Thus Spoke Book Quotes

And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally.

Do you love tragedies and everything that breaks the heart?

Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master… Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon. But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.

It had been June, the bright hot summer of 1937, and with the curtains thrown back the bedroom had been full of sunlight, sunlight and her and Will's children, their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews- Cecy's blue eyed boys, tall and handsome, and Gideon and Sophie's two girls- and those who were as close as family: Charlotte, white- haired and upright, and the Fairchild sons and daughters with their curling red hair like Henry's had once been. The children had spoken fondly of the way he had always loved their mother, fiercely and devotedly, the way he had never had eyes for anyone else, and how their parents had set the model for the sort of love they hoped to find in their own lives. They spoke of his regard for books, and how he had taught them all to love them too, to respect the printed page and cherish the stories that those pages held. They spoke of the way he still cursed in Welsh when he dropped something, though he rarely used the language otherwise, and of the fact that though his prose was excellent- he had written several histories of the Shadowhunters when he's retired that had been very well respected- his poetry had always been awful, though that never stopped him from reciting it. Their oldest child, James, had spoken laughingly about Will's unrelenting fear of ducks and his continual battle to keep them out of the pond at the family home in Yorkshire. Their grandchildren had reminded him of the song about demon pox he had taught them- when they were much too young, Tessa had always thought- and that they had all memorized. They sang it all together and out of tune, scandalizing Sophie. With tears running down her face, Cecily had reminded him of the moment at her wedding to Gabriel when he had delivered a beautiful speech praising the groom, at the end of which he had announced, "Dear God, I thought she was marrying Gideon. I take it all back," thus vexing not only Cecily and Gabriel but Sophie as well- and Will, though too tired to laugh, had smiled at his sister and squeezed her hand. They had all laughed about his habit of taking Tessa on romantic "holidays" to places from Gothic novels, including the hideous moor where someone had died, a drafty castle with a ghost in it, and of course the square in Paris in which he had decided Sydney Carton had been guillotined, where Will had horrified passerby by shouting "I can see the blood on the cobblestones!" in French.

Like many others of the younger generation, for Magda and Fritz the last years of the sixties were the utopian meaning of paradise on earth, the more so for Magda who had graduated with honours. She had based a part of her thesis on the philosophical perspective of the Expressionist movement, particularly what the philosopher Nietzsche wrote in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which, amongst other things, he stated: ''What does my shadow matter?... Let it run after me!... I shall out-run it...'' And that's what Magda wanted to do with her life: declare herself independent from conventional thought and from past memories.

76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

But when Zarathustra was alone, he addressed his heart thus: “Can it really be possible? This old holy man in his forest still hasn’t received any notice that God is dead!

Truly, a filthy stream man is. One must be a sea, to receive a filthy stream without becoming impure.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (German: Also sprach Zarathustra, sometimes translated Thus Spake Zarathustra), subtitled A Book for All and None (Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen), is a written work by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Overman, which were first introduced in The Gay Science. Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written", the book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality, featuring as protagonist a fictionalized Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that the style of the Bible is used by Nietzsche to present ideas of his which fundamentally oppose Judaeo-Christian morality and tradition.

As they walked, Tehol spoke. ‘…the assumption is the foundation stone of Letherii society, perhaps all societies the world over. The notion of inequity, my friends. For from inequity derives the concept of value, whether measured by money or the countless other means of gauging human worth. Simply put, there resides in all of us the unchallenged belief that the poor and the starving are in some way deserving of their fate. In other words, there will always be poor people. A truism to grant structure to the continual task of comparison, the establishment through observation of not our mutual similarities, but our essential differences. ‘I know what you’re thinking, to which I have no choice but to challenge you both. Like this. Imagine walking down this street, doling out coins by the thousands. Until everyone here is in possession of vast wealth. A solution? No, you say, because among these suddenly rich folk there will be perhaps a majority who will prove wasteful, profligate and foolish, and before long they will be poor once again. Besides, if wealth were distributed in such a fashion, the coins themselves would lose all value—they would cease being useful. And without such utility, the entire social structure we love so dearly would collapse. ‘Ah, but to that I say, so what? There are other ways of measuring self-worth. To which you both heatedly reply: with no value applicable to labour, all sense of worth vanishes! And in answer to that I simply smile and shake my head. Labour and its product become the negotiable commodities. But wait, you object, then value sneaks in after all! Because a man who makes bricks cannot be equated with, say, a man who paints portraits. Material is inherently value-laden, on the basis of our need to assert comparison—but ah, was I not challenging the very assumption that one must proceed with such intricate structures of value? ‘And so you ask, what’s your point, Tehol? To which I reply with a shrug. Did I say my discourse was a valuable means of using this time? I did not. No, you assumed it was. Thus proving my point!’ ‘I’m sorry, master,’ Bugg said, ‘but what was that point again?’ ‘I forget. But we’ve arrived. Behold, gentlemen, the poor.

Such was also the case with Nietzsche, a volcanic genius if ever there was one. Here, too, there is passionate exteriorization of an inward fire, but in a manner that is both deviated and demented; we have in mind here, not the Nietzschian philosophy, which taken literally is without interest, but his poetical work, whose most intense expression is in part his ‘Zarathustra’. What this highly uneven book manifests above all is the violent reaction of an a priori profound soul against a mediocre and paralyzing cultural environment; Nietzsche’s fault was to have only a sense of grandeur in the absence of all intellectual discernment. ‘Zarathustra’ is basically the cry of a grandeur trodden underfoot, whence comes the heart-rending authenticity – grandeur precisely – of certain passages; not all of them, to be sure, and above all not those which express a half-Machiavellian, half-Darwinian philosophy, or minor literary cleverness. Be that as it may, Nietzsche’s misfortune, like that of other men of genius, such as Napoleon, was to be born after the Renaissance and not before it; which indicates evidently an aspect of their nature, for there is no such thing as chance.

Lead, like me, the flown-away virtue back to the earth—yea, back to body and life: that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning! A

When power becometh gracious and descendeth into the visible—I call such condescension, beauty.

again passed moons and years over Zarathustra's soul, and he heeded it not; his hair, however, became white.

Of man there is little here: therefore do their women masculinise themselves. For only he who is man enough, will—SAVE THE WOMAN in woman.

In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all: that no one hurt them. Thus do they anticipate every one's wishes and do well unto every one. That, however, is COWARDICE, though it be called "virtue.

Unto all of you, who like me suffer FROM THE GREAT LOATHING, to whom the old God hath died, and as yet no new God lieth in cradles and swaddling clothes—unto all of you is mine evil spirit and magic-devil favourable.

The Azath will not be touched, for it is new, a child. Her eyes, soft brown, slowly regarded those of her companions. “The Queen of Darkness spoke thus of Light when it was first born: ‘It is new, and what is new is innocent, and what is innocent is precious. Observe this child of wonder, and know respect.’ ” Orfantal scowled. “Thus did Light survive, and so was Darkness destroyed, the purity vanquished—and now you would have us flawed as our Queen was flawed. Light became corrupted and destroyed our world, Korlat, or have you forgotten?” Korlat’s smile was a sad one. Cherish such flaws, dear brother, for our Queen’s was hope, and so is mine.

Would you go into isolation, my brother? would you seek the way to yourself? Tarry yet a little and listen to me. "He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd. The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain. Behold, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction. But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your authority and your strength to do so! Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?

Oh, it is only you, you dark ones, you nocturnal ones, who create warmth out of that which shines. It is only you who drink milk and refreshment out of the udders of light. — Friedrich Nietzsche, from “The Night Song,” Thus Spoke Zarathustra, transl not given (Penguin Books, 1969)

I show you the last human. „What is love? What is creation? What is desire? What is a star?“ – so asks the last human and blinks. The earth has become small by then, and on it hops the last human who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea beetle; the last man lives the longest. „We have invented happiness“ – say the last humans and blink.

Why should one live? All is vain! To live - that is to thresh straw; to live - that is to burn oneself and yet not get warm.- Such ancient babbling still passes for "wisdom"; because it is old, however, and smells mustily, therefore is it the more honoured. Even mould ennobles.- Children might thus speak: they shun the fire because it has burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. And he who ever "threshes straw," why should he be allowed to rail at threshing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle! Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even good hunger: - and then do they rail: "All is vain!" But to eat and drink well, my brothers, is truly no hath burnt them! There is much childishness in the old books of wisdom. And he who ever “thrasheth straw,” why should he be allowed to rail at thrashing! Such a fool one would have to muzzle! Such persons sit down to the table and bring nothing with them, not even good hunger:—and then do they rail: “All is vain!” But to eat and drink well, my brethren, is verily no vain art! Break up, break up for me the tables of the never-joyous ones!

The young ladies might behave like they were smooth and sealed as alabaster statues underneath their clothes, but then they would drop their soiled shifts on the bedchamber floor, to be whisked away and cleansed, and would thus reveal themselves to be the frail, leaking, forked bodily creatures that they really were. Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her from behind an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book: she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren’t as rarefied as angels, and so they just couldn’t look her in the eye.

Also, there was a disciple of Plato who one time spoke to his Master, as the book by Senior Zadith will bear witness, and this was his demand, in all truthfulness: “Tell me the name of the Philosopher’s Stone.” And Plato answered unto him anon, “It is the stone that men call Titanos.” “What is that?” asked the disciple. “It is the same as Magnasia,” said Plato. “Yea, Sir, and is it thus?” said the disciple. “This is to explain one unknown by another unknown. What is Magnasia, good Sir? Pray tell me.” “It is a liquid that is made of four elements,” said Plato. “Tell me the source of that liquid, good Sir, if it be your will,” said the disciple. “Nay, nay,” said Plato, “that I certainly shall not.

Would you go into isolation, my brother? would you seek the way to yourself? Tarry yet a little and listen to me. "He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd. The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain. Behold, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction. But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your authority and your strength to do so! Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?

Would you go into isolation, my brother? would you seek the way to yourself? Tarry yet a little and listen to me. "He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All isolation is wrong": so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd. The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, "I have no longer a conscience in common with you," then will it be a plaint and a pain. Behold, that pain itself did the same conscience produce; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction. But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your authority and your strength to do so! Are you a new strength and a new authority? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you also compel stars to revolve around you?

The Poet" The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry His power is his left hand It is idle weak and precious His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light which never was On land or sea. He may be drunken to death, draining the casks of excess That extreme form of success. He may suffer Narcissus' destiny Unable to live except with the image which is infatuation Love, blind, adoring, overflowing Unable to respond to anything which does not bring love quickly or immediately. ...The poet must be innocent and ignorant But he cannot be innocent since stupidity is not his strong point Therefore Cocteau said, "What would I not give To have the poems of my youth withdrawn from existence? I would give to Satan my immortal soul." This metaphor is wrong, for it is his immortal soul which he wished to redeem, Lifting it and sifting it, free and white, from the actuality of youth's banality, vulgarity, pomp and affectation of his early works of poetry. So too in the same way a Famous American Poet When fame at last had come to him sought out the fifty copies of his first book of poems which had been privately printed by himself at his own expense. He succeeded in securing 48 of the 50 copies, burned them And learned then how the last copies were extant, As the law of the land required, stashed away in the national capital, at the Library of Congress. Therefore he went to Washington, therefore he took out the last two copies Placed them in his pocket, planned to depart Only to be halted and apprehended. Since he was the author, Since they were his books and his property he was reproached But forgiven. But the two copies were taken away from him Thus setting a national precedent. For neither amnesty nor forgiveness is bestowed upon poets, poetry and poems, For William James, the lovable genius of Harvard spoke the terrifying truth: "Your friends may forget, God may forgive you, But the brain cells record your acts for the rest of eternity." What a terrifying thing to say! This is the endless doom, without remedy, of poetry. This is also the joy everlasting of poetry. Delmore Schwartz

His mother left the room; then, moved by insupportable regret, I just murmured the words “Dr. Bretton.” He looked up from his book; his eyes were not cold or malevolent, his mouth was not cynical; he was ready and willing to hear what I might have to say: his spirit was of vintage too mellow and generous to sour in one thunder-clap. “Dr. Bretton, forgive my hasty words: do, do forgive them.” He smiled that moment I spoke. “Perhaps I deserved them, Lucy. If you don’t respect me, I am sure it is because I am not respectable. I fear, I am an awkward fool: I must manage badly in some way, for where I wish to please, it seems I don’t please.” “Of that you cannot be sure; and even if such be the case, is it the fault of your character, or of another’s perceptions? But now, let me unsay what I said in anger. In one thing, and in all things, I deeply respect you. If you think scarcely enough of yourself, and too much of others, what is that but an excellence?” “Can I think too much of Ginevra?” “I believe you may; you believe you can’t. Let us agree to differ. Let me be pardoned; that is what I ask.” “Do you think I cherish ill-will for one warm word?” “I see you do not and cannot; but just say, ‘Lucy, I forgive you!’ Say that, to ease me of the heart-ache.” “Put away your heart-ache, as I will put away mine; for you wounded me a little, Lucy. Now, when the pain is gone, I more than forgive: I feel grateful, as to a sincere well-wisher.” “I am your sincere well-wisher: you are right.” Thus our quarrel ended.

Your God is a child, so long as you are not childlike. Is the child order, meaningi' Or disorder, capricei' Disorder and meaninglessness are the mother oforder and meaning. Order and meaning are things that have become and are no longer becoming. You open the gates ofthe soul to let the darkffood ofchaosffow into your order and meaning. I f you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness. You are aftaid to open the doori' I too was ayaid, since we hadforgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. 66 But you should know that love is also terrible. I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I heaped up a wall ofdoubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myselfyom myftaiful soul. You dread the depths; it should horrify you, since the way ofwhat is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation offtar and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your ftar is justified and your doubt is reasonable. How otherwise / could it be a true temptation and a true overcomingi' Christ totally overcomes the temptation ofthe devil, but not the temptation ofGodtogoodandreason.67 Christthussuccumbstocursing.68 Youstillhavetolearnthis,tosuccumbtonotemptation,buttodo thing ofyour own will; then you will befree and beyond christianity. I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I ftar; yes, even more, that I must even love what horrifies me. We must learn suchyom that saint who was disgusted by the plague inftctions; she drank the pus cifplague boils and became aware that it smelled like roses. The acts cifthe saint were not in vain. 69 I n everything regarding your salvation and the attainment ofmercy, you are dependent on your soul. Thus no sacrifice can be too(greatfor you. I f your virtues hinder youyom salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtuefinds the way as little as the slave to vices.70 Ifyou believe that you are the master ofyour soul, then become her vant. I f you were her servant, make yourselfher master, since she needs to be ruled. These should be yourfirst steps.

About the twelfth year of my age, my father being abroad, my mother reproved me for some misconduct, to which I made an undutiful reply. The next first-day, as I was with my father returning from meeting, he told me that he understood I had behaved amiss to my mother, and advised me to be more careful in future. I knew myself blamable, and in shame and confusion remained silent. Being thus awakened to a sense of my wickedness, I felt remorse in my mind, and on getting home I retired and prayed to the Lord to forgive me, and I do not remember that I ever afterwards spoke unhandsomely to either of my parents, however foolish in some other things.

The kiss, to put the twinkle in the stars of all the Universes within her eyes. A long awaited lingering, to set the passion of the muse alight again. What words pressed to her mouth, whispered on the tendrils of fervency, aroused? Touching her face, then laying a hand upon her chest, spoke words flecked with such regret: "How anyone could ever dare to break such a beautiful heart- I will never know.". Twasn't the saying of those words- it was that her lover meant it so. And thus she kissed her lover; slowly, deliberately, reciprocally- in equal measure to the genuine care and rapt passion. A returned affection for the ardor from her new companion. Hail truth in love. Hail, hail, the springs which quench the parched lips of loneliness. Hail freedom to be, in vivacity. Hail trust and unencumbered twining of spirit." From the book "The spark (of a muse)"- by Cheri Bauer

Caleb and Joshua stopped and watched the prophets. The three of them were staring at Rahab as if they saw something in her that they did not quite understand. Then a shudder and a gasp of breath seemed to flow from one to the other. Everyone in the room saw it. It was like a rushing wind that penetrated their bodies, but only their bodies, no one else’s. It was the Spirit of the living God. One of the prophets spoke up, “Thus saith Yahweh, behold this woman before you will bear a child in the line of Judah.” The second spoke as if continuing the sentence like they were all three connected in spirit. “It will be a royal bloodline from which a king of Israel shall arise. A gibborim warrior.” And the last one finished, “The Seed of Promise shall issue forth who will crush the Seed of the Serpent.” A strange peace came over Rahab. It was as if Yahweh’s spirit rested upon her as well. It was as if he were comforting her, clearing away all her doubt, and all her years of pain and anguish in search of one true love. And now she had found it. She kept clinging to Caleb. The prophets then lost their breath and looked at one another. The Spirit that had come over them was now gone.

Now as God revealed his Word and spoke, or preached, by the mouth of the fathers and Prophets, and at last by his own Son, then by the Apostles and evangelists, whose tongues were but as the pens of scribes writing rapidly, God thus employing men to speak to men; so to propose, apply, and declare this his Word, he employs his visible spouse as his mouthpiece and the interpreter of his intentions. It is God then who rules over Christian belief, but with two instruments, in a double way: (1) by his Word as by a formal rule and (2) by his Church as by the hand of the measurer and rule-user. Let us put it thus: God is the painter, our faith the picture, the colors are the Word of God, the brush is the Church. Here then are two ordinary and infallible rules of our belief: the Word of God, which is the fundamental and formal rule; the Church of God, which is the rule of application and explanation.

When Mora came in with my hot chocolate, she also brought me a gift: a book. I took it eagerly. The book was a memoir from almost three hundred years before, written by the Duchess Nirth Masharlias, who married the heir to a principality. Though she never ruled, three of her children married into royalty. I had known of her, but not much beyond that. There was no letter, but slipped in the pages was a single petal of starliss. The text it marked was written in old-fashioned language, but even so, I liked the voice of the writer at once: …and though the Count spoke strictly in Accordance with Etiquette, his words were an Affront, for he knew my thoughts on Courtship of Married Persons… I skipped down a ways, then started to laugh when I read: …and mock-solemn, matching his Manner to the most precise Degree, I challenged him to a Duel. He was forced to go along with the Jest, lest the Court laugh at him instead of with him, but he liked it Not… …and at the first bells of Gold we were there on the Green, and lo, the Entire Court was out with us to see the Duel. Instead of Horses, I had brought big, shaggy Dogs from the southern Islands, playful and clumsy under their Gilt Saddles, and for Lances, we had great paper Devices which were already Limp and Dripping from the Rain… Twice he tried to speak Privily to me, but knowing he would apologize and thus end the Ridiculous Spectacle, I heeded him Not, and so we progressed through the Duel, attended with all proper Appurtenances, from Seconds to Trumpeteers, with the Court laughing themselves Hoarse and No One minding the increasing Downpour. In making us both Ridiculous I believe I put paid to all such Advances in future… The next page went on about other matters. I laid the book down, staring at the starliss as I thought this over. The incident on this page was a response--the flower made that clear enough--but what did it mean? And why the mystery? Since my correspondent had taken the trouble to answer, why not write a plain letter? Again I took up my pen, and I wrote carefully: Dear Mysterious Benefactor: I read the pages you marked, and though I was greatly diverted, the connection between this story and my own dilemma leaves me more confused than before. Would you advise my young lady to act the fool to the high-ranking lady--or are you hinting that the young one already has? Or is it merely a suggestion that she follow the duchess’s example and ward off the high-ranking lady’s hints with a joke duel? If you’ve figured out that this is a real situation and not a mere mental exercise, then you should also know that I promised someone important that I would not let myself get involved in political brangles; and I wish most straightly to keep this promise. Truth to tell, if you have insights that I have not--and it’s obvious that you do--in this dilemma I’d rather have plain discourse than gifts. The last line I lingered over the longest. I almost crossed it out, but instead folded the letter, sealed it, and when Mora came in, I gave it to her to deliver right away. Then I dressed and went out to walk.

Lewis himself spoke about this process of “double seeing” at several points in his works—most notably, in concluding a lecture given at the Socratic Club in Oxford in 1945: “I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”[583] We can look at the sun itself; or we can look instead at what it illuminates—thus enlarging our intellectual, moral, and aesthetic vision. We see the true, the good, and the beautiful more clearly by being given a lens that brings them into focus. They are not invented by our reading of Narnia, but they are discerned, lit up, and brought into sharper focus. And more than that, we see more, and we see farther, by looking through the right lens. We should read Narnia as Lewis asks us to read other works of literature—as something that is to be enjoyed on the one hand, and something with the capacity to enlarge our vision of reality on the other. What Lewis wrote of The Hobbit in 1939 applies with equal force to his own Narnia books: they allow us into “a world of its own” which, once it has been encountered, “becomes indispensable.” “You cannot anticipate it before you go there, as you cannot forget it once you have gone.”[584]

Let me first admit quite simply: I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we merely need ask perpetually and with a bit of humility in order to get the answer from it. One cannot simply read the Bible like other books. One must be prepared genuinely to query it. Only thus does it reveal itself. Only if we are really expecting an ultimate answer from it will it give us that answer. The reason is that God is speaking to us in the Bible. And one cannot simply reflect on God on one’s own; one must ask God. Only if we seek God will God answer. Of course, one can also read the Bible just as one does any other book, for example, from the perspective of textual criticism, etc. There can be no objections to such reading. It merely is not the use that genuinely discloses the essence of the Bible; it discloses merely its surface. Just as you grasp the words of someone dear to you not by first[174] analyzing them but merely by accepting them, and just as they may then resonate in your ears for days, simply as the words of this particular person whom we love, and just as in these words the person who spoke them is increasingly disclosed to us the more we “ponder it in our heart” as Mary did,[175] so also should we deal with the word of the Bible.

Aristotle said that the best activities are the most useless. This is because such things are not simply means to a further end but are done entirely for their own sake. Thus watching a baseball game is more important than getting a haircut, and cultivating a friendship is more valuable than making money. The game and the friendship are goods that are excellent in themselves, while getting a haircut and making money are in service of something beyond themselves. This is also why the most important parts of the newspaper are the sports section and the comics, and not, as we would customarily think, the business and political reports. In this sense, the most useless activity of all is the celebration of the Liturgy, which is another way of saying that it is the most important thing we could possibly do. There is no higher good than to rest in God, to honor him for his kindness, to savor his sweetness—in a word, to praise him. As we have seen in chapter three, every good comes from God, reflects God, and leads back to God, and, therefore, all value is summed up in the celebration of the Liturgy, the supreme act by which we commune with God. This is why the great liturgical theologian Romano Guardini said that the liturgy is a consummate form of play. We play football and we play musical instruments because it is simply delightful to do so, and we play in the presence of the Lord for the same reason. In chapter one I spoke of Adam in the garden as being the first priest, which is another way of saying that his life, prior to the fall, was entirely liturgical. At play in the field of the Lord, Adam, with every move and thought, effortlessly gave praise to God. As Dietrich von Hildebrand indicated, this play of liturgy is what rightly orders the personality, since we find interior order in the measure that we surrender everything in us to God. We might say that the Liturgy bookends the entire Scripture, for the priesthood of Adam stands at the beginning of the sacred text and the heavenly Liturgy of the book of Revelation stands at the end. In the closing book of the Bible, John the visionary gives us a glimpse into the heavenly court, and he sees priests, candles, incense, the reading of a sacred text, the gathering of thousands in prayer, prostrations and other gestures of praise, and the appearance of the Lamb of God. He sees,

Pressures and forces are ever in opposition,’ the Edur was saying as he rotated the spitted hare over the flames. ‘And the striving is ever towards a balance. This is beyond the gods, of course—it is the current of existence—but no, beyond even that, for existence itself is opposed by oblivion. It is a struggle that encompasses all, that defines every island in the Abyss. Or so I now believe. Life is answered by death. Dark by light. Overwhelming success by catastrophic failure. Horrific curse by breathtaking blessing. It seems the inclination of all people to lose sight of that truth, particularly when blinded by triumph upon triumph. See before me, if you will, this small fire. A modest victory…but if I feed it, my own eager delight is answered, until this entire plain is aflame, then the forest, then the world itself. Thus, an assertion of wisdom here…in the quenching of these flames once this meat is cooked. After all, igniting this entire world will also kill everything in it, if not in flames then in subsequent starvation. Do you see my point, Monok Ochem?’ ‘I do not, Trull Sengar. This prefaces nothing.’ Onrack spoke. ‘You are wrong, Monok Ochem. It prefaces… everything

This book is about plants and by plants. It is a phytobiography—a collection of stories, each written together with and on behalf of a plant person. These stories are told through the narrative voice of both the human and the plant person, through the language of plants and my language for them. But let me be clear on this most delicate subject. There is no attempt at, or need for, ventriloquizing by assigning a voice to plants or speaking for them to render these stories intelligible to our human mind.

chaos in her eyes Sitting with Christine, thinking about the chaos in her eyes, his emotional chaos, plotting to lure her out for a weekend of love, he wished in a chaotic, physical logic,” I wish I could count the number of causes and their probabilities that affect your feelings about me and that will determine what kind of answer I get if I ask you out for a date.” -What? What is that you just said? (An internal voice). By knowing the causes and the probabilities of the order in which they occur, you predict emotions Is that possible? Can we treat human emotions like the weather? Are there sensors to measure our emotions across time points in our history from which we can predict our future actions and their impact on us and others? Is there a computer with enormous capacity that can collect, analyze, and predict them? Do human emotions fall within this randomness? Throughout their history, physicists have rejected the idea of a relationship between human emotions and the surrounding world. Emotions are incomprehensible, they cannot be expected, what cannot be expected cannot be measured, what cannot be measured cannot be formulated into equations, and what cannot be formulated into equations, screw it, reject it, get rid of it, it is not part of this world. These ideas were acceptable to physicists in the past before we knew that we can control the effect of randomness to some extent through control sciences, and predict it by collecting a huge amount of data through special sensors and analyzing it. What affects when a plane arrives? Wind speed and direction? Our motors compensate for this unwanted turbulence. A lightning strike could destroy it? Our lightning rods control this disturbance and neutralize its danger. Running out of fuel? We have fuel meter indicators. Engine failure? We have alternative solutions for an emergency landing. All fall under the category of control sciences, But what about the basic building blocks of an airplane model during its flight? Humans themselves! A passenger suddenly felt dizzy, and felt ill, did the pilot decide to change his destination to the nearest airport? Another angry person caused a commotion, did he cause the flight to be canceled? Our emotions are part of this world, affect it, and can be affected by, interact with. Since we can predict chaos if we have the tools to collect, measure, and analyze it, and since we can neutralize its harmful effects through control science, thus, we can certainly do the same to human emotions as we do with weather and everything else that we have been able to predict and neutralize its undesirable effect. But would we get the desired results? nobody knows… -“Not today, not today, Robert”, he spoke to himself. – If you can’t do it today, you can’t do it for a lifetime, all you have to do now is simply to ask her out and let her chaos of feelings take you wherever she wants. Unconsciously, about to make the request, his phone rang, the caller being his mother and the destination being Tel Aviv. Standing next to Sheikh Ruslan at the building door, this wall fascinated him. -The universe worked in some parts of its paint even to the point of entropy, which it broke, so it painted a very beautiful painting, signed by its greatest law, randomness. If Van Gogh was here, he would not have a nicer one. Sheikh Ruslan knocked on the door, they heard the sound of footsteps behind him, someone opened a small window from it, as soon as he saw the Sheikh until he closed it immediately, then there was a rattle in the stillness of the alley, iron locks opening. Here Robert booked a front-row seat for the night with the absurd, illogic and subconscious.

Jews were thus being reclaimed as fellow Germans, while their previously asserted racial or ethnic “difference” was disavowed on the grounds that, after all, they had been born in Germany, spoke German as a mother tongue, or at any rate wrote for a German readership. Those exiles whom the Nazis had deprived of their German citizenship on political and racial grounds were now entitled to renaturalization according to Article 116, Paragraph 2 of the German constitution, the Grundgesetz.29 Yet with the exception of Adorno, who renewed his German citizenship in 1955, the public speakers considered here did not seek to repatriate: Arendt, a secular German Jew, never reapplied for German citizenship, even though she took her German readers seriously enough to personally produce German versions of books she had originally written in English. In a similar vein, Weiss, son of a Jewish-Hungarian father and a Swiss mother, acquired Swedish citizenship

I am a railing beside the stream: he who can grasp me, let him grasp me! I am not, however, your crutch.

You still feel noble, and others, too, who dislike you and cast evil glances at you, still feel you are noble. Learn that everyone finds the noble man an obstruction.

The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the Neo-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident. Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, redemption and return of all to the purity of the Creator; and, after the re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a fortunate and truly divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines. Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative style. Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense centre of Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays; so do the spirits of Light emanate from the Divine Light. Behold, all the springs which nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the Earth; they emanate from one and the same ocean; so from the bosom of the Divinity emanate so many streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences. Behold numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it, all are composed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and utterances, decomposable into so many syllables and elements, all contained in the primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the world of Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they all resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences. It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the Pastoral letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in parables and allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the Platonists, and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of which could have been clear to the Initiates alone.

O sky above me! O pure, deep sky! You abyss of light! Gazing into you, I tremble with divine desires. To cast myself into your height - that is my depth! To hide myself in your purity - that is my innocence! -Before Sunrise

1:1. wilderness Wilderness emerges through the narrative not only as a setting but also as a theme of considerable significance. The Hebrew title of the book, bêmidbar, "In the Wilderness," which derives from the opening verse ("And YHWH spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai [bêmidbar sînay] ... "), is a better indicator of the book's contents than the Greek title, arithmoi (from which comes the English "Numbers"). It also better captures the pervasive feeling of the book. The wilderness depiction conveys two quite different qualities. On the one hand, the wilderness years constitute a kind of ideal. The peoples life is orderly, protected, close to God. It is a period of incubation, of nurturing. All is provided: food, water, direction. The miraculous is the norm. At the same time, though, the wilderness is depicted as terrible. Conditions are bad. The environment is hostile. There is rebellion from within and fighting with peoples whom they encounter on the way. There are power struggles and fear. And this is pictured as having been almost entirely avoidable, a fate that has come upon the people for having rejected the opportunity to enter the land. Numbers thus expresses pervasively a notion that is only begun in Leviticus, namely that closeness to the divine is both glorious and dangerous.

He spoke with bitterness, and, having said thus, relapsed for some minutes into silence. Presently he raised his head from his hands, and added, with an altered voice and manner, “I, sir, paused, investigated, believed, and was not ashamed to state my convictions to the world. I, too, was branded as a visionary, held up to ridicule by my contemporaries, and hooted from that field of science in which I had laboured with honour during all the best years of my life. These things happened just three-and-twenty years ago. Since then, I have lived as you see me living now, and the world has forgotten me, as I have forgotten the world. You have my history.” “It is a very sad one,” I murmured, scarcely knowing what to answer. “It is a very common one,” he replied. “I have only suffered for the truth, as many a better and wiser man has suffered before me.

In this book, I have tried to reveal her other Nietzsche as really the central Nietzsche in Zarathustra by firmly linking his mysticism to Spinoza’s pantheism.

Progressive thievery is thievery of a special sort, thievery that marches behind the banner of justice. In one of his other books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes that for the avengers, justice is a camouflage for envy and revenge; these are “tyrants who shroud themselves in words of virtue.

Americans are driven by many forces, and chief among those forces—and thus a formative element in the country’s soul—is the “pursuit of happiness” of which Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. When he composed those words in his rented second-floor quarters at Seventh and Market in Philadelphia in late June, 1776, Jefferson was not thinking about happiness in only the sense of good cheer. He and his colleagues were contemplating something more comprehensive—more revolutionary. Garry Wills’s classic 1978 book on the Declaration, Inventing America, put it well: “When Jefferson spoke of pursuing happiness,” Wills wrote, “he had nothing vague or private in mind. He meant public happiness which is measurable; which is, indeed, the test and justification of any government.

In my dream, the floating corpses motioned to me and spoke, saying the things they had said in life, urging me to buy nails or boots, cheap clothing, and meat pies, blessing me in the names of various gods, and wishing me a good morning, a good afternoon; and it became clear to me that the dead cannot know that they are dead, that if they know it they cannot be dead. Thus all those dead men and women behaved in death as they had in life. It seemed certain that I was dead as well—that it was only because I too was dead and did not know it that I could hear the dead as I did, that I could see them move and speak.

But to be forsaken is something very different from deliberately choosing blessed loneliness.

Is there more to the Fatima secret not yet revealed? Well, before he later revealed the content of the 3rd Secret of Fatima in 2000, John Paul II spoke to a select group of German Catholics at Fulda during his 1980 visit to Germany. Here is an excerpt from his words: The Holy Father was asked, “What about the Third Secret of Fatima? Should it not have already been published by 1960?” Pope John Paul II replied: “Given the seriousness of the contents, my predecessors in the Petrine office diplomatically preferred to postpone publication so as not to encourage the world power of Communism to make certain moves. On the other hand, it should be sufficient for all Christians to know this: if there is a message in which it is written that the oceans will flood whole areas of the earth, and that from one moment to the next millions of people will perish, truly the publication of such a message is no longer something to be so much desired.” At this point the Pope grasped a Rosary and said: “Here is the remedy against this evil. Pray, pray, and ask for nothing more. Leave everything else to the Mother of God.” The Holy Father was then asked: “What is going to happen to the Church?” He answered: “We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ. With your and my prayer it is possible to mitigate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it, because only thus can the Church be effectively renewed. How many times has the renewal of the Church sprung from blood! This time, too, it will not be otherwise. We must be strong and prepared, and trust in Christ and His Mother, and be very, very assiduous in praying the Rosary.” In his book, The Last Secret of Fatima, Cardinal Bertone, (now former) Vatican Secretary of State, acknowledged that John Paul II did in fact say these words (p. 48). What clarity, for those who can see!

And, thus we went out. We talked. Briefly. Intensely. Being as open as we could. Judging as little as possible. For an hour or less. Every day or every alternate day. Over the last month or so. We talked till we parted. Initially, we found our time too short and childishly expressed that we would look forward to our next chat. Then we saw the value of speaking face-to-face, in a city that hardly spoke. We cherished our little time. Our conversations grew deeper. We set them free. And returning home felt less shackling. We shared nothing more. An accidental touch of fingers, or a wrist held while crossing the road, or an arm around the shoulder, rather barely above it, scraping the thin air. But we didn’t hold hands. We didn’t hug. We hadn’t so far. Though we both wanted it. So badly.