Superior Man Book Quotes

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.

Rohan, one of us is an unmarried man with superior mathematical abilities and no prospects for the evening. The other is a confirmed lecher in an amorous mood, with a willing and nubile young wife waiting at home. Who do you think should do the damned account books?" And, with a nonchalant wave, St. Vincent had left the office.

A man's bookseller should keep his confidence, like his physician. What can become of a world where every man knows what another man reads? Why, sir, books would become like quacks' potions, with every mountebank in the newspapers claiming one volume's superiority over another.

Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’ ‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’ ‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’ ‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’ ‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.

Man is a mental being, and to know this is the first step on the road to freedom and prosperity, for as long as you believe yourself to be primarily physical, a superior kind of animal, you will remain in bondage—in bondage, that is to say, to your own habits of thought, for there is no other bondage.

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it's collective. Nothing passes into the realm of the collective without leaving at the border--like a toll--most of the intelligence it contained. In youth we're twofold. Our innate intelligence, which may be considerable, coexists with the stupidity of our inexperience, which forms a second, lesser intelligence. Only later on do the two unite. That's why youth always blunders - not because of its inexperience, but because of its non-unity. Today the only course left for the man of superior intelligence is abdication.

Jung said that to be in a situation where there is no way out or to be in a conflict where there is no solution is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution; the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realize that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. . . If he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally, because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God.

71. Rare Things-- A son-in-law who's praised by his wife's father. Likewise, a wife who's loved by her mother-in-law. A pair of silver tweezers that can actually pull out hairs properly. A retainer who doesn't speak ill of his master. A person who is without a single quirk. Someone who's superior in both appearance and character, and who's remained utterly blameless throughout his long dealings with the world. You never find an instance of two people living together who continue to be overawed by each other's excellence and always treat each other with scrupulous care and respect, so such a relationship is obviously a great rarity. Copying out a tale or a volume of poems without smearing any ink on the book you're copying from. If you're copying it from some beautiful bound book, you try to take immense care, but somehow you always manage to get ink on it. Two women, let alone a man and a woman, who vow themselves to each other forever, and actually manage to remain on good terms to the end.

Jung has said that to be in a situation where there is no way out, or to be in a conflict where there is no solution, is the classical beginning of the process of individuation. It is meant to be a situation without solution: the unconscious wants the hopeless conflict in order to put ego-consciousness up against the wall, so that the man has to realise that whatever he does is wrong, whichever way he decides will be wrong. This is meant to knock out the superiority of the ego, which always acts from the illusion that it has the responsibility of decision. Naturally, if a man says, "Oh well, then I shall just let everything go and make no decision, but just protract and wriggle out of [it]," the whole thing is equally wrong, for then naturally nothing happens. But if he is ethical enough to suffer to the core of his personality, then generally because of the insolubility of the conscious situation, the Self manifests. In religious language you could say that the situation without issue is meant to force the man to rely on an act of God. In psychological language the situation without issue, which the anima arranges with great skill in a man's life, is meant to drive him into a condition in which he is capable of experiencing the Self. When thinking of the anima as the soul guide, we are apt to think of Beatrice leading Dante up to Paradise, but we should not forget that he experienced that only after he had gone through Hell. Normally, the anima does not take a man by the hand and lead him right up to Paradise; she puts him first into a hot cauldron where he is nicely roasted for a while.

That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilising natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is?. . . they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.

I was in the fifth grade the first time I thought about turning thirty. My best friend Darcy and I came across a perpetual calendar in the back of the phone book, where you could look up any date in the future, and by using this little grid, determine what the day of the week would be. So we located our birthdays in the following year, mine in May and hers in September. I got Wednesday, a school night. She got a Friday. A small victory, but typical. Darcy was always the lucky one. Her skin tanned more quickly, her hair feathered more easily, and she didn't need braces. Her moonwalk was superior, as were her cart-wheels and her front handsprings (I couldn't handspring at all). She had a better sticker collection. More Michael Jackson pins. Forenze sweaters in turquoise, red, and peach (my mother allowed me none- said they were too trendy and expensive). And a pair of fifty-dollar Guess jeans with zippers at the ankles (ditto). Darcy had double-pierced ears and a sibling- even if it was just a brother, it was better than being an only child as I was. But at least I was a few months older and she would never quite catch up. That's when I decided to check out my thirtieth birthday- in a year so far away that it sounded like science fiction. It fell on a Sunday, which meant that my dashing husband and I would secure a responsible baby-sitter for our two (possibly three) children on that Saturday evening, dine at a fancy French restaurant with cloth napkins, and stay out past midnight, so technically we would be celebrating on my actual birthday. I would have just won a big case- somehow proven that an innocent man didn't do it. And my husband would toast me: "To Rachel, my beautiful wife, the mother of my chidren and the finest lawyer in Indy." I shared my fantasy with Darcy as we discovered that her thirtieth birthday fell on a Monday. Bummer for her. I watched her purse her lips as she processed this information. "You know, Rachel, who cares what day of the week we turn thirty?" she said, shrugging a smooth, olive shoulder. "We'll be old by then. Birthdays don't matter when you get that old." I thought of my parents, who were in their thirties, and their lackluster approach to their own birthdays. My dad had just given my mom a toaster for her birthday because ours broke the week before. The new one toasted four slices at a time instead of just two. It wasn't much of a gift. But my mom had seemed pleased enough with her new appliance; nowhere did I detect the disappointment that I felt when my Christmas stash didn't quite meet expectations. So Darcy was probably right. Fun stuff like birthdays wouldn't matter as much by the time we reached thirty. The next time I really thought about being thirty was our senior year in high school, when Darcy and I started watching ths show Thirty Something together. It wasn't our favorite- we preferred cheerful sit-coms like Who's the Boss? and Growing Pains- but we watched it anyway. My big problem with Thirty Something was the whiny characters and their depressing issues that they seemed to bring upon themselves. I remember thinking that they should grow up, suck it up. Stop pondering the meaning of life and start making grocery lists. That was back when I thought my teenage years were dragging and my twenties would surealy last forever. Then I reached my twenties. And the early twenties did seem to last forever. When I heard acquaintances a few years older lament the end of their youth, I felt smug, not yet in the danger zone myself. I had plenty of time..

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twister pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities — all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.

Every category has its snobs: music, books, movies. There are so many things a man is only pressured into liking or disliking.

Clouds rise up to heaven: The image of WAITING. Thus the superior man eats and drinks, is joyous and of good cheer.

Mr. Blake idly turned over the books on his bedroom table. I had taken the precaution of looking at them, when we first entered the room. THE GUARDIAN; THE TATLER; Richardson's PAMELA; Mackenzie's MAN OF FEELING; Roscoe's LORENZO DE MEDICI; and Robertson's CHARLES THE FIFTH—all classical works; all (of course) immeasurably superior to anything produced in later times; and all (from my present point of view) possessing the one great merit of enchaining nobody's interest, and exciting nobody's brain. I left Mr. Blake to the composing influence of Standard Literature, and occupied myself in making this entry in my journal.

It was not an esthetic room. Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.

But our superiority is not the kind that many dreamers have imagined we have. The dreamer isn’t superior to the active man because dreaming is superior to reality. The dreamer’s superiority is due to the fact that dreaming is much more practical than living, and the dreamer gets far greater and more varied pleasure out of life than the man of action. In other and plainer words, the dreamer is the true man of action.

But what I would like to know," says Albert, "is whether there would not have been a war if the Kaiser had said No." "I'm sure there would," I interject, "he was against it from the first." "Well, if not him alone, then perhaps if twenty or thirty people in the world had said No." "That's probable," I agree, "but they damned well said Yes." "It's queer, when one thinks about it," goes on Kropp, "we are here to protect our fatherland. And the French are over there to protect their fatherland. Now who's in the right?" "Perhaps both," say I without believing it. "Yes, well now," pursues Albert, and I see that he means to drive me into a corner, "but our professors and parsons and newspapers say that we are the only ones that are right, and let's hope so;--but the French professors and parsons and newspapers say that the right is on their side, now what about that?" "That I don't know," I say, "but whichever way it is there's war all the same and every month more countries coming in." Tjaden reappears. He is still quite excited and again joins the conversation, wondering just how a war gets started. "Mostly by one country badly offending another," answers Albert with a slight air of superiority. Then Tjaden pretends to be obtuse. "A country? I don't follow. A mountain in Germany cannot offend a mountain in France. Or a river, or a wood, or a field of wheat." "Are you really as stupid as that, or are you just pulling my leg?" growls Kropp, "I don't mean that at all. One people offends the other--" "Then I haven't any business here at all," replies Tjaden, "I don't feel myself offended." "Well, let me tell you," says Albert sourly, "it doesn't apply to tramps like you." "Then I can be going home right away," retorts Tjaden, and we all laugh, "Ach, man! he means the people as a whole, the State--" exclaims Mller. "State, State"--Tjaden snaps his fingers contemptuously, "Gendarmes, police, taxes, that's your State;--if that's what you are talking about, no, thank you." "That's right," says Kat, "you've said something for once, Tjaden. State and home-country, there's a big difference." "But they go together," insists Kropp, "without the State there wouldn't be any home-country." "True, but just you consider, almost all of us are simple folk. And in France, too, the majority of men are labourers, workmen, or poor clerks. Now just why would a French blacksmith or a French shoemaker want to attack us? No, it is merely the rulers. I had never seen a Frenchman before I came here, and it will be just the same with the majority of Frenchmen as regards us. They weren't asked about it any more than we were." "Then what exactly is the war for?" asks Tjaden. Kat shrugs his shoulders. "There must be some people to whom the war is useful." "Well, I'm not one of them," grins Tjaden. "Not you, nor anybody else here." "Who are they then?" persists Tjaden. "It isn't any use to the Kaiser either. He has everything he can want already." "I'm not so sure about that," contradicts Kat, "he has not had a war up till now. And every full-grown emperor requires at least one war, otherwise he would not become famous. You look in your school books." "And generals too," adds Detering, "they become famous through war." "Even more famous than emperors," adds Kat. "There are other people back behind there who profit by the war, that's certain," growls Detering. "I think it is more of a kind of fever," says Albert. "No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn't want the war, the others say the same thing--and yet half the world is in it all the same.

All of life’s unpleasant experiences – when we make fools of ourselves, act thoughtlessly, or lapse in our observance of some virtue – should be regarded as mere external accidents which can’t affect the substance of our soul. We should see them as toothaches or calluses of life, as things that bother us but remain outside us (even though they’re ours), or that only our organic existence need consider and our vital functions worry about. When we achieve this attitude, which in essence is that of the mystics, we’re protected not only from the world but also from ourselves, for we’ve conquered what is foreign in us, contrary and external to us, and therefore our enemy. Horace said* that the just man will remain undaunted, even if the world crumbles all around him. Although the image is absurd, the point is valid. Even if what we pretend to be (because we coexist with others) crumbles around us, we should remain undaunted – not because we’re just, but because we’re ourselves, and to be ourselves means having nothing to do with external things that crumble, even if they crumble right on top of what for them we are. For superior men, life should, life should be a dream that spurns confrontations.

There was one novel above all others, Knight said, that sparked in him the rare and unnerving sensation that writer was reaching through time and speaking directly to him: Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. "I recognize myself in the main character," he said, referring to the angry and misanthropic narrator, who has lived apart form all others for about twenty years. The book's opening lines are: "I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man I am an unattractive man." Knight also expressed no shortage of self-loathing, but it was offset by a fierce pride, as well as an occasional trace of superiority. So, too, with the unnamed narrator of Underground . On the final page of the book, the narrator drops all humbleness and says what he feels: "I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you.

If a man is not superior to his education, is not larger than his crutches or his helps, if he is not greater than the means of his culture, which are but the sign-boards pointing the way to success, he will never reach greatness. Not

THE ONLY superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man.

Cronos, then lord of the world, knew that no mortal nature could endure the temptations of power, and therefore he appointed demons or demi-gods, who are of a superior race, to have dominion over man, as man has dominion over the animals

Lincoln found himself in a stifling courtroom one hot summer day, pleading his client’s case. The opposing lawyer, in a concession to the oppressive heat, took off his coat and vest as the debate went on. The man’s shirt had its buttons in the back, a style which was unusual even then. Lincoln looked at his opponent and sized up the man’s apparel. Knowing that the rural jury disliked pretension of any kind, or any attempt to show superior social rank, he said: "Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don't think you will be at all influenced by the gentleman's pretended knowledge of the law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front." The jury burst into laughter, and Lincoln won the case.

[Speaking to a group of female students] Have you any notion how many books are written [by men] about women in the course of one year? (...) Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? (...) Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women (...) were very angry (...) as they wrote (...) about the mental, moral, and physical inferiority of women. (...) Why were they angry? (...) Possibly when the professor [imagined by V. Woolf as a prototype of patriarchal writer] insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. (...) Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch (...) of feeling that great number of people, half the human race indeed [=women], are by nature inferior to himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. (…) That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished (…) A Room of One´s Own, chapter 2

Humanity fears no rivals. You have forgotten what it was to share the world with creatures as arrogantly superior as yourselves. You think to arrange the world to your liking. So you map the land and draw lines across it, claiming ownership simply because you can draw a picture of it. The plants that grow and the beasts that rove, you mark as your own, claiming not only what lives today, but what might grow tomorrow, to do with as you please. Then, in your conceit and aggression, you wage wars and slay one another over the lines you have imagined on the world’s face.

The Washington regime’s leading internal thesis-which has not changed since 1933-is that Americans must be “tolerant” of the alien elements (which now number roughly 50% of the population), since, after all, these aliens are “brothers.” “Brotherhood” is glorified on all public occasions, by all public officials, is taught in the schools and preached in the churches, which have been coordinated into the master-plan of the Culturally-alien Washington regime. Newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, films-all vomit forth the same “Brotherhood.” The “Brotherhood” propaganda is a ghastly caricature of the Christian idea of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, but there is no religious intent to the propaganda. Its sole purpose is to destroy whatever exclusiveness, national feelings, or racial instincts may still remain in the American population after twenty years of national leprosy. The result of the “tolerance” and “brotherhood” campaign is that the alien enjoys a superior position in America-he can demand to be “tolerated.” The American can demand nothing. The tragic fact is that the attenuation of the national instincts has proceeded so far that one cannot envisage how a Nationalist Revolution would be even possible in America.

The course (of duty), virtue, benevolence, and righteousness cannot be fully carried out without the rules of propriety; nor are training and oral lessons for the rectification of manners complete; nor can the clearing up of quarrels and discriminating in disputes be accomplished; nor can (the duties between) ruler and minister, high and low, father and son, elder brother and younger, be determined; nor can students for office and (other) learners, in serving their masters, have an attachment for them; nor can majesty and dignity be shown in assigning the different places at court, in the government of the armies, and in discharging the duties of office so as to secure the operation of the laws; nor can there be the (proper) sincerity and gravity in presenting the offerings to spiritual Beings on occasions of supplication, thanksgiving, and the various sacrifices. Therefore the superior man is respectful and reverent, assiduous in his duties and not going beyond them, retiring and yielding - thus illustrating (the principle of) propriety.

But when Trump emerged from the primary, Bennett characterized those Republicans not supporting Trump as not team players who “suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country.”22 What has changed? If he believed what he wrote in The Book of Virtues that “it is our character that supports the promise of our future—far more than particular government programs or policies,” if he believed what he wrote about Bill Clinton that “a president whose character manifests itself in patterns of reckless personal conduct…cannot be a good president,” how can Bennett support a man who brags about assaulting women and directs his own son to write checks to reimburse his lawyer Michael Cohen for hush payments to a porn star?

(Corinthian:) Many schemes which were ill-advised have succeeded through the still greater folly which possessed the enemy,and yet more, which seemed to be wisely contrived, have ended in foul disaster. The execution of an enterprise is never equal to the conception of it in the confident mind of its promoter; for men are safe while they are forming plans,but, when the time of action comes, then they lose their presence of mind and fail. We, however, do not make war upon the Athenians in a spirit of vain-glory, but from a sense of wrong; there is ample justification, and when we obtain redress, we will put up the sword. For every reason we are likely to succeed. First, because we are superior in numbers and in military skill; secondly, because we all obey as one man the orders given to us. (Book 1 Chapter 120.5-121.2)

(Peloponnesian Generals:) In that battle (cf. B2C83-84) we were, as you know, ill-prepared, and our whole expedition had a military and not a naval object. Fortune was in many ways unpropitious to us, and this being our first sea-fight we may possibly have suffered a little from inexperience. The defeat which ensued was not the result of cowardice; nor should the unconquerable quality which is inherent in our minds, and refuses to acknowledge the victory of mere force, be depressed by the accident of the event. For though fortune may sometimes bring disaster, yet the spirit of a brave man is always the same, and while he retains his courage he will never allow inexperience to be an excuse for misbehaviour. And whatever be your own inexperience, it is more than compensated by your superiority in valour. (Book 2 Chapter 87.2-3)

(Pericles:) If you are still unsatisfied I will indicate one element of your superiority which appears to have escaped you, although it nearly touches your imperial greatness. I too have never mentioned it before, nor would I now, because the claim may seem too arrogant, if I did not see that you are unreasonably depressed. You think that your empire is confined to your allies, but I say that of the two divisions of the world accessible to man, the land and the sea, there is one of which you are absolute masters, and have, or may have, the dominion to any extent which you please. Neither the great King nor any nation on earth can hinder a navy like yours from penetrating whithersoever you choose to sail. When we reflect on this great power, houses and lands, of which the loss seems so dreadful to you, are as nothing. (Book 2 Chapter 62.1-2)

Abraham Ellison dipped his sword in the pool and the red from the blood floated ominously across the water’s surface. He had been waiting all night for his vampire to arise from his 100th death and take his place among the ranks of the mortals. There was no discussion, no words of parting, or speeches of regret, as Ellison held his former superior’s head and made a powerful cut to his new life - a life of solitude as a normal man living on his own terms.

This is surely the main problem of the twentieth century: is it permissible merely to carry out orders and commit one's conscience to someone else's keeping? Can a man do without ideas of his own about good and evil, and merely derive them from the printed instructions and verbal orders of his superiors? Oaths! Those solemn pledges pronounced with a tremor in the voice and intended to defend people against the evildoers: see how easily they can be misdirected to the service of the evildoers and against the people!

Discreet as you are, Rohan, one can’t help but notice how ardently you are pursued. It seems you hold quite an appeal for the ladies of London. And from all appearances, you’ve taken full advantage of what’s been offered.” Cam stared at him without expression. “Pardon, but are you leading to an actual point, my lord?” Leaning back in his chair, St. Vincent made a temple of his elegant hands and regarded Cam steadily. “Since you’ve had no problem with lack of desire in the past, I can only assume that, as happens with other appetites, yours has been sated with an overabundance of sameness. A bit of novelty may be just the thing.” Considering the statement, which actually made sense, Cam wondered if the notorious former rake had ever been tempted to stray. Having known Evie since childhood, when she had come to visit her widowed father at the club from time to time, Cam felt as protective of her as if she’d been his younger sister. No one would have paired the gentle-natured Evie with such a libertine. And perhaps no one had been as surprised as St. Vincent himself to discover their marriage of convenience had turned into a passionate love match. “What of married life?” Cam asked softly. “Does it eventually become an overabundance of sameness?” St. Vincent’s expression changed, the light blue eyes warming at the thought of his wife. “It has become clear to me that with the right woman, one can never have enough. I would welcome an overabundance of such bliss—but I doubt such a thing is mortally possible.” Closing the account book with a decisive thud, he stood from the desk. “If you’ll excuse me, Rohan, I’ll bid you good night.” “What about finishing the accounting?” “I’ll leave the rest in your capable hands.” At Cam’s scowl, St. Vincent shrugged innocently. “Rohan, one of us is an unmarried man with superior mathematical abilities and no prospects for the evening. The other is a confirmed lecher in an amorous mood, with a willing and nubile young wife waiting at home. Who do you think should do the damned account books?” And, with a nonchalant wave, St. Vincent had left the office.

Walter came from a strong line of self-motivated, determined folk: not grand, not high-society, but no-nonsense, family-minded, go-getters. His grandfather had been Samuel Smiles, who, in 1859, authored the original motivational book, titled Self-Help. It was a landmark work, and an instant bestseller, even outselling Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species when it was first launched. Samuel’s book Self-Help also made plain the mantra that hard work and perseverance were the keys to personal progress. At a time in Victorian society where, as an Englishman, the world was your oyster if you had the get-up-and-go to make things happen, his book Self-Help struck a chord. It became the ultimate Victorian how-to guide, empowering the everyday person to reach for the sky. And at its heart it said that nobility is not a birthright but is defined by our actions. It laid bare the simple but unspoken secrets for living a meaningful, fulfilling life, and it defined a gentleman in terms of character not blood type. Riches and rank have no necessary connection with genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit. To borrow St. Paul’s words, the former is as “having nothing, yet possessing all things,” while the other, though possessing all things, has nothing. Only the poor in spirit are really poor. He who has lost all, but retains his courage, cheerfulness, hope, virtue, and self-respect, is still rich. These were revolutionary words to Victorian, aristocratic, class-ridden England. To drive the point home (and no doubt prick a few hereditary aristocratic egos along the way), Samuel made the point again that being a gentleman is something that has to be earned: “There is no free pass to greatness.

What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him.

Man lived like Gods, without vices or passions, vexation or toil. In happy companionship with divine beings (extraterrestrials?), they passed their days in tranquillity and joy, living together in perfect equality, united by mutual confidence and love. The Earth was more beautiful than now, and spontaneously yielded an abundant variety of fruits. Human beings and animals spoke the same language and conversed with each other (telepathy). Men were considered mere boys at a hundred years old. They had none of the infirmities of age to trouble them and when they passed to regions of superior life, it was in a gentle slumber.

4Paul Gaydos My Books Browse ▾ Community ▾ The Way of the Superior Man Quotes The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to... by David Deida Read Austerity means to eliminate the comforts and cushions in your life that you have learned to snuggle into and lose wakefulness. Take away anything that dulls your edge. No newspapers or magazines. No TV. No candy, cookies, or sweets. No sex. No cuddling. No reading of anything at all while you eat or sit on the toilet. Reduce working time to a necessary minimum. No movies. No conversation that isn't about truth, love, or the divine. If you take on these disciplines for a few weeks, as well as any other disciplines that may particularly cut through your unique habits of dullness, then your life will be stripped of routine distraction. All that will be left is the edge you have been avoiding by means of your daily routine. You will have to face the basic discomfort and dissatisfaction that is the hidden texture of your life. You will be alive with the challenge of living your truth, rather than hiding form it. Unadorned suffering is the bedmate of masculine growth. Only by staying intimate with your personal suffering can you feel through it to its source. By putting all your attention into work, TV, sex, and reading, your suffering remains unpenetrated, and the source remains hidden. Your life becomes structured entirely by your favorite means of sidestepping the suffering you rarely allow yourself to feel. And when you do touch the surface of your suffering, perhaps in the form of boredom, you quickly pick up a magazine or the remote control. Instead, feel your suffering, rest with it, embrace it, make love with it. Feel your suffering so deeply and thoroughly that you penetrate it, and realize its fearful foundation. Almost everything you do, you do because you are afraid to die. And yet dying is exactly what you are doing, from the moment you are born. Two hours of absorption in a good Super Bowl telecast may distract you temporarily, but the fact remains. You were born as a sacrifice. And you can either participate in the sacrifice, dissolving in the giving of your gift, or you can resist it, which is your suffering. By eliminating the safety net of comforts in your life, you have the opportunity to free fall in this moment between birth and death, right through the hole of your fear, into the unthreatenable openness which is the source of your gifts. The superior man lives as this spontaneous sacrifice of love.

Women are doers. Women are human. Women are feelers. Women are thinkers. Women are more than objects. Women deserve softness and support. Women owe no explanation for our rightful nature. Women should govern their own bodies, minds, and hearts. Women deserve grace from everyone in their lives, including self. Women are the most fragile beings on the planet and should be treated as such. Women are the superior gender. Put a man in our shoes and his ankles will bleed. Women’s femininity is a direct reflection of the masculine energy that surrounds them. Without women, life isn’t possible. The quicker the world remembers that, the better the world will be.

there remains nothing to hinder the belief that the   devout Levite of Cyprus, the early convert to Christianity while still   in strong sympathy with the Christian Jews, the man of benevolence and   wealth, and therefore probably of education, by birth the appointed   servant of the temple, the man of independence and dignity, and yet of   such tender sympathy as to be surnamed "Son of consolation," the long   and intimate companion of St. Paul, and for years in the position of   his superior,--there is nothing to hinder the acceptance of the early   ecclesiastical statement that he was also the author of the Epistle to   the Hebrews.    Frederic Gardiner.    

His little piece-of-crap loft didn’t have books or movies, but he had a metric shit ton of weapons and ammo. He opened the door to the closet he’d made into his own private supply shop. Jake whistled. “Is that C-4? Are you fucking kidding me?” Jesse shrugged. Everyone needed a hobby. “I like to be prepared, sir.” “We’re not your superior officers, man. It’s just Jake.” Jake practically salivated. “Is that a fucking P90?” Jake caressed the Belgian made submachine gun. It was highly restricted. Jesse had spent a lot of money buying it on the black market. “You can take it. It might come in handy.” God, he sounded like a five-year-old trying to make a friend. Sean nabbed his SR-25 and an extra cartridge. “This should do it.

If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a roccoco style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.

The whole point of education is that it should give a man abstract and eternal standards, by which he can judge material and fugitive conditions. If the citizen is to be a reformer, he must start with some ideal which he does not obtain merely by gazing reverently at the unreformed institutions. And if any one asks, as so many are asking: 'What is the use of my son learning all about ancient Athens and remote China and medieval guilds and monasteries, and all sorts of dead or distant things, when he is going to be a superior scientific plumber in Pimlico?' the answer is obvious enough. 'The use of it is that he may have some power of comparison, which will not only prevent him from supposing that Pimlico covers the whole planet, but also enable him, while doing full credit to the beauties and virtues of Pimlico, to point out that, here and there, as revealed by alternative experiments, even Pimlico may conceal somewhere a defect.

What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him. As the Collector pored over his manuals, from time to time rubbing his tired eyes, he knew that he was using science and progress to help him out of his difficulties and he was pleased. The inventions on his desk, the carriage which supplied its own track and the effervescent drinking vessel, watched him in silent admiration as he worked. The

The key point here is Macaulay’s belief that “knowledge and reflection” on the part of the Hindus, especially the Brahmanas, would cause them to give up their age-old belief in anything Vedic in favor of Christianity. The purpose was to turn the strength of Hindu intellectuals against their own kind by utilizing their commitment to scholarship in uprooting their own tradition, which Macaulay viewed as nothing more than superstitions. His plan was to educate the Hindus to become Christians and turn them into collaborators. He persisted with this idea for fifteen years until he found the money and the right man for turning his utopian idea into reality. He needed someone who would translate and interpret the Vedic texts in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see the superiority of the Bible and choose that over everything else. Upon his return to England, after a good deal of effort he found a talented but impoverished young German Vedic scholar by name Friedrich Max Muller who was willing to take on the arduous job. Macaulay used his influence with the East India Company to find funds for Max Muller’s translation of the Rig Veda. Though an ardent German nationalist, Max Muller agreed for the sake of Christianity to work for the East India Company, which in reality meant the British Government of India. He also badly needed a major sponsor for his ambitious plans, which he felt he had at last found. The fact is that Max Muller was paid by the East India Company to further its colonial aims, and worked in cooperation with others who were motivated by the superiority of the German race through the white Aryan race theory. This was the genesis of his great enterprise, translating the Rig Veda with Sayana's commentary and the editing of the fifty-volume Sacred Books of the East. In this way, there can be no doubt regarding Max Muller’s initial aim and commitment to converting Indians to Christianity. Writing to his wife in 1866 he observed: “It [the Rig Veda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.” Two years later he also wrote the Duke of Argyle, then acting Secretary of State for India: “The ancient religion of India is doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?” This makes it very clear that Max Muller was an agent of the British government paid to advance its colonial interests. Nonetheless, he still remained an ardent German nationalist even while working in England. This helps explain why he used his position as a recognized Vedic and Sanskrit scholar to promote the idea of the “Aryan race” and the “Aryan nation,” a theory amongst a certain class of so-called scholars, which has maintained its influence even until today.

And what books should we so read? The principle which has never failed to confer superiority on a man's thinking activity is the well-worn precept: DO NOT READ GOOD BOOKS—life is too short for that—ONLY READ THE BEST. This simple recipe is as infallible as good air and good food are in physical hygiene. Yet, it is a fact that nineteen out of twenty modern people quake away from it. "Masterpieces again," they groan, "The Aeneid, the Divina Commedia, Paradise Lost, we have heard that before: much rather be ordinary than bored." The notion that masterpieces are boresome school books interpreted by dull teachers, or examination stuff, is a marvellous product of education. Ignorance is assuredly less deadly, for it can create no such inferiority complex as the schoolboy's notion of his lack of kinship with the best literature. But this phantasm can easily be exorcised if we modify the above principle to: ONLY READ WHAT GIVES YOU THE GREATEST PLEASURE.

In the midst of all this talk about husbands and babies, we mustn’t forget about finding a gentleman for Daisy.” The dark-haired girl sent her an affectionate grin. “You’re a dear, Evie. And I don’t mind having waited for my turn. After all, someone had to be the last wallflower. But I am beginning to wonder if I’ll ever find a suitable man to marry.” “Of course you will,” Annabelle said reasonably. “I don’t foresee any difficulty, Daisy. We’ve all broadened our circle of acquaintances quite a bit, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to find the perfect husband for you.” “Just keep in mind that I don’t want to marry a man like LordWestcliff,” Daisy said. “Too overbearing. And not one like Lord St.Vincent either. Too unpredictable.” “What about one like Mr. Hunt?” Annabelle asked. Daisy shook her head firmly. “Too tall.” “You’re becoming a bit particular, aren’t you?” Annabelle pointed out mildly, her eyes twinkling. “Not in the least! My expectations are quite reasonable. I want a nice man who likes long walks, and books, and is adored by dogs, children—” “And all the superior forms of aquatic and plant life,” Lillian said dryly. “Tell me, dear, where are we to find this paragon?” “Not at any of the balls I’ve been to so far,” came Daisy’s glum reply.

Therefore, it is not off the point if, along with the forgotten feminine principles, there are no longer good carpets at the kings court and they need one, for they have again to find the pattern in of life. In this way the story tells us that the subtlety of the inventions of the unconscious and the secret design woven into a human life are infinitely more intelligent than human consciousness and more subtle and superior than man could invent. One is again and again overwhelmed by the genius of that unknown mysterious something in our psyche which is the inventor of our dreams, It picks elements from day impressions, from something the dreamer has read the evening before in the paper, or from a childhood memory, and makes a nice kind of potpourri out of it, and only when you have interpreted its meaning do you see the subtlety and the genius of each dream composition. Every night we have that carpet weaver at work within us, who makes those fantastically subtle patterns, so subtle that, unfortunately often after an hour's attempt to interpret them, we are unable to find out the meaning. We are just too clumsy and stupid to follow up the genius of that unknown spirit of the unconscious which invents dreams. But we can understand that this carpet is more subtly woven than any human could ever achieve.

Danae and the God of Gold. — Whence arises this excessive impatience in our day which turns men into criminals even in circumstances which would be more likely to bring about the contrary tendency? What induces one man to use false weights, another to set his house on fire after having insured it for more than its value, a third to take part in counterfeiting, while three-fourths of our upper classes indulge in legalised fraud, and suffer from the pangs of conscience that follow speculation and dealings on the Stock Exchange: what gives rise to all this? It is not real want, — for their existence is by no means precarious; perhaps they have even enough to eat and drink without worrying, — but they are urged on day and night by a terrible impatience at seeing their wealth pile up so slowly, and by an equally terrible longing and love for these heaps of gold. In this impatience and love, however, we see re-appear once more that fanaticism of the desire for power which was stimulated in former times by the belief that we were in the possession of truth, a fanaticism which bore such beautiful names that we could dare to be inhuman with a good conscience (burning Jews, heretics, and good books, and exterminating entire cultures superior to ours, such as those of Peru and Mexico). The means of this desire for power are changed in our day, but the same volcano is still smouldering, impatience and intemperate love call for their victims, and what was once done “for the love of God” is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience.

There would seem to be only one question for philosophy to resolve: what must I do? Despite being combined with an enormous amount of unnecessary confusion, answers to the question have at any rate been given within the philosophical tradition of the Christian nations. For example, in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, or in Spinoza, Schopenhauer and especially Rousseau. But in more recent times, since Hegel's assertion that all that exists is reasonable, the question of what one must do has been pushed to the background and philosophy has directed its whole attention to the investigation of things as they are, and to fitting them into a prearranged theory. This was the first step backwards. The second step, degrading human thought yet further, was the acceptance of the struggle for existence as a basic law, simply because that struggle can be observed among animals and plants. According to this theory the destruction of the weakest is a law which should not be opposed. And finally, the third step was taken when the childish originality of Nietzche's half-crazed thought, presenting nothing complete or coherent, but only various drafts of immoral and completely unsubstantiated ideas, was accepted by the leading figures as the final word in philosophical science. In reply to the question: what must we do? the answer is now put straightforwardly as: live as you like, without paying attention to the lives of others. Turgenev made the witty remark that there are inverse platitudes, which are frequently employed by people lacking in talent who wish to attract attention to themselves. Everyone knows, for instance, that water is wet, and someone suddenly says, very seriously, that water is dry, not that ice is, but that water is dry, and the conviction with which this is stated attracts attention. Similarly, the whole world knows that virtue consists in the subjugation of one's passions, or in self-renunciation. It is not just the Christian world, against whom Nietzsche howls, that knows this, but it is an eternal supreme law towards which all humanity has developed, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism and the ancient Persian religion. And suddenly a man appears who declares that he is convinced that self-renunciation, meekness, submissiveness and love are all vices that destroy humanity (he has in mind Christianity, ignoring all the other religions). One can understand why such a declaration baffled people at first. But after giving it a little thought and failing to find any proof of the strange propositions, any rational person ought to throw the books aside and wonder if there is any kind of rubbish that would not find a publisher today. But this has not happened with Nietzsche's books. The majority of pseudo-enlightened people seriously look into the theory of the superman, and acknowledge its author to be a great philosopher, a descendant of Descartes, Leibniz and Kant. And all this has come about because the majority of the pseudo-enlightened men of today object to any reminder of virtue, or to its chief premise: self-renunciation and love - virtues that restrain and condemn the animal side of their life. They gladly welcome a doctrine, however incoherently and disjointedly expressed, of egotism and cruelty, sanctioning the ideas of personal happiness and superiority over the lives of others, by which they live.

And indeed, much of the evidence presented in this book so far would appear to confirm this. From the Boeing executives who built faulty planes, to the Goldman Sachs analysts who lied to their clients before being bailed out by the taxpayer, the capitalist class seems to provide the best evidence that society is made up of innately selfish individuals whose cooperative impulses extend, at best, to their immediate family and friends. But this view is highly one-sided. As we will see in this chapter, people are capable of amazing feats of ingenuity, compassion, and cooperation -even in a social order as brutal and competitive as our own. Capitalism, of course, rewards the opposite behavior: ruthlessness, competitiveness, and self-interest. No wonder these are the behaviors we see most prominently on display at the top of our society. And those at the top are precisely those who benefit from the belief that everyone is just like them. You don't have to look particularly hard to find the view of humanity as inherently selfish repeated by those in positions of authority. The managers at Lucas Aerospace certainly shared this view. And it is no coincidence that Golding was a schoolmaster -he was probably quite used to being disobeyed by his students, and likely saw this as an indication of man's inherent selfishness. But disobedience to authority is not an indication of selfishness; it's an assertion of an individual's autonomy. In fact, the willingness to disobey is precisely what separates genuinely civilized societies from barbarous ones. One only has to listen to the testimony at the Nuremberg trials to see what can happen when people unquestionably obey their superiors.

The passion for truth and justice often gives those who experience it a start. Those who experience it? But surely to desire truth and justice is the same thing as to be a man, to be human. However unequally distributed such a passion may be, it marks the extent to which each man is human – to which human dignity is due to him. Marcel Proust wrote in Jean Santeuil: It is always with a joyful and positive emotion that we hear those bold statements made by men of science who, for a mere question of professional honour, come to tell the truth – a truth which only interests them because it is true, and which they have to cherish in their art without hesitating to displease those who see it in a very different light and who regard it as part of a mass of considerations which interest them very little.1 The style and the content of this passage are very different from A la Recherche du temps perdu. Yet, in the same book, the style changes, but not the thought: What moves us so much in Phaedo is that, as we follow Socrates’ arguments, we suddenly have the extraordinary feeling that we are listening to an argument whose purity is unaltered by any personal desire. We feel as if truth were superior to everything, because we realise that the conclusion that Socrates is going to draw is that he must die.2 Marcel Proust wrote about the Dreyfus case around 1900. His dreyfusard sympathies are known to us all, but after A la Recherche du temps perdu, written ten years later, he lost his ingenuous aggressiveness. We ourselves have also lost that simplicity. The same passion may occasionally arouse us, but, on the whole, we are too tired, too indifferent. A Dreyfus case in our day would probably cause little stir …

What about childhood? What did you like to do?” I ask, fishing for any commonality now. “Take pictures of moss. Collect stickers. Pretend that the sticks I found were a wand, and I was Hermione Granger.” I pause and glance at her. “You’re a Potter head?” She grips the edge of the table. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, please tell me that you’re a Potter head as well.” “Eh, not so much.” She groans. “Ughhh, really?” “No, I actually am.” “Stop, are you?” she asks. “Yes, and I read some of the books when they were first released. That’s how old I am compared to you. I have some first editions.” “You’re a liar,” she yells, excitement bustling in her eyes. “Seriously?” “Yes, they’re my prized possessions. Have you been to Harry Potter World?” “No,” she bemoans. “But when I graduate, I plan on going. I’m assuming since you’re rich and can do whatever you want when you’re not playing, you’ve been?” “I have.” “Is the butter beer everything I think it would be?” “And then some,” I answer. “Harry Potter World is probably one of the best things that has ever happened to fandom. It feels so real.” “Urrghh, I’m so jealous. Did you get sorted into a house?” “Yeah, Gryffindor.” “Of course. You seem like an overachiever. I know I’m Hufflepuff through and through, and I’m damn proud of it.” “Do you ever feel bad for people who get Ravenclaw?” I ask. “No one ever talks about it. Gryffindor is clearly superior, Slytherin has its own merit because it’s evil, and then Hufflepuff is for all the fun-loving people. What about Ravenclaw?” “You know, now that you mentioned it, I don’t think I ever hear anyone claim they’re from Ravenclaw. That’s sad.” “It is.” She tilts her head to the side. “I think we figured out what we bonded over.

From Life, Volume III, by Unspiek, Baron Bodissey: I am constantly startled and often amused by the diverse attitudes toward wealth to be found among the peoples of the Oikumene. Some societies equate affluence with criminal skill; for others wealth represents the gratitude of society for the performance of valuable services. My own concepts in this regard are easy and clear, and I am sure that the word ‘simplistic’ will be used by my critics. These folk are callow and turgid of intellect; I am reassured by their howls and yelps. For present purposes I exclude criminal wealth, the garnering of which needs no elaboration, and a gambler’s wealth which is tinsel. In regard, then, to wealth: Luxury and privilege are the perquisites of wealth. This would appear a notably bland remark, but is much larger than it seems. If one listens closely, he hears deep and far below the mournful chime of inevitability. To achieve wealth, one generally must thoroughly exploit at least three of the following five attributes: Luck. Toil, persistence, courage. Self-denial. Short-range intelligence: cunning, improvisational ability. Long-range intelligence: planning, the perception of trends. These attributes are common; anyone desiring privilege and luxury can gain the precursory wealth by making proper use of his native competence. In some societies poverty is considered a pathetic misfortune, or noble abnegation, hurriedly to be remedied by use of public funds. Other more stalwart societies think of poverty as a measure of the man himself. The critics respond: What an unutterable ass is this fellow Unspiek! I am reduced to making furious scratches and crotchets with my pen! — Lionel Wistofer, in The Monstrator I am poor; I admit it! Am I then a churl or a noddy? I deny it with all the vehemence of my soul! I take my bite of seed-cake and my sip of tea with the same relish as any paunchy plutocrat with bulging eyes and grease running from his mouth as he engulfs ortolans in brandy, Krokinole oysters, filet of Darango Five-Horn! My wealth is my shelf of books! My privileges are my dreams! — Sistie Fael, in The Outlook … He moves me to tooth-chattering wrath; he has inflicted upon me, personally, a barrage of sheer piffle, and maundering insult which cries out to the Heavens for atonement. I will thrust my fist down his loquacious maw; better, I will horsewhip him on the steps of his club. If he has no club, I hereby invite him to the broad and convenient steps of the Senior Quill-drivers, although I must say that the Inksters maintain a superior bar, and this shall be my choice since, after trouncing the old fool, I will undoubtedly ask him in for a drink. — McFarquhar Kenshaw, in The Gaean

Today I had a lively discussion with a merchant in Fez with a view to finding out what the Moors think of European civilization.... He was a fine man, about forty years old, with an honest and serious face, who had made business visits to the most important cities in Western Europe and had lived for a long time in Tangier, where he learnt Spanish.... I asked him therefore what kind of impression the large cities of Europe had made on him.... He looked hard at me and answered coldly: “Large streets, fine shops, beautiful palaces, good workshops, everything clean.” He gave the impression that with these words, he had mentioned everything in our countries that was worthy of praise. “Have you not found anything else in Europe that is beautiful and good?” I asked. He looked at me questioningly. “Is it possible,” I went on, “that an intelligent man like you, who has visited several countries so marvelously superior to your own can speak about them without astonishment, or at least without the emotion of a country boy who has seen the pasha’s palace? What can you possibly admire in the world? What sort of people are you? Who can possibly understand you?” “Perdone Usted”, he answered coldly, “it is for me to say that I cannot understand you. I have told you all the things which I consider to be better in Europe. What more can I say? Have I to say something that I do not believe to be true? I repeat that your streets are larger than ours, your shops finer, that you have workshops such as we do not have, and also rich palaces. That is all. I can only add one more thing: that you know more than we do, because you have many books, and read more.” I became impatient. “Do not lose patience, Caballero,” he said, “let us speak together calmly. Is not a man’s first duty honesty? Is it not honesty more than anything else that makes a man worthy of respect, and one country superior to another? Very well, then. As far as honesty is concerned, your countries are certainly not better than ours. That much I can say right away.” “Gently, gently!” I said, “Tell me first what you mean by honesty!” “Honesty in business, Caballero. The Moors, for example, sometimes cheat the Europeans in trade, but you Europeans cheat the Moors much more often.” “There must be a few cases,” I replied, in order to say something. “Casos raros?” he exclaimed angrily. “It happens every day! Proof: I go to Marseilles. I buy cotton. I choose a particular thread, give the exact reference number and brand-name, as well as the amount required. I ask for it to be sent, I pay, and I return home. Back in Morocco, I receive the cotton. I open the consignment, and take a look. I find the same number, the same brand-name, and a thread that is of one third the thickness! This is anything but good, and I lose thousands of francs! I rush to the consulate, but in vain. Another case: A merchant from Fez places an order in Europe for blue cloth, so many pieces, of such and such a length and breadth. He pays for it when the bargain is made. In due course he receives the cloth, opens the package, and checks the measurements. The first pieces are all right, those underneath are shorter, and those lowest down are half a meter too short! The cloth cannot be used for cloaks, and the merchant is ruined. . . . And so on and so on!

And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that math- ematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacri ces his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to nd it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be noth- ing for him to look for. When workmen have nished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station—and there is oc- cupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is a er all, something insu erable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo bar- ring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes ve is sometimes a very charming thing too. And why are you so rmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man? Notes from the Underground Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of su ering? Perhaps su ering is just as great a bene t to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraor- dinarily, passionately, in love with su ering, and that is a fact. ere is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for su ering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being guaran- teed to me when necessary. Su ering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the ‘Palace of Crystal’ it is unthinkable; su ering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a ‘palace of crystal’ if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real su ering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, su ering is the sole origin of consciousness. ough I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the great- est misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for in- stance, is in nitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing le to do or to understand. ere will be nothing le but to bottle up your ve senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least og yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.

By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney - for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, 'The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!' The exclamation, to me so surprising for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex? - was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheep skins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Tsar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and musing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.

I wanted to be a spy,” Olga said, shrugging. “I applied to the CIA. I was turned down. I did not meet the psychological profile. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Basically, I have a hard time taking orders from idiots.” “Don’t think of me as an idiot and I won’t give you an idiotic order,” Sophia said. “But if I give you one, you’d better do it. Because it’s probably going to mean surviving or dying.” “You I don’t mind,” Olga said. “Or I wouldn’t have joined your crew. Don’t ask me about Nazar. So I was in Spain with the troupe. When the Plague hit, they shut down travel. And all my guns were in America. In a zombie apocalypse. I was quite upset.” “You should have seen Faith when they told her she had to be disarmed in New York,” Sophia said. “Then they gave her a taser and that was mistake. What kind of guns?” “I like that your family prefers the AK series,” Olga said. “I really do think it’s superior to the M16 series in many ways. Much more reliable. They say it is less accurate but that is at longer ranges. The round is not designed for long range.” “I can hit at a thousand meters with my accurized AK,” Sophia said. “It’s a matter of knowing the ballistics. It’s not real powerful at that range, but try doing the same thing with an M4. I’ll wait.” “Oh, jeeze, you two,” Paula said. “Get a room.” “So continue with how you got on the yacht,” Sophia said. “We don’t want our cook getting all woozy with gun geeking.” “We were called by the agency and asked if anyone wanted to ‘catch a ride’ on a yacht,” Olga said. “When they said who owned the boat… I nearly said no. We all knew Nazar. Or at least of him. Not a nice man, as you might have noticed. We knew what we were getting into. But then we were told he had vaccine… ” she shrugged again. “Accepting Nazar’s offer was perhaps not the worst decision I have made in my life. I survived. Not how I would have preferred to survive, but I was vaccinated and I survived. But I did not even hint that I knew more about his men’s weapons than they did. They were pigs. Tough guys. But none of them were military and none of them really knew what they were doing with them. When they brought out the RPG, I nearly peed myself. Irinei had no idea what he was doing with it. I don’t think he even knew the safety was off.” “You know how to use an RPG?” Sophia said. “My family liked the United States very much,” Olga said, sadly. “We all like guns and anything that goes boom. And in the US, you could find people who had licenses for anything. I’ve fired an RPG, yes.” “Well, if we find an RPG you can have it,” Sophia said. “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly. “But we’ll be keeping the rounds and the launcher separate,” Sophia said. “Oh, my, yes,” Olga said. “And both will have to be in a well sealed container. This salt air would cause corrosion quickly.” “I guess you miss your guns?” Paula said. “That’s not a request for an inventory and loving description of each, by the way. Got that enough from Faith.” “I do,” Olga said. “But I miss my books more.” “Books,” Paula said. “Now you’re talking my language.” “I have more books than shelves,” Olga said. “And I had many shelves. I collect old manuscripts when I can afford them.” “If we do any land clearance, look in the libraries and big houses,” Sophia said. “I bet around here you can probably pick up some great stuff.” “This is okay?” Olga said. “We can, salvage?” “If there’s time and if we clear the town,” Sophia said. “Sure.” “Oh, thank you, captain!” Olga said, kissing her on the cheek. “Okay, now you definitely need to get a room.

The U.S. father of colorism is Samuel Stanhope Smith, a longtime theologian who taught at and then presided over Princeton University in early America. In early 1787, the young Princeton professor gave the annual oration to the new nation’s most distinguished scholarly group, the American Philosophical Society. He spoke before the White men who wrote the U.S. Constitution that year, pledging to use “the genuine light of truth.” Smith’s racist light: “domestic servants…who remain near the [White] persons” have “advanced far before the others in acquiring the regular and agreeable features.” Since “field slaves” live “remote from…their superiors,” their bodies “are, generally, ill shaped,” and their kinky hair is “the farthest removed from the ordinary laws of nature.” In an 1850 book, Peter Browne leaned on his unrivaled human-hair collection to classify the “hair” of Whites and “wool” of Blacks, to swear, “The hair of the white man is more perfect than that of the Negro.

Habakkuk’s response is the response of every person in this world. Every sinner to their eyes looks more righteous than the next one. There is always someone worse. A bigger liar. A superior gossiper. A prouder man.

Now, you may ask why I am so committed to my translations if I don't care much about them once they're crated. Well, I'm committed to the process and not the final product. I know this sounds esoteric, and I dislike sounding so, but it's the act that inspires me, the work itself. Once the book is done, the wonder dissolves and the mystery is solved. It holds little interest after. That's not all, though. In The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa writes: "The only attitude worthy of a superior man is to persist in an activity he recognizes is useless, to observe a discipline he knows is sterile, and to apply certain norms of philosophical and metaphysical thought that he considers utterly inconsequential.

- Hitler prepared for battle by infiltrating Frances airwaves. Germany hired native-French broadcasters to unsuspecting listeners to tune in to amusing radio shows and music. Many listeners were oblivious to the propaganda was subtly included. These radio commentators expressed worry over the German army’s dominance and military strength, and predicted that France could not withstand an attack, The doubt Hitler’s radio programs planted in French minds quickly spread. Edmond Taylor, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who lived in France during this period, witnessed Hitler’s intricately choreographed propaganda campaign and how it crumbled Frances resolve. Describing it as a “strategy of terror,’ Taylor reported that Germany spent enormous amounts on propaganda and even bribed French newspapers to publish stories that confirmed the rumors of Germany’s superiority. According to Taylor, Germany’s war of ideas planted a sense of dread “in the of France that spread like a monstrous cancer, devouring all ocher emotional faculties [with] an irrational fear [that was] … uncontrollable.” So weakened was the confidence of the French that something as innocuous as a test of Frances air-raid-siren system generated ripples of panic; the mere innuendo of invasion somehow reinforced the idea that France would undoubtedly be defeated. Although the French government made a late attempt at launching an ideological counteroffensive by publicizing the need to defend freedom, it was as effective as telling citizens to protect themselves from a hurricane by opening an umbrella. When the invasion finally did come, France capitulated in six weeks. By similarly destroying the resolve of his enemies before invading them, Hitler defeated Poland, Finland, Denmark, Norway. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg in addition to France, all in under a year. Over 230 million Europeans, once free, fell under Nazi rule.

Like any of man’s inventions, artificial intelligence can be used for good or evil. In the right hands and with proper intent, it can do beneficial things for humanity. Conversely, it can be used by evil dictators, sinister politicians, and malevolent leaders to create something as dangerous as a deadly weapon in a terrorist’s hands. Yuval Noah Harari is a leading spokesperson for the globalists and their transhumanist, AI, and Fourth Industrial Revolution agenda. Harari is also an advisor to Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. Barack Obama refers to Harari as a prophet and recommends his books. Harari wrote a book titled Sapiens and another titled Homo Deus (“homo” being a Latin word for human or man, and “deus” being the Latin word for god or deity). He believes that homo sapiens as we know them have run their course and will no longer be relevant in the future. Technology will create homo deus, which will be a much superior model with upgraded physical and mental abilities. Harari tells us that humankind possesses enormous new powers, and once the threat of famine, plagues, and war is finally lifted, we will be looking for something to do with ourselves. He believes the next targets of our power and technology are likely to be immortality, happiness, and divinity. He says: “We will aim to overcome old age and even death itself. Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn homo sapiens into homo deus. When I say that humans will upgrade themselves into gods in the 21st century, this is not meant as a metaphor; I mean it literally. If you think about the gods of ancient mythology, like the Hebrew God, they have certain qualities. Not just immortality, but maybe above all, the ability to create life, to design life. We are in the process of acquiring these divine abilities. We want to learn how to engineer and produce life. It’s very likely that in the 21st century, the main products of the economy will no longer be textiles and vehicles and weapons. They will be bodies and brains and minds.48

To feel that you’re superior and to be treated by Fate as supremely and incurably inferior — who in such a plight can boast about being a man?

Remember Who God Is Calling God “Father” is dismissible today. It rolls off the tongue as unconsciously as the lyrics of “Happy Birthday” as you carry a candlelit cake to the dinner table. It’s become just cheesy enough to edge past in search of some more sophisticated insight from Jesus in the lines that follow. Worse yet, for some its use is grouped in with a centuries-long patriarchal history of male superiority and female oppression. But the disciples likely gasped when Jesus said it. The temple that served as the training ground for their prayers had taught them to pray with supreme reverence. The grounding text for the Jewish people’s understanding of God was the book of Exodus—when the Lord appeared to the people in the form of a cloud by day and fire by night.6 The big question in ancient days wasn’t, “Does God exist?” It would be foolish to ask such a question. “Of course God exists! Open your eyes, man! He’s the cylindrical pillar of fire stretching from the desert floor into the night sky and serves as our trail guide!” Instead, the existential question in ancient days was, “Is God knowable?” Because a pillar of fire doesn’t provoke doubt, but neither does it provide intimacy. These disciples knew a God of cleansing rituals and animal sacrifices, a God of ten plagues and blood on the doorpost, a God who parts seas and floods the earth, a God with a heavy hand of deliverance and a heavy hand of judgment—awesome in power but hard to get to know. Jesus did nothing to diminish the reverence, nothing to minimize the power of God. Jesus made that powerful God knowable.

Thus amid all fellowship The superior man retains his individuality. The I Ching or Book of Changes

Pages might be written to prove, from this illustrious example, the defects of human excellence; to show how easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage, to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.

His little piece-of-crap loft didn’t have books or movies, but he had a metric shit ton of weapons and ammo. He opened the door to the closet he’d made into his own private supply shop. Jake whistled. “Is that C-4? Are you fucking kidding me?” Jesse shrugged. Everyone needed a hobby. “I like to be prepared, sir.” “We’re not your superior officers, man. It’s just Jake.” Jake practically salivated. “Is that a fucking P90?

The great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.

His life is a long succession of perfect actions, of struggle against evil, of success in what is good. By these qualities, which were in him and which he has carefully cultivated, he makes himself superior to all his fellows. He acts for himself, according to his own ideas. He does not bother with books, examples, or advice. He goes where his conscience — which is not built on fidelity to the rules of his childhood—leads him. It is made up of thoroughly original beliefs, impressions, deductions and inductions of his own. This man possesses what we call a moral personality. Men of this sort we deem philosophers. They do not see the world from the common viewpoint. They have one all their own, which varies greatly from the rules usually applied and the generalities usually taught, from which every one feeds his mind. They are called optimists if their mental attitude is more cheerful than the ordinary; pessimists, if it is more melancholy. They are simply people who think according to the turn of their character, the logic of their belief, the range of their intelligence and the sincerity of their nature. In a word they are themselves.

He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors.

Anyone could tell us two writers shouldn’t be together. Or rather, that a competitive American shouldn’t be with a woman who has written a book.”“That’s right,”he said. “It’s a challenge to my sexual superiority, and that isn’t a joke.”“I know it isn’t. But please don’t give me any more of your pompous socialist lectures about the equality of men and women.”“I shall probably give you pompous lectures because I enjoy it. But I won’t believe in them myself. The truth is, I resent you for having written a book which was a success. And I’ve come to the conclusion I’ve always been a hypocrite, and in fact I enjoy a society where women are second-class citizens, I enjoy being boss and being flattered.”“Good,”I said. “Because in a society where not one man in ten thousand begins to understand the ways in which women are second-class citizens, we have to rely for company on the men who are at least not hypocrites.

To be born free is Man’s greatest quality; it is what makes the humble hermit superior to kings, superior even to the gods, who are sufficient unto themselves only by virtue of their power but not by virtue of their disdain for it.

So we forgive. We send away the wrongs done to us. We let people out of the little cages we keep them in while we enjoy our feelings of moral superiority. We hand the feelings of wrong to God and refuse to ever take them back. Then we shut up and never mention the matter again. When the time comes, we put our arm around the offender and we ask him how he is.

Regardless of gender or sexual orientation, if you want to experience deep spiritual and sexual fulfillment, you must know your natural sexual essence—masculine, feminine, or balanced—and live true to it. You can’t deny your true sexual essence by covering it with layers of false energy for years, and then expect to know your authentic purpose and be free in the flow of love. This book is a guide to shedding pretense and living true to your core, specifically for people who have a masculine sexual essence and their feminine essenced lovers who have to deal with them.

The Way of the Superior Man is a book written explicitly for people who have already achieved respect for other genders and sexual preferences, and who consider men and women to be social, economic, and political equals. Now, we are ready to move to the next stage, grounded in this mutual respect and equality, but celebrating the sexual and spiritual passions inherent in the masculine/feminine polarity.

I have never forgotten that phrase of the biologist, Haeckel, whom I read in the infancy of my intelligence, at that age when one reads scientific publications and arguments against religion. The phrase goes more or less like this: the superior man (a Kant or a Goethe, I think he says) is farther removed from the common man than the common man is from the monkey.

Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity … The believer finds himself distinguished above other men, exalted above natural man … Because faith represents man's own nature as that of another being, the believer does not contemplate his dignity immediately in himself, but in this supposed distinct person. … [H]is own desire of honour is satisfied in the honour of his Lord. Faith is arrogant, but it is distinguished from natural arrogance in this, that it clothes its feelings of superiority, its pride, in the idea of another person … This distinctive person, however, is simply its own hidden self[.]

CHAPTER II—THE LOWEST DEPTHS There disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each one is for himself. The I in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf. The wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty—that is the point of departure; to be Satan—that is the point reached. From that vault Lacenaire emerges. We have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress. The moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil. This cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything. Of everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance. All the others, those above it, have but one object—to suppress it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime. Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness. Humanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.

The master said," the superior man seeks and himself whereas ordinary men seeking others for truth. The object of the superior man is truth. Truth is achieved through consistency with the highest standard of the common good and strict application of the principal.

What kind of degenerate thinks it is manly to beat a woman—that he is somehow affirming his superior status in the world through violence against those he is intended to protect?

The notion of implicit communication also has deep roots in Zen, another of Boyd’s primary influences. Thomas Cleary, in his The Japanese Art of War (which may have been Boyd’s all time favorite book, next to Sun Tzu itself) emphasizes the importance Zen places on mind-to-mind communication. As Cleary notes, this has nothing to do with telepathy or other mystical nonsense but clearly means the transmission of Zen through objective experience, that is, through actions in the real world, which is how Boyd and the maneuver warfare theorists build mutual trust and unit cohesion.63 It is true that the Germans did not always apply these principles well, and sometimes forgot them entirely. Len Deighton even claims that there was only one true Blitzkrieg, the May 1940 attack on France.64 Defense analyst and Boyd acolyte Pierre M. Sprey,65 who translated and assisted in several of Boyd’s interviews with the German generals, estimated that the climate was only fully implemented by maybe one-half of one percent of the army—the small circle around Heinz Guderian that Sprey calls “brilliant rebels.” In this sense, the Israeli Army of 1956 and 1967 was superior, man for man, to the German Army of 1940.66

Another cause of dissension and disagreement is the fact that religion has been pronounced at variance with science. Between scientists and the followers of religion there has always been controversy and strife for the reason that the latter have proclaimed religion superior in authority to science and considered scientific announcement opposed to the teachings of religion. Bahá’u’lláh declared that religion is in complete harmony with science and reason. If religious belief and doctrine is at variance with reason, it proceeds from the limited mind of man and not from God; therefore, it is unworthy of belief and not deserving of attention; the heart finds no rest in it, and real faith is impossible. How can man believe that which he knows to be opposed to reason? Is this possible? Can the heart accept that which reason denies? Reason is the first faculty of man, and the religion of God is in harmony with it. Bahá’u’lláh has removed this form of dissension and discord from among mankind and reconciled science with religion by revealing the pure teachings of the divine reality. This accomplishment is specialized to Him in this Day.

I’d like to leave all my interest in, please,” explained Paddington. “In case it rains.” “Well,” said the man in a superior tone of voice as he made some calculations on a piece of paper. “I’m afraid you won’t keep very dry on this. It only comes to ten pence.” “What!” exclaimed Paddington, hardly able to believe his ears. “Ten pence! I don’t think that’s very interesting.” “Interest isn’t the same thing as interesting,” said the man. “Not the same thing at all.” He tried hard to think of some way of explaining matters for he wasn’t used to dealing with bears and he had a feeling that Paddington was going to be one of his more difficult customers. “It’s… it’s something we give you for letting us borrow your money,” he said. “The longer you leave it in the more you get.” “Well, my money’s been in since just after Christmas,” exclaimed Paddington. “That’s nearly six months.” “Ten pence,” said the man firmly.

Everett stalked back to his desk and then pointed to a chair that was bolted to the floor opposite him. “Mr. Mulberry, you don’t believe that’s an acceptable way of asking me to take a seat, do you?” A stabbing of a finger to the chair once more was his only reply. Taking a second to fasten herself back into the cork jacket, even as an odd and somewhat inappropriate sense of amusement settled over her, Millie walked over to the indicated chair and took a seat. Placing her hands demurely in her lap, she watched as Everett lowered into his own chair. Thrusting a hand through hair that was distinctly untidy, he caught her eye. “Was there a reason behind your interrupting my reading?” “I’m sure there was, but that reason escapes me at the moment.” She sat forward. “What are you reading?” Everett’s face turned a little red as he snatched the book off the desk and stuffed it into a drawer. Millie leaned back in the chair. “Very well, since you don’t seem to want to exchange the expected pleasantries, let us move on to what I’ve suddenly recalled I wanted to speak with you about. We need to discuss the children and the part you need to play in their lives, as well as discuss how you’re going to go about telling Miss Dixon it would be a horrible idea for you to send the children away to a boarding school.” Opening the drawer, Everett yanked out the book he’d just stashed away, and pushed it Millie’s way. “I think I’d rather discuss this.” Picking up the book, she looked at the title. “You’re reading Pride and Prejudice?” “I am, but don’t tell anyone. It could ruin my reputation as a manly gentleman.” The amusement that was still bubbling through her increased. “I doubt that, but tell me, what do you think about the story so far?” “I think it’s unfortunate that Lizzy is not better connected, because she would be perfect for Mr. Darcy if she came from money.” Millie shoved the book back at him as every ounce of amusement disappeared in a flash. “You don’t believe that Mr. Darcy might be just a tad too prideful since he believes he’s superior to Lizzy?” “He’s one of the richest men in England,” Everett said, returning the book to the drawer and giving it a somewhat longing look before he caught Millie’s eye. “Of course he’s superior to Lizzy.” Fighting the impulse to tell him he was a bit of an idiot, because that was a guaranteed way of getting dismissed, Millie forced a smile. “Perhaps it would be best to continue this discussion after you finish the book. But, tell me, why in the world are you reading a romance novel?” “I needed something to keep me occupied while evading Abigail and her meddling ways, and since you spoke so highly of Jane Austen, I thought I’d give her a try.” “You’re reading it because I enjoy Jane Austen?” “Well, yes. You also mentioned you enjoy Frankenstein, but I couldn’t find a copy of that in my library, so I decided I’d read a book of Jane’s instead.” Pleasure

When Thrasymachus begins to speak, he behaves according to Socrates’ lively description like a raving beast; by the end of the first book he has become completely tame. He has been tamed by Socrates: the action of the first book consists in a marvelous victory of Socrates. As we have seen, that action is also a disgraceful defeat of Socrates as the defender of justice. It almost goes without saying that Thrasymachus has in no way become convinced by Socrates of the goodness of justice. This goes far toward explaining Thrasymachus’ taming: while his reasoning proves to be poor, his principle remains victorious. He must have found no small comfort in the observation that Socrates’ reasoning was on the whole not superior to his, although he must have been impressed both by the cleverness with which Socrates argued badly on purpose and the superior frankness with which he admitted at the end the weakness of his proof.

Richard Cracroft, one of the few American commentators on May’s writings, aptly summarizes the narrative structure of May’s work: “while surveying, Karl May becomes acquainted with the revolting cruelty of the American, and must frequently exert his Teutonic wisdom and strength to teach a few Teutonic manners.”31 The evil of the Americans thus only makes sense in contrast to the goodness of the Germans. For, unlike the American, the German is perceived by all as “a brother of redmen,” and indeed explicitly identified by the “red man” as his “dearest friend and brother.” Not only are May’s Germans morally superior to white Americans, they are also, unexpectedly, better cowboys and trappers. Indeed, American-born men often have to acknowledge reluctantly that native Germans are “cut out to be Westerners,” indeed miles ahead of “real” Americans in their ability to understand and master the American landscape.32

Here are some additional books that I recommend… The Queen’s Code – Alison Armstrong For Women Only – Shaunti Feldhahn The 5 Love Languages – Gary Chapman The Way of the Superior Man – David Deida

dissolve in the force of your loving, and you dissolve in the giving. 2For a book-length treatment of superior sexuality, s

Every artist who moves us, from a movie maker to Beethoven or Shakespeare, is a bit of a hypnotist. In this sense that seemingly stupid and mechanical contraption we call "society" must rank as the greatest artist on the planet. For instance, when I was seven or eight, and feeling superior to the kids who closed their eyes "during the scary parts," I was entering a deep hypnosis created by another Virtual Reality called language. This hypnosis was a worse nightmare than the Wicked Witch of the West or King Kong or the Wolf-Man or any of their kith and kin, but it made me a "member of society”. By Robert AntonWilson in the introduction of the book.

256 I’ve always felt an almost physical loathing for secret things – intrigues, diplomacy, secret societies, occult sciences. What especially irks me are these last two things – the pretension certain men have that, through their understandings with Gods or Masters or Demiurges, they and they alone know the great secrets on which the world is founded. I can’t believe their claims, though I can believe someone else might. But is there any reason why all these people might not be crazy or deluded? The fact there are a lot of them proves nothing, for there are collective hallucinations. What really shocks me is how these wizards and masters of the invisible, when they write to communicate or intimate their mysteries, all write abominably. It offends my intelligence that a man can master the Devil without being able to master the Portuguese language. Why should dealing with demons be easier than dealing with grammar? If through long exercises of concentration and willpower one can have so-called astral visions, why can’t the same person – applying considerably less concentration and willpower – have a vision of syntax? What is there in the teachings and rituals of the Magic Arts that prevents their adherents from writing – I won’t say with clarity, since obscurity may be part of the occult law – but at least with elegance and fluency, which can exist in the sphere of the abstruse? Why should all the soul’s energy be spent studying the language of the Gods, without a pittance left over to study the colour and rhythm of the language of men? I don’t trust masters who can’t be down-to-earth. For me they’re like those eccentric poets who can’t write like everybody else. I accept that they’re eccentric, but I’d like them to show me that it’s because they’re superior to the norm rather than incapable of it. There are supposedly great mathematicians who make errors in simple addition, but what I’m talking about here is ignorance, not error. I accept that a great mathematician can add two and two and get five: it can happen to anyone in a moment of distraction. What I don’t accept is that he not know what addition is or how it’s done. And this is the case of the overwhelming majority of occult masters.

Mack Bolan was not born to kill, as many of his comrades and superiors secretly believed. He was not a mechanically functioning killer-robot, as his sniper-team partners openly proclaimed. He was not even a cold-blooded and ruthless exterminator, as one leftist news correspondent tagged him. Mack was simply a man who could command himself.

Thucydides, the Greek philosopher, in describing the four natures of man, describes principles that just cannot be argued. 1. Weakness invites the domination of the stronger. 2. Power always seeks to increase itself. 3. Power never surrenders its position willfully. 4. Power will only yield to a superior force or power.

I loathe the happiness of all these people who don’t know they’re unhappy. Their human life is full of what, in a true sensibility, would produce a surfeit of anxieties. But since their true life is vegetative, their sufferings come and go without touching their soul, and they live a life that can be compared only to that of a man with a toothache who won a fortune – the genuine good fortune of living unawares, the greatest gift granted by the gods, for it is the gift of being like them, superior just as they are (albeit in a different fashion) to happiness and pain. That’s why, in spite of everything, I love them all. My dear vegetables!

also mention in the same book that Master Imakita Kosen likewise writes in the fourth chapter of Zenkai Ichiran that the consistent way of a superior man lies nowhere but in saying, “Yes!”7 Master Takuan calls this mind that answers, “Yes!” Immovable Wisdom. I think that this spontaneous response to anything in the affirmative selflessly and with mu-shin (no mind) is “praising the practice of zazen and faithfully following it.

ST-9 This point is a bilateral point that is found on both sides of the neck and is located about 1.5 inches to the outside of the edge of the Adam’s apple of the throat. The fact that the point lays directly over the carotid artery allows strikes to have an immediate reaction to the flow of blood to the brain and head in general. It has a cryptic name in Chinese, Ren Ying,9 which means “Man’s Prognosis” and provides no clues to its location or use from a martial standpoint. Its proximity to the carotid artery allows this point to be one of the weakest points on the human body and regardless of the size and muscular strength of an opponent it is extremely sensitive. The superior thyroid artery, the anterior jugular vein, the internal jugular vein, the carotid artery, the cutaneous cervical nerve, the cervical branch of the facial nerve, the sympathetic trunk, and the ascending branch of the hypoglossal and vagus nerves are all present. Just the structurally aspects of all these sensitive and vital nerves, arteries and veins should place it high on the list of potential targets. I personally consider it as one of the most important Vital Points because of this alone. Additionally, ST-9 is an intersection point for the Stomach Meridian, Gall Bladder Meridian and the Yin Heel Vessel. Strikes to this point can kill due to the overall structural weakness of the area. Strikes should be aimed toward the center of the spine on a 90-degree angle. A variety of empty hand weapons can be employed in striking this point. Forearms, edge of hand strikes, punches, kicks, and elbow strikes are all effective. The same defensive tactics outlined under the SI-16 should be employed against attacks to this extremely vital point. CV-22 This is one of the two most important acupuncture points to the martial arts that is concerned with the hostile actions of life-or-death combatives. It sets in the horseshoe notch located at the extreme upper part of the chest structure and at the centerline of the front of the neck. Resting under it is the trachea, or commonly known as the “windpipe,” and a hard and vicious strike to this point can cause the surrounding tissue to swell, which can shut off the body’s ability to pull oxygen into the lungs. A hard strike to this point can be deadly. Attacking this point should only be done in the most extreme life-or-death situations. Energetically, the Conception Vessel and the Yin Linking Vessel intersect at this point. The implications of that, from a Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective, is included in this book. Additionally, the structure of the suprasternal notch is an excellent “touch point” for situations when sight is reduced and you find yourself at extremely close range with your opponent. This allows for utilization of this point in a self-defense situation that is not as extreme as full force strikes, as only a finger or two are inserted and rolled to the backside of the notch causing pain for the opponent.

To be born free is the greatest splendour of man, making the humble hermit superior to kings and even to the gods, who are self-sufficient by their power but not by their contempt of it.

In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.

Does he know the Minotaur of this cave from experience? . . . I doubt it, indeed, I know otherwise: – nothing is stranger to these people who are absolute in one thing, these so-called atheist ‘free spirits’, than freedom and release in that sense, in no respect are they more firmly bound; precisely in their faith in truth they are more rigid and more absolute than anyone else. Perhaps I am too familiar with all this: that venerable philosopher’s abstinence prescribed by such a faith like that commits one, that stoicism of the intellect which, in the last resort, denies itself the ‘no’ just as strictly as the ‘yes’, that will to stand still before the factual, the factum brutum, that fatalism of ‘petits faits’116 (ce petit faitalisme,117 as I call it) in which French scholarship now seeks a kind of moral superiority over the German, that renunciation of any interpretation (of forcing, adjusting, shortening, omitting, filling-out, inventing, falsifying and everything else essential to interpretation) – on the whole, this expresses the asceticism of virtue just as well as any denial of sensuality (it is basically just a modus of this denial). However, the compulsion towards it, that unconditional will to truth, is faith in the ascetic ideal itself, even if, as an unconscious imperative, make no mistake about it, – it is the faith in a metaphysical value, a value as such of truth as vouched for and confirmed by that ideal alone (it stands and falls by that ideal). Strictly speaking, there is no ‘presuppositionless’ knowledge, the thought of such a thing is unthinkable, paralogical: a philosophy, a ‘faith’ always has to be there first, for knowledge to win from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist. (Whoever under- stands it the other way round and, for example, tries to place philosophy ‘on a strictly scientific foundation’, must first stand on its head not just philosophy, but also truth itself: the worst offence against decency which can occur in relation to two such respectable ladies!) Yes, there is no doubt – and here I let my Gay Science have a word, see the fifth book (section 344) – ‘the truthful man, in that daring and final sense which faith in science presupposes, thus affirms another world from the one of life, nature and history; and inasmuch as he affirms this “other world”, must he not therefore deny its opposite, this world, our world, in doing so? . . . Our faith in science is still based on a metaphysical faith, – even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire from the blaze set alight by a faith thousands of years old, that faith of the Christians, which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth, that God is Logos, that truth is divine . . . But what if precisely this becomes more and more unbelievable, when nothing any longer turns out to be divine except for error, blindness and lies – and what if God himself turned out to be our oldest lie?’ – – At this point we need to stop and take time to reflect. Science itself now needs a justification (which is not at all to say that there is one for it). On this question, turn to the most ancient and most modern philosophies: all of them lack a consciousness of the extent to which the will to truth itself needs a justification, here is a gap in every philosophy – how does it come about? Because the ascetic Christian ideal has so far been master over all philosophy, because truth was set as being, as God, as the highest authority itself, because truth was not allowed to be a problem. Do you understand this ‘allowed to be’? – From the very moment that faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, there is a new problem as well: that of the value of truth. – The will to truth needs a critique – let us define our own task with this –, the value of truth is tentatively to be called into question . . . (Anyone who finds this put too briefly is advised to read the Gay Science, s 344)