama. Lived in this spirit, it helps man to progress towards Self-realization. Nevertheless, if you hanker after anything such as name, fame or position, God will bestow it on you, but you will not feel satisfied. The Kingdom of God is a whole, and unless you are admitted to the whole of it you cannot remain content. He grants you just a little, only to keep Your discontent alive, for without discontent there can be no progress. You, a scion of the Immortal, can never become reconciled to the realm of death, neither does God allow you to remain in it. He Himself kindles the sense of want in you by granting you a small thing, only to whet your appetite for a greater one. This is His method by which He urges you on. The traveller on this path finds it difficult and feels troubled, but one who has eyes to see can clearly perceive that the pilgrim is advancing. The distress that is experienced burns to ashes all pleasure derived from worldly things. This is what is called ‘tapasya’. What obstructs one on the spiritual path bears within itself seeds of future suffering. Yet the heartache, the anguish over the effects of these obstructions, are the beginning of an awakening to Consciousness.

I do not think men are good at all. I have seen enough to know that humans are a wicked race from their very birth. Selfishness defines us. Greed and lust motivate us. And even the best man who ever lived would lie to preserve his own life or beliefs. No, mankind is far from being essentially good. It takes exceptional individuals to change the world, to make a difference. Give the average person a choice, and he will make life miserable for others if only it will make his own life easier.

The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with a Jesus-like beard, an affinity for Russian literature, and a melancholy sense of humor, such that one afternoon he even “realized” the truth of human mortality, right there in the classroom. He pointed at each of us around the seminar table: “You’re going to die. And you’re going to die. And you’re going to die.” I still remember the expression on the face of one of my classmates, a genial scion of the Kennedy family who always wrote the same story, about a busy corporate lawyer who neglected his wife. The expression was confused.

At first, he was kindly disposed to these men, young as they were, skinny, sometimes shoeless rural boys, most from farms too poor to afford slaves. It had seemed to him an evil fate, a geographical accident, that had forced them to take up arms in what was, to him, a war to secure the rich man’s wealth. Beyond what was strictly required for their care, he would talk to them, to better know their minds. But after a time, he had stopped seeking such dialogue. They were, all of them, lost to a narrative untethered to anything he recognized as true. Their mad conception of Mr. Lincoln as some kind of cloven-hoofed devil’s scion, their complete disregard—denial—of the humanity of the enslaved, their fabulous notions of what evils the Federal government intended for them should their cause fail—all of it was ingrained so deep, beyond the reach of reasonable dialogue or evidence. Scott had become convinced that a total obliteration of their rebellion was the only way forward. And since the drift of things was strong in that direction, he would see it through to the end.

For a long time being female was treated by science and medicine as being akin to having a serious psychological disorder. Women were routinely prescribed hysterectomies or anxiolytics like valium to treat the symptoms of hysteria which is a syndrome with symptoms that are suspiciously similar to the symptoms of being of human female who has to deal with stupid sexist bullshit. Although scions and medicine has come a long way since these sorts of practices were common place every woman i know has had an experience of being treated as less rational version of a man. Sometimes even by our own doctors simply by virtue of our gender. There belief that women are irrational and therefore underserving of the same rights as men is something that has lingered in the public consciousness in a huge way. And women are very aware of this. We have to listen to a lot of people say a lot of dumb shit about our hormones and about whether we deserve the right to control our own fertility. These types of claims particularly when combined with sciences and medicine mishandling of women for so long have made it very difficult for anyone, even female scientists, to have thoughtful conversations about things like women's hormones and fertility regulation. These topics unaddressed by science are often met with suspicion by anyone who has ever owned a pair of ovaries or is an ovarian sympatist.

He told me the story of the butterfly emerging from the hard pupa. Its life begins as an “ugly” caterpillar. When the time is right, it forms a pupa and retreats behind its hard walls. Within its shell, it transforms into a butterfly, unseen, unheard. When ready, it uses its tiny, sharp claws at the base of its forewings to crack a small opening in the hard, protective outer shell. It squeezes through this tiny opening and struggles to make its way out. This is a difficult, painful and prolonged process. Misguided compassion may make us want to enlarge the hole in the pupa, imagining that it would ease the butterfly’s task. But that struggle is necessary; as the butterfly squeezes its body out of the tiny hole, it secretes fluids within its swollen body. This fluid goes to its wings, strengthening them; once they’ve emerged, as the fluid dries, the delicate creatures are able to take flight. Making the hole bigger to “help” the butterfly and ease its struggle will only debilitate it. Without the struggle, its wings would never gain strength. It would never fly.