Too Malicious Quotes

Most people are far too much occupied with themselves to be malicious.

Sure you can manage that broom, Potter?" said a cold, drawling voice. Draco Malfoy had arrived for a closer look, Crabbe and Goyle right behind him. "Yeah, reckon so," said Harry casually. "Got plenty of special features, hasn't it?" said Malfoy, eyes glittering maliciously. "Shame it doesn't come with a parachute - in case you get too near a Dementor." Crabbe and Goyle sniggered. "Pity you can't attach an extra arm to yours, Malfoy," said Harry. "Then it could catch the Snitch for you.

Incessant smiling is one of the deadly tools used by someone whose intent is to make others cry.

No, no, no, " she says in a sincere, yet malicious tone. "It's not me who should be mad. That would be your father for messing up our lives!" "Goodnight, Paige. Enjoy the dark." "Fuck you!" "Love you too.

Don't reach for the halo too soon. You have plenty of time to enjoy yourself, even a little maliciously sometimes, before you settle down to being a saint.

It's like a malicious person lifting a photograph from the developing chemicals too early, and then pronouncing the photographer incompetent.

By degrees, however, he fashioned for himself out of this tendency a philosophy that was actually serviceable to life. He gained strength through familiarity with the thought that the emergency exit stood always open, and became curious, too, to taste his suffering to the dregs. If it went too badly with him he could feel sometimes with a grim malicious pleasure: "I am curious to see all the same just how much a man can endure. If the limit of what is bearable is reached, I have only to open the door to escape.

Starling knew what the malicious Dr. Lecter would say, and it was true: she was afraid there was something tacky that Senator Martin saw in her, something cheap, something thief-like that Senator Martin reacted to. That Vanderbilt bitch. Dr. Lecter would relish pointing out that class resentment, the buried anger that comes with mother's milk, was a factor too. Starling gave away nothing to any Martin in education, intelligence, drive, and certainly physical appearance, but still it was there and she knew it.

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such injury that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly’s wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen; never be hung even, and there was Mr Tansley whispering in her ear, “Women can’t paint, women can’t write ...” She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr Bankes’s glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr Bankes extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw there. But why different, and how different? she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do her bidding tomorrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found a crumpled glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness. She was willful; she was commanding (of course, Lily reminded herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune of Mrs Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a light tap on one’s bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her beauty was always that—hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it might be—Charles Tansley losing his umbrella; Mr Carmichael snuffling and sniffing; Mr Bankes saying, “The vegetable salts are lost.” All this she would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the window, in pretence that she must go,—it was dawn, she could see the sun rising,—half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing, insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole world whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs Ramsay cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs Ramsay had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs Ramsay listening; shaded lights and regular breathing.

god, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts. the doubts of past convictions only cast aspersions on present assurances and maliciously suggest that those, too, shall pass into the realm of the null and void...

Is there not genius in the villain? In the criminal? A magic born in the beginnings of the tiniest of rebellions? When I think of someone who has to create a masterplan to rob a store, the valor of a pirate, or a malicious CEO trying to tear down competition, at least they have a point of view. They are uninhibited by the parameters of previous motion. They are electric imaginers. And they make their money by thinking. The originality of a criminal’s thoughts requires a freedom so rare to attain—and from there, brilliant masterplans, blueprints, trajectories, and other devices are employed. No one owns them and they defy odds with every offense. To have the mind of a criminal, but the heart of an angel would be ideal, but who promised ideal? It’s too bad the cleverest of things were corrupt and have made us call geniuses stupid. Maybe it’s circumstance, maybe it’s hereditary, but the greatest criminals have the creativity and courage like no other.

It wasn't my mother's laugh, the obscene laughter of a woman who knows. In Nella there was something chaste and yet vulgar, it was the laugh of an aging virgin that asailed me and pushed me to laugh, too, but in a forced way. [...] I saw myself growing old, with that laugh of malicious innocence in my breast. I thought: I'll end up laughing like that, too.

I should hardly advise you to go too much by all I’ve told you. I’m a malicious creature.

I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as “love” and “darling” on his lips: the best words at my service were “provoking puppet,” “malicious elf,” “sprite,” “changeling,” &c.  For caresses, too, I now got grimaces; for a pressure of the hand, a pinch on the arm; for a kiss on the cheek, a severe tweak of the ear.  It was all right: at present I decidedly preferred these fierce favours to anything more tender. 

Hugo felt the world was hostile to his writing, he felt not only all its human inhabitants but its noises and diversions and ordinary clutter were linked against him, maliciously, purposefully, diabolically thwarting and maiming him and keeping him from his work. And I, whose business it was to throw myself between him and the world, was failing to do so, by choice perhaps as much as ineptitude for the job. I did not believe in him. I had not understood how it would be necessary to believe in him. I believed that he was clever and talented, whatever that might mean, but I was not sure he would turn out to be a writer. He did not have the authority I thought a writer should have. He was too nervous, too touchy with everybody, too much of a showoff. I believed that writers were calm, sad people, knowing too much. I believed that there was a difference about them, some hard and shining, rare intimidating quality they had from the beginning, and Hugo didn’t have it. I thought that someday he would recognize this. Meanwhile, he lived in a world whose rewards and punishments were as strange, as hidden from me, as if he had been a lunatic.

What a skeletal wreck of man this is. Translucent flesh and feeble bones, the kind of temple where the whores and villains try to tempt the holistic domes. Running rampid with free thought to free form, and the free and clear. When the matters at hand are shelled out like lint at a laundry mat to sift and focus on the bigger, better, now. We all have a little sin that needs venting, virtues for the rending and laws and systems and stems are ripped from the branches of office, do you know where your post entails? Do you serve a purpose, or purposely serve? When in doubt inside your atavistic allure, the value of a summer spent, and a winter earned. For the rest of us, there is always Sunday. The day of the week the reeks of rest, but all we do is catch our breath, so we can wade naked in the bloody pool, and place our hand on the big, black book. To watch the knives zigzag between our aching fingers. A vacation is a countdown, T minus your life and counting, time to drag your tongue across the sugar cube, and hope you get a taste. WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FOR? WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON? SHUT UP! I can go on and on but lets move on, shall we? Say, your me, and I’m you, and they all watch the things we do, and like a smack of spite they threw me down the stairs, haven’t felt like this in years. The great magnet of malicious magnanimous refuse, let me go, and punch me into the dead spout again. That’s where you go when there’s no one else around, it’s just you, and there was never anyone to begin with, now was there? Sanctimonious pretentious dastardly bastards with their thumb on the pulse, and a finger on the trigger. CLASSIFIED MY ASS! THAT’S A FUCKING SECRET, AND YOU KNOW IT! Government is another way to say better…than…you. It’s like ice but no pick, a murder charge that won’t stick, it’s like a whole other world where you can smell the food, but you can’t touch the silverware. Huh, what luck. Fascism you can vote for. Humph, isn’t that sweet? And we’re all gonna die some day, because that’s the American way, and I’ve drunk too much, and said too little, when your gaffer taped in the middle, say a prayer, say a face, get your self together and see what’s happening. SHUT UP! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! I’m sorry, I could go on and on but their times to move on so, remember: you’re a wreck, an accident. Forget the freak, your just nature. Keep the gun oiled, and the temple cleaned shit snort, and blaspheme, let the heads cool, and the engine run. Because in the end, everything we do, is just everything we’ve done.

It is better to not believe a truth than to believe a lie, because this defines yourself too. If you believe a lie that has negative effects, it shows you may have malicious intentions. But if you don't believe a truth that has negative effects, then you may be well-disposed.

Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful. You’ll be too preoccupied with what so-and-so is doing, and why, and what they’re saying, and what they’re thinking, and what they’re up to, and all the other things that throw you off and keep you from focusing on your own mind. You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that. And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones—the thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be ashamed to be caught thinking. Someone like that—someone who refuses to put off joining the elect—is a kind of priest, a servant of the gods, in touch with what is within him and what keeps a person undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests—the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens. With what leaves us dyed indelibly by justice, welcoming wholeheartedly whatever comes—whatever we’re assigned—not worrying too often, or with any selfish motive, about what other people say. Or do, or think. He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us. He keeps in mind that all rational things are related, and that to care for all human beings is part of being human. Which doesn’t mean we have to share their opinions. We should listen only to those whose lives conform to nature. And the others? He bears in mind what sort of people they are—both at home and abroad, by night as well as day—and who they spend their time with. And he cares nothing for their praise—men who can’t even meet their own standards.

They were silent for a moment, each of them contemplating Anthony Comstock, a demagogue with too much power for such a limited understanding and narrow mind. Many saw him as nothing more than a sanctimonious buffoon, but those who paid attention knew him to be malicious and calculating.

The Fox News network, especially opinion broadcaster Sean Hannity, had a Svengali-like influence on Trump that Rosenstein privately labeled “malicious.” Too many right-wing nuts had influence. He also found no comfort or credibility with mainstream media reporters, who he believed were prisoners of their partisan sources.

Sonny shows me his phone. It’s a text message from Rapid, sent this morning, and it consists of one simple-but-not-so-simple question: Wanna meet up? My mouth drops. “Seriously?” “Seriously,” Sonny says. “Holy shit.” There’s one problem though. “Why haven’t you responded?” “I don’t know,” he says. “Part of me is like, hell yeah. The other part feels like this shit is too good to be true. What if he’s really a fifty-year-old man who lives in his mom’s basement and has a malicious plot to murder me and leave my body parts spread out across his backyard, unknown to anyone, until twenty years from now when a stray dog sniffs me out?” I stare at him. “The specifics in your examples are disturbing sometimes.

If for some women flirting is second nature, insignificant, routine, for Tereza it had developed into an important field of research with the goal of teaching her who she was and what she was capable of. But by making it important and serious, she deprived it of its lightness, and it became forced, labored, overdone. She disturbed the balance between promise and lack of guarantee (which, when maintained, is a sign of flirtistic virtue); she promised too ardently, and without making it clear that the promise involved no guarantee on her part. Which is another way of saying that she gave everyone the impression of being there for the taking. But when men responded by asking for what they felt they had been promised, they met with strong resistance, and their only explanation for it was that she was deceitful and malicious.

The worker began to wheeze, choking with anger and malicious joy. “That’s too little! That’s way too little!” he said. Of course, for him the Bolsheviks were the genuine “worker-peasant force.” They “were realizing the most cherished hopes of the people.” Everyone knows what kind of “hopes” these “people” have, for they have been called upon to rule the world and to take charge of all culture, law, honor, conscience, religion, and art.

Well, my love, I consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that expressive word, but I do wish he was a little younger and a good deal richer." "Now, Laurie, don't be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women never should marry for money..." Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity...

Looking at her with a wolf’s gaze, with a hunger satiated only by violence and destruction, he pulled back only slightly with the sight of blood trickling from her nose. When she smiled at him, her teeth stained red, her tongue running over her gums, however, Blossom’s entire body juxtaposed the idea between sweet and innocent to malicious and coarse. She was as sharp as a blade, yet as sweet as a flowering bruise. And his affection for her was as equally a perfect mixture—balance—between the desire to destroy her, tear her limb from limb, devour her, and protect, nurture, save her from all the evil in the world, including himself. But what he didn’t realize, as she batted her lashes back up at him, her body molding under his fingertips so easily he for a minute was convinced she had been created for the sole purpose of him, was that she was a wolf, too. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, a false prey. A predator of equal conviction.

When an opponent in the gymnasium gashes us with his nails or bruises our head in a collision, we do not protest or take offence, and we do not suspect him ever afterwards of malicious intent. However, we do regard him with a wary eye; not in enmity or suspicion, yet good-temperedly keeping our distance. So let it be, too, at other times in life; let us agree to overlook a great many things in those who are, as it were, our fellow-contestants. A simple avoidance, as I have said, is always open to us, without either suspicion or ill will.

I reach out and trace the dragon relic on his back, my fingers lingering on the raised silver scars, and he stiffens. They're all short, thin lines, too precise to be a whip, no rhyme or reason to their pattern but never intersecting. 'What happened?' I whisper, holding my breath. 'You really don't want to know.' He's tense, but doesn't move away from my touch. 'I do.' They don't look accidental. Someone hurt him deliberately maliciously, and it makes me want to hunt the person down and do the same to them. His jaw flexes as he looks over his shoulder, and his eyes meet mine. I bite my lip, knowing this moment can go either way. He can shut me out like always or he can actually let me in. 'There's a lot of them,' I murmur, dragging my fingers down his spine. 'A hundred and seven.' He looks away. The number makes my stomach lurch, and then my hand pauses. A hundred and seven. That's the number Liam mentioned. 'That's how many kids under the age of majority carry the rebellion relic.' 'Yeah.' I shift so I can see his face. 'What happened, Xaden?' He brushes my hair back, and the look that passes is over his face is so close to tender that it makes my heart stutter. 'I saw the opportunity to make a deal,' he says softly. 'And I took it.' 'What kind of deal leaves you with scars like that?' Conflict rages in his eyes, but then he sighs. 'The kind where I take personal responsibility for the loyalty of the hundred and seven kids the rebellion's leaders left behind, and in return, we're allowed to fight for our lives in the Riders Quadrant instead of being put to death like our parents.' He averts his gaze. 'I chose the chance of death over the certainty.' The cruelty of the offer and the sacrifice he made to save the others hits like a physical blow. I cradle his cheek and guide his face back to mine. 'So if any of them betray Navarre...' I lift my brows. 'Then my life is forfeit. The scars are a reminder.' It's why Liam says he owes him everything. 'I'm so sorry that happened to you.' Especially when he wasn't the one who led the rebellion. He looks at me like he sees into the very depths of who I am. 'You have nothing to apologise for.

The impossible class. — Poor, happy and independent! — these things can go together; poor, happy and a slave! — these things can also go together — and I can think of no better news I could give to our factory slaves: provided, that is, they do not feel it to be in general a disgrace to be thus used, and used up, as a part of a machine and as it were a stopgap to fill a hole in human inventiveness! To the devil with the belief that higher payment could lift from them the essence of their miserable condition I mean their impersonal enslavement! To the devil with the idea of being persuaded that an enhancement of this impersonality within the mechanical operation of a new society could transform the disgrace of slavery into a virtue! To the devil with setting a price on oneself in exchange for which one ceases to be a person and becomes a part of a machine! Are you accomplices in the current folly of the nations the folly of wanting above all to produce as much as possible and to become as rich as possible? What you ought to do, rather, is to hold up to them the counter-reckoning: how great a sum of inner value is thrown away in pursuit of this external goal! But where is your inner value if you no longer know what it is to breathe freely? if you no longer possess the slightest power over yourselves? if you all too often grow weary of yourselves like a drink that has been left too long standing? if you pay heed to the newspapers and look askance at your wealthy neighbour, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money and opinions? if you no longer believe in philosophy that wears rags, in the free-heartedness of him without needs? if voluntary poverty and freedom from profession and marriage, such as would very well suit the more spiritual among you, have become to you things to laugh at? If, on the other hand, you have always in your ears the flutings of the Socialist pied-pipers whose design is to enflame you with wild hopes? which bid you to be prepared and nothing further, prepared day upon day, so that you wait and wait for something to happen from outside and in all other respects go on living as you have always lived until this waiting turns to hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and at last the day of the bestia triumphans dawns in all its glory? In contrast to all this, everyone ought to say to himself: ‘better to go abroad, to seek to become master in new and savage regions of the world and above all master over myself; to keep moving from place to place for just as long as any sign of slavery seems to threaten me; to shun neither adventure nor war and, if the worst should come to the worst, to be prepared for death: all this rather than further to endure this indecent servitude, rather than to go on becoming soured and malicious and conspiratorial!

I want to quote that poem in something I'm writing," he explained, "and can you tell me the last line of it ? " Lou answered mechanically, as if he had pressed a button: "Death is not a way out of it!" "A very strange theory, that about death," he said. "I wonder if there's anything in it. It would really be too easy if we could get out of our troubles in so simple a fashion. It has always seemed to me that nothing can ever be destroyed. The problems of life are really put together ingeniously in order to baffle one, like a chess problem. We can't untie a real knot in a closed piece of string without the aid of the fourth dimension; but we can disentangle the complexities caused by dipping the string in water-and such things," he added, with an almost malicious gravity in his tone. I knew what he meant. " It might very well be," he continued, " that when we fail to solve the puzzles of life, they remain with us. We have to do them sooner or later ; and it seems reasonable to suppose that the problems of life ought to be solved during life, while we have to our hands the apparatus in which they arose. We might find that after death the problems were unaltered, but that we were impotent to deal with them. Did you ever meet any one that had been indiscreet about taking drugs ? Presumably not. Well, take my word for it, those people get into a state which is in many ways very like death. And the tragic thing about the situation is this ; that they started taking the drugs because life, in one way or another, was one too many for them. And what is the result ? The drugs have not in the least relieved the monotony of life or whatever their trouble was, and yet they have got into a state very like that of death, in which they are impotent to struggle. No, we must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige. We can face that adventure as we've faced the others.

There is no sense in refusing honours. That is in fact to do them too much honour. The only strategy is to act so that they never weigh upon you. Your delicious (and malicious) certainty that you are a beautiful woman only subjugates yourself. How is one to approach her to be subjugated oneself? It seems difficult to meet the woman of your life when you have several (lives). In fact, as soon as you have a double life . . . Popular fame is what we should aspire to. Nothing will ever match the distracted gaze of the woman serving in the butcher's who has seen you on television. With their feet caught in the ice like the pink flamingos, they still thought they were God's gift to mankind.

8. Such is the lowliness of our condition in this life; for we think others are like ourselves and we judge others according to what we ourselves are, since our judgment arises from within us and not outside us. Thus the thief thinks others also steal; and the lustful think others are lustful too; and the malicious think others also bear malice, their judgment stemming from their own malice; and the good think well of others, for their judgment flows from the goodness of their own thoughts; and to those who are careless and asleep, it seems that others are too. Hence it is that when we are careless and asleep in God's presence, it seems to us it is God who is asleep and neglectful of us, as is seen in psalm 43 where David calls to him: Arise, Lord, why do you sleep? Arise [Ps. 44:23].

George Washington had turned down the requests of blacks, seeking freedom, to fight in the Revolutionary army. So when the British military commander in Virginia, Lord Dunmore, promised freedom to Virginia slaves who joined his forces, this created consternation. A report from one Maryland county worried about poor whites encouraging slave runaways: The insolence of the Negroes in this county is come to such a height, that we are under a necessity of disarming them which we affected on Saturday last. We took about eighty guns, some bayonets, swords, etc. The malicious and imprudent speeches of some among the lower classes of whites have induced them to believe that their freedom depended on the success of the King’s troops. We cannot therefore be too vigilant nor too rigourous with those who promote and encourage this disposition in our slaves.

Erin. “No matter what else has happened, you’re water and your element is welcome in our circle, but we don’t need any negative energy here—this is too important.” I nodded to the spiders. Erin’s gaze followed mine and she gasped. “What the hell is that?” I opened my mouth to evade her question, but my gut stopped me. I met Erin’s blue eyes. “I think it’s what’s left of Neferet. I know it’s evil and it doesn’t belong at our school. Will you help us kick it out?” “Spiders are disgusting,” she began, but her voice faltered as she glanced at Shaunee. She lifted her chin and cleared her throat. “Disgusting things should go.” Resolutely, she walked to Shaunee and paused. “This is my school, too.” I thought Erin’s voice sounded weird and kinda raspy. I hoped that meant that her emotions were unfreezing and that, maybe, she was coming back around to being the kid we used to know. Shaunee held out her hand. Erin took it. “I’m glad you’re here,” I heard Shaunee whisper. Erin said nothing. “Be discreet,” I told her. Erin nodded tightly. “Water, come to me.” I could smell the sea and spring rains. “Make them wet,” she continued. Water beaded the cages and a puddle began to form under them. A fist-sized clump of spiders lost their hold on the metal and splashed into the waiting wetness. “Stevie Rae.” I held my hand out to her. She took mine, then Erin’s, completing the circle. “Earth, come to me,” she said. The scents and sounds of a meadow surrounded us. “Don’t let this pollute our campus.” Ever so slightly, the earth beneath us trembled. More spiders tumbled from the cages and fell into the pooling water, making it churn. Finally, it was my turn. “Spirit, come to me. Support the elements in expelling this Darkness that does not belong at our school.” There was a whooshing sound and all of the spiders dropped from the cages, falling into the waiting pool of water. The water quivered and began to change form, elongating—expanding. I focused, feeling the indwelling of spirit, the element for which I had the greatest affinity, and in my mind I pictured the pool of spiders being thrown out of our campus, like someone had emptied a pot of disgusting toilet water. Keeping that image in mind, I commanded: “Now get out!” “Out!” Damien echoed. “Go!” Shaunee said. “Leave!” Erin said. “Bye-bye now!” Stevie Rae said. Then, just like in my imagination, the pool of spiders lifted up, like they were going to be hurled from the earth. But in the space of a single breath the dark image reformed again into a familiar silhouette—curvaceous, beautiful, deadly. Neferet! Her features weren’t fully formed, but I recognized her and the malicious energy she radiated. “No!” I shouted. “Spirit! Strengthen each of the elements with the power of our love and loyalty! Air! Fire! Water! Earth! I call on thee, so mote it be!” There was a terrible shriek, and the Neferet apparition rushed forward. It surged from our circle, breaking over Erin

...There,in his foul, stinking cellar, our offended, down-trodden and ridiculed mouse immerses himself in cold, venomous and, cheifly, everlasting spite. For forty years on end he will remember the offence, down to the smallest and most shameful detail, constantly adding more shameful details of his own, maliciously teasing and irritating himself with his own fantasies. He himself will be ashamed of his fantasies, but nevertheless he will remember all of them, weighing them up and inventing all sorts of things that never happend to him, on the pretext that they too could have happend and he'll forgive nothing. Probably he'll start taking his revenge, but somehow in fits and starts, pettily, anonymously, from behind the stove, believing neither in his right to take revenge, nor in the success of his revenge and knowing beforehand that he will suffer one hundred times more from every single one of his attempts at revenge than the object of his revenge, who, most likely, wont't give a damn.

There comes a time when you walk downstairs to pick up a letter you forgot, and the low confidential voices of the little group of girls in the living room suddenly ravels into an incoherent mumble and their eyes slide slimily through you, around you, away from you in a snaky effort not to meet the tentative half-fear quivering in your own eyes. And you remember a lot of nasty little tag ends of conversation directed at you and around you, meant for you, to strangle you on the invisible noose of insinuation. You know it was meant for you; so do they who stab you. But the game is for both of you to pretend you don't know, you don't really mean, you don't understand. Sometimes you can get a shot back in the same way, and you and your antagonist rival each other with brave smiles while the poison darts quiver, maliciously, in your mutual wounds. More often you are too sickened to fight back, because you know the fear and the inadequacy will crawl out in your words as they crackle falsely on the air. So you hear her say to you "We'd rather flunk school and be sociable than stick in our rooms all the time," and very sweetly "I never see you. You're always studying in your rooom!" And you keep your mouth shut. And oh, how you smile!

Every estate has its traitors, so too matrimony. Naturally I do not mean the seducers, for of course they have not entered into this holy estate (I trust the mood this inquiry meets you in doesn’t cause you to smile at that expression); I do not mean those who have left it through divorce, for they have at least had the courage to be openly rebellious. No, I mean those who are rebels only in thought, who do not even dare let it be expressed in action, these wretched husbands who sit and sigh over the fact that love has long ago evaporated from their marriage, these husbands who, as you once said of them, sit like lunatics each in his matrimonial cell, and tug at the iron bars and fantasize about the sweetness of betrothal and the bitterness of marriage, these husbands who, as you rightly observe, are among those to congratulate, with a certain malicious glee, anyone who gets engaged. I cannot describe how despicable they appear to me, and how much unholy joy it gives me when such a husband confides in you and pours out all his sufferings, rattling off all his lies about the happy first love, and you say with a knowing look, ‘Yes, I’ll make sure not to get onto thin ice’, and he is all the more embittered that he can’t drag you with him into a common shipwreck. It is these husbands you so often refer to when you speak of a tender paterfamilias with four blessed children he would sooner see in hell.

One griever told me that three years after her twenty-eight-year-old daughter died unexpectedly, she was having a bad day and found herself quite depressed and sad. She called a friend hoping to find a sympathetic ear but instead was assaulted by the friend’s exclamation, ‟You mean you’re still grieving over her, after three three years?” The friend’s question was not meant to be malicious. She honestly didn’t understand that to a grieving mother three years is nothing. She was sadly ignorant that major loss lasts a lifetime. This woman is not alone in her ignorance. I’ve heard educated people tell me that they thought the average length of the grieving process was two to four weeks. Maybe that was just their wishful thinking. We’re an immediate-gratification society that values quick fixes, a generation raised on microwaves and fast foods. We prefer our solutions and emotions conveniently packaged for the swiftest consumption. So we expect grief to be a quick and easy process with no bitter aftertaste. But how can we expect to love someone, lose someone—and not be changed irrevocably? How can we realistically expect this to be a speedy process? Yet time and again grievers tell me they are being asked, “When will you be your old self again?” or “It’s been three months already, shouldn’t you be over this by now?” Perhaps you’ve heard comments like this too, and chances are that as a result, you feel quite confused and isolated in your grief. Maybe you’ve been asking yourself the same questions.

You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that. And it would be obvious at once from your answer that your thoughts were straightforward and considerate ones—the thoughts of an unselfish person, one unconcerned with pleasure and with sensual indulgence generally, with squabbling, with slander and envy, or anything else you’d be ashamed to be caught thinking. Someone like that—someone who refuses to put off joining the elect—is a kind of priest, a servant of the gods, in touch with what is within him and what keeps a person undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests—the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens. With what leaves us dyed indelibly by justice, welcoming wholeheartedly whatever comes—whatever we’re assigned—not worrying too often, or with any selfish motive, about what other people say. Or do, or think. He does only what is his to do, and considers constantly what the world has in store for him—doing his best, and trusting that all is for the best. For we carry our fate with us—and it carries us. He keeps in mind that all rational things are related, and that to care for all human beings is part of being human.

Teddy actually cries, he misses her so bad, and eventually he convinces her that she”—here Sadie makes quote marks with her fingers—“‘owes’ him the chance to explain.” “And she agrees to meet?” I ask, mostly because I worry I’ve been silent too long. “Yes.” “This,” I say. “This is the part I never get.” Sadie leans forward and tilts her head to the side. “That’s because while you’re trying, Win, you’re still too male to get it. Women have been conditioned to please. We are responsible not just for ourselves but everyone in our orbit. We think it is our job to comfort the man. We think we can make things better by sacrificing a bit of ourselves. But you’re also right to ask. It’s the first thing I tell my clients: If you’re ready to end it, end it. Make a clean break and don’t look back. You don’t owe him anything.” “Did Sharyn go back to him?” I ask. “For a little while. Don’t shake your head like that, Win. Just listen, okay? That’s what these psychos do. They manipulate and gaslight. They make you feel guilty, like it’s your fault. They sucker you back in.” I still don’t get it, but that’s not important, is it? “Anyway, it didn’t last. Sharyn saw the light fast. She ended it again. She stopped replying to his calls and texts. And that’s when Teddy upped his assholery to the fully psychotic. Unbeknownst to her, he bugged her apartment. He put keyloggers on her computers. Teddy has a tracker on her phone. Then he starts texting her anonymous threats. He stole all her contacts, so he floods mailboxes with malicious lies about her—to her friends, her family. He writes emails and pretends he’s Sharyn and he trashes her professors and friends. On one occasion, he contacts Sharyn’s best friend’s fiancé—as Sharyn—and

I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….

People should forgive me, as an old philologist who cannot prevent himself from maliciously setting his finger on the arts of bad interpretation ― but that "conformity to nature" which you physicists talk about so proudly, as if ― it exists only thanks to your interpretation and bad "philology"― it is not a matter of fact, a "text." It is much more only a naively humanitarian emendation and distortion of meaning, with which you make concessions ad nauseam to the democratic instincts of the modern soul! "Equality before the law everywhere ― in that respect nature is no different and no better than we are": a charming ulterior motive, in which once again lies disguised the rabble's hostility to everything privileged and autocratic, as well as a second and more sophisticated atheism. Ni dieu, ni maître [neither god nor master] ― that's how you want it, and therefore "Up with natural law!" Isn't that so? But, as mentioned, that is interpretation, not text, and someone could come along who had an opposite intention and style of interpretation and who would know how to read out of this same nature, with a look at the same phenomena, the tyrannically inconsiderate and inexorable enforcement of power claims ― an interpreter who set right before your eyes the unexceptional and unconditional nature in all "will to power," in such a way that almost every word, even that word "tyranny," would finally appear unusable or an already weakening metaphor losing its force ― as too human ― and who nonetheless in the process finished up asserting the same thing about this world as you claim, namely, that it has a "necessary" and "calculable" course, but not because laws rule the world but because there is a total absence of laws, and every power draws its final consequence in every moment. Supposing that this also is only an interpretation ―and you will be eager enough to raise that objection?― well, so much the better.

BITCH THE POT Tea and gossip go together. At least, that’s the stereotypical view of a tea gathering: a group of women gathered around the teapot exchanging tittle-tattle. As popularity of the beverage imported from China (‘tea’ comes from the Mandarin Chinese cha) increased, it became particularly associated with women, and above all with their tendency to gossip. Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue lists various slang terms for tea, including ‘prattle-broth’, ‘cat-lap’ (‘cat’ being a contemporary slang for a gossipy old woman), and ‘scandal broth’. To pour tea, meanwhile, was not just to ‘play mother’, as one enduring English expression has it, but also to ‘bitch the pot’ – to drink tea was to simply ‘bitch’. At this time a bitch was a lewd or sensual woman as well as a potentially malicious one, and in another nineteenth-century dictionary the phraseology is even more unguarded, linking tea with loose morals as much as loquaciousness: ‘How the blowens [whores] lush the slop. How the wenches drink tea!’ The language of tea had become another vehicle for sexism, and a misogynistic world view in which the air women exchanged was as hot as the beverage they sipped. ‘Bitch party’ and ‘tabby party’ (again the image of cattiness) were the terms of choice for such gossipy gatherings. Men, it seems, were made of stronger stuff, and drank it too. Furthermore, any self-respecting man would ensure his wife and daughters stayed away from tea. The pamphleteer and political writer William Cobbett declared in 1822: The gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. The girl that has been brought up, merely to boil the tea kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to affix his affections upon her. In the twenty-first century, to ‘spill the T’ has become a firm part of drag culture slang for gossiping. T here may stand for either ‘truth’ or the drink, but either way ‘weak tea’ has come to mean a story that doesn’t quite hold up – and it’s often one told by women. Perhaps it’s time for bitches to make a fresh pot.

Gossip, even malicious rumors, are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world. What alarmed me most in the course of my stay in the United States was the habit of spending enormous sums of money in order to achieve so little real luxury. America represents the triumph of quantity over quality. Mass production triumphs; men and women both prefer to buy a multitude of mediocre things rather than a smaller number, carefully chosen. The American woman, faithful to the ideal of optimism with the United States seems to have made its rule of life, spends money entirely in order to gratify the collective need to buy. She prefers three new dresses to one beautiful one and does not linger over a choice, knowing perfectly well that her fancy will be of short duration and the dress which she is in the process of buying will be discarded very soon. The prime need of fashion is to please and attract. Consequently this attraction cannot be born of uniformity, the mother of boredom. Contemporary elegance is at once simple and natural. Since there is no patience where vanity is concerned, any client who is kept waiting considers it a personal insult. The best bargain in the world is a successful dress. It brings happiness to the woman who wears it and it is never too dear for the man who pays for it. The most expensive dress in the world is a dress which is a failure. It infuriates the woman who wears it and it is a burden to the man who pays for it. In addition, it practically always involves him in the purchase of a second dress much more expensive - the only thing that can blot out the memory of the first failure. Living in a house which does not suit you is like wearing someone else's clothes. There will always be women who cling to a particular style of dress because they wore it during the time of their greatest happiness, but white hair is the only excuse for this type of eccentricity. The need for display, which is dormant in all of us, can express itself nowadays in fashion and nowhere else. The dresses of this collection may be worn by only a few of the thousands of women who read and dream about them, but high fashion need not be directly accessible to everyone: it need only exist in the world for its influence to be felt.

She had been unable to stand the people at the inn. The company had disgusted her. For an instant, but that instant was now long gone, she had thought of returning to her home, to Persia. Or to Greece, where she had friends, but she had dropped the idea again. From me she had expected salvation, but I too had disappointed her. I was, much as she was, a lost and ultimately ruinous person, even though I did not admit that to her, she could feel it, she knew it. No salvation could come from such a person. On the contrary, such a person only pushed one even deeper into despair and hopelessness. Schumann, Schopenhauer, these were the two words she said after a prolonged silence and I had the impression that she was smiling as she said them, and then nothing again for a long time. She had had everything, heard and seen everything, that was enough. She did not wish to hear from anyone any more. People were utterly distasteful to her, the whole of human society had profoundly disappointed her and abandoned her in her disappointment. There would have been no point in saying anything, and so I just listened and said nothing. I had, she said, on our second walk in the larch-wood, been the first person to explain to her the concept of anarchy in such a clear and decisive manner. Anarchy she said and no more, after that she was again silent. An anarchist, I had said to her in the larch-wood, was only a person who practised anarchy, she now reminded me. Everything in an intellectual mind is anarchy, she said, repeating another of my quotations. Society, no matter what society, must always be turned upside down and abolished, she said, and what she said were again my words. Everything that is is a lot more terrible and horrible than described by you, she said. You were right, she said, these people here are malicious and violent and this country is a dangerous and an inhuman country. You are lost, she said, just as I am lost. You may escape to wherever you choose. Your science is an absurd science, as is every science. Can you hear yourself? she asked. All these things you yourself said. Schumann and Schopenhauer, they no longer give you anything, you have got to admit it. Whatever you have done in your life, which you are always so fond of describing as existence, you have, naturally enough, failed. You are an absurd person. I listened to her for a while, then I could bear it no longer and took my leave.

What a lovely day again; were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the angels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a fairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here's food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that's tingling enough for mortal man! to think's audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. And yet, I've sometimes thought my brain was very calm—frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the contents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing now; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it's like that sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy clefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow it; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the tossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this through prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and ventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces. Out upon it!—it's tainted. Were I the wind, I'd blow no more on such a wicked, miserable world. I'd crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink there. And yet, 'tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever conquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run tilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that strikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow. Even Ahab is a braver thing—a nobler thing that that. Would now the wind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and outrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as objects, not as agents. There's a most special, a most cunning, oh, a most malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that there's something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm Trade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in strong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark, however the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest Mississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go at last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly blow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them—something so unchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along!

THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING After the war, Einstein, the towering figure who had unlocked the cosmic relationship between matter and energy and discovered the secret of the stars, found himself lonely and isolated. Almost all recent progress in physics had been made in the quantum theory, not in the unified field theory. In fact, Einstein lamented that he was viewed as a relic by other physicists. His goal of finding a unified field theory was considered too difficult by most physicists, especially when the nuclear force remained a total mystery. Einstein commented, “I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified object, rendered blind and deaf by the years. I find this role not too distasteful, as it corresponds fairly well with my temperament.” In the past, there was a fundamental principle that guided Einstein’s work. In special relativity, his theory had to remain the same when interchanging X, Y, Z, and T. In general relativity, it was the equivalence principle, that gravity and acceleration could be equivalent. But in his quest for the theory of everything, Einstein failed to find a guiding principle. Even today, when I go through Einstein’s notebooks and calculations, I find plenty of ideas but no guiding principle. He himself realized that this would doom his ultimate quest. He once observed sadly, “I believe that in order to make real progress, one must again ferret out some general principle from nature.” He never found it. Einstein once bravely said that “God is subtle, but not malicious.” In his later years, he became frustrated and concluded, “I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.” Although the quest for a unified field theory was ignored by most physicists, every now and then, someone would try their hand at creating one. Even Erwin Schrödinger tried. He modestly wrote to Einstein, “You are on a lion hunt, while I am speaking of rabbits.” Nevertheless, in 1947 Schrödinger held a press conference to announce his version of the unified field theory. Even Ireland’s prime minister, Éamon de Valera, showed up. Schrödinger said, “I believe I am right. I shall look an awful fool if I am wrong.” Einstein would later tell Schrödinger that he had also considered this theory and found it to be incorrect. In addition, his theory could not explain the nature of electrons and the atom. Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli caught the bug too, and proposed their version of a unified field theory. Pauli was the biggest cynic in physics and a critic of Einstein’s program. He was famous for saying, “What God has torn asunder, let no man put together”—that is, if God had torn apart the forces in the universe, then who were we to try to put them back together?

The impossible class. Poor, happy and independent! — these things can go together; poor, happy and a slave! — these things can also go together — and I can think of no better news I could give to our factory slaves: provided, that is, they do not feel it to be in general a disgrace to be thus used, and used up, as a part of a machine and as it were a stopgap to fill a hole in human inventiveness! To the devil with the belief that higher payment could lift from them the essence of their miserable condition I mean their impersonal enslavement! To the devil with the idea of being persuaded that an enhancement of this impersonality within the mechanical operation of a new society could transform the disgrace of slavery into a virtue! To the devil with setting a price on oneself in exchange for which one ceases to be a person and becomes a part of a machine! Are you accomplices in the current folly of the nations the folly of wanting above all to produce as much as possible and to become as rich as possible? What you ought to do, rather, is to hold up to them the counter-reckoning: how great a sum of inner value is thrown away in pursuit of this external goal! But where is your inner value if you no longer know what it is to breathe freely? if you no longer possess the slightest power over yourselves? if you all too often grow weary of yourselves like a drink that has been left too long standing? if you pay heed to the newspapers and look askance at your wealthy neighbour, made covetous by the rapid rise and fall of power, money and opinions? if you no longer believe in philosophy that wears rags, in the free-heartedness of him without needs? if voluntary poverty and freedom from profession and marriage, such as would very well suit the more spiritual among you, have become to you things to laugh at? If, on the other hand, you have always in your ears the flutings of the Socialist pied-pipers whose design is to enflame you with wild hopes? which bid you to be prepared and nothing further, prepared day upon day, so that you wait and wait for something to happen from outside and in all other respects go on living as you have always lived until this waiting turns to hunger and thirst and fever and madness, and at last the day of the bestia triumphans dawns in all its glory? In contrast to all this, everyone ought to say to himself: ‘better to go abroad, to seek to become master in new and savage regions of the world and above all master over myself; to keep moving from place to place for just as long as any sign of slavery seems to threaten me; to shun neither adventure nor war and, if the worst should come to the worst, to be prepared for death: all this rather than further to endure this indecent servitude, rather than to go on becoming soured and malicious and conspiratorial!

could be a weekly boarder again, I suppose.’ Cherie had become a day pupil a couple of years earlier, when Tess had left school. ‘I don’t want to be a boarder, and the bus gets me there too late . . . oh I know, Tess can drive us,’ Cherie said now. She returned to her toast and marmalade. ‘That’s all right then.’ ‘I won’t have it!’ Marianne said pettishly. ‘Though I suppose, if you are to be away all week and only home weekends, Tess will be able to shop for me.’ ‘They’re going to ration petrol,’ Tess said rather maliciously. Her father had taught her to drive some months ago but Marianne had said it was unfeminine and unnecessary

The Second World War has swept over Europe. The Führer is dead. The Greater German Reich has been smashed. German cities lie in ruins. The German folk has been surrendered to the interest slavery of its enemy. As in the First, so in the Second World War, too, English, American and Russian soldiers have been the executors. But who is the real victor of this war? Is it the folks from whom those soldiers had come? The takeover of the government by the Führer in 1933 was for World Jewry the signal to attack. The World Jewish press agitated for the global boycott against Germany. Germany’s reply was the 24 hour boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933. No Jew lost his life in the process, and no Jewish business building was damaged. The counter-boycott, ordered by the party leadership and carried out under my leadership, was supposed to warn World Jewry against challenging National Socialist Germany. Since that time, malicious attacks against National Socialist Germany have appeared in the world press again and again. It was unmistakable that with that propaganda in the world, carried out without interruption, the view was supposed to be bred that the existence of a National Socialist Germany meant a danger for the other folks. The Jewish writer Emil Ludwig, who emigrated to France, spoke especially clearly about Jewish wishes and intentions in the magazine „Les Annales”: „Hitler does not want war, but he will be forced to it.” The Polish ambassador in the USA, Count Potocky, wrote at a time when in Europe nobody thought a Second World War would come or must come, to his government in Warsaw that he had gained the impression that influential Jews in Washington would work toward a new world war. (See the German White Book.) The report of the Polish Ambassador Potocky, whom nobody can reproach with bias against World Jewry and who also was no friend of National Socialist Germany, would alone suffice to be able to thoroughly answer the question of war guilt. The guilt for the Second World War, too, was born at the moment when god Jehovah, through the mouth of Field Marshal Moses, gave the Jewish folk the instructions: „You should devour all the folks!” With the defeat of National Socialist Germany in the Second World War, World Jewry has won the greatest victory in its history.

person's mind can race faster than anything else. It drums up the craziest things. It hopes. It deceives. It scares. It speaks lies and truths. It spins in a malicious circle until wondering gets the better of you. Over the past four days since he’s been gone, I’ve learned how loyal it is too.

But Christians need to toughen up to the idea of being hated in this post-Christian culture, or you will drop out of the race. We must decide if we want to be used mightily by God to fight evil in our culture and build His kingdom, or if our little kingdoms and reputations are too important to lose. To win this battle against malicious hate, bullying, and slander, we don’t need eloquence, good looks, or physical strength—we need grit! Grit is resolve, endurance, and resilience in the face of impossible odds. It takes a lot of grit to take on the social Marxists. But it is so worth it when you win a battle.

But, actually, the idea of a personal god or spirit who peevishly withholds food, or maliciously hurls lightning, gets a boost from the evolved human brain. People reared in modern scientific societies may consider it only natural to ponder some feature of the world—the weather, say—and try to come up with a mechanistic explanation couched in the abstract language of natural law. But evolutionary psychology suggests that a much more natural way to explain anything is to attribute it to a humanlike agent. This is the way we’re “designed” by natural selection to explain things. Our brain’s capacity to think about causality—to ask why something happened and come up with theories that help us predict what will happen in the future—evolved in a specific context: other brains. When our distant ancestors first asked “Why,” they weren’t asking about the behavior of water or weather or illness; they were asking about the behavior of their peers. That’s a somewhat speculative (and, yes, hard-to-test!) claim. We have no way of observing our prehuman ancestors one or two or three million years ago, when the capacity to think explicitly about causality was evolving by natural selection. But there are ways to shed light on the process. For starters, we can observe our nearest nonhuman relatives, chimpanzees. We didn’t evolve from chimps, but chimps and humans do share a common ancestor in the not-too-distant past (4 to 7 million years ago). And chimps are probably a lot more like that common ancestor than humans are. Chimps aren’t examples of our ancestors circa 5 million BCE but they’re close enough to be illuminating. As the primatologist Frans de Waal has shown, chimpanzee society shows some clear parallels with human society. One of them is in the title of his book Chimpanzee Politics. Groups of chimps form coalitions—alliances—and the most powerful alliance gets preferred access to resources (notably a resource that in Darwinian terms is important: sex partners). Natural selection has equipped chimps with emotional and cognitive tools for playing this political game. One such tool is anticipation of a given chimp’s future behavior based on past behavior. De Waal writes of a reigning alpha male, Yeroen, who faced growing hostility from a former ally named Luit: “He already sensed that Luit’s attitude was changing and he knew that his position was threatened.” 8 One could argue about whether Yeroen was actually pondering the situation in as clear and conscious a way as de Waal suggests. But even if chimps aren’t quite up to explicit inference, they do seem close. If you imagine their politics getting more complex (more like, say, human politics), and them getting smarter (more like humans), you’re imagining an organism evolving toward conscious thought about causality. And the causal agents about which these organisms will think are other such organisms, because the arena of causality is the social arena. In this realm, when a bad thing happens (like a challenge for Yeroen’s alpha spot) or a good thing happens (like an ally coming to Yeroen’s aid), it is another organism that is making the bad or good thing happen.

I like to say the idea of Phantasma came to me all at once, hitting me like a ton of bricks one cloudy afternoon in November 2021, but truly, my experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder has been building to this story for a very long time. During the process of brainstorming the sort of adult romance I wanted to debut with, I was going through a period where my obsessive-compulsive tendencies were flaring up more than usual and the voices in my head were getting a little too bold. To my friends, these compulsions were alarming little anecdotes over lunch—‘that sounds like a horror movie’ one of them said (affectionately)—which is funny because, to me, someone who has lived with OCD my entire life, it was just another day of being unfazed by the increasingly creative scenarios my mind likes to conjure. OCD has such a wide range of symptoms that it makes every person’s experience with it different. Unfortunately, it has also become a commonly misused term conflated with the idea of being overly neat and clean, when in reality a lot of people with OCD have much darker symptoms. In my experience this has made explaining the real effects of OCD very hard as well as making it more difficult for people to regard the condition seriously. It’s so important to me to convey, with the utmost sincerity, that I know people are not doing this to be malicious! Because of the misuse of the term, however, some of the ways this disorder is shown in this book may come off as exaggerated or dramatic—but the details of Ophelia’s OCD are drawn directly from experiences that I, or someone I know who shares my condition, have had first-hand. And it’s still only a fraction of the symptoms we live with daily. Ophelia’s story is a love letter to my journey of getting comfortable being in my own head (as well as my adoration for Gothic aesthetics and hot ghosts). And while her experience with OCD, my experience with OCD, might look a lot different to someone else’s, I hope that the same message rings clear: struggling with your mental health does not make you unworthy of love. And I hope the people you surround yourself with are the sort of people who know that, too.

But the Butler-Brennan collaboration splendidly informs The Prince and the Pirate, a Samuel Goldwyn million-dollar Technicolor production that spoofs the swashbuckling pictures of the 1930s that made Errol Flynn a star. Butler seems to have given Brennan free rein in bringing to life one of his most exuberant and ribald roles. As Featherhead, a scuzzy pirate, he convinces the malicious Captain Barrett, “the Hook” (Victor McLaglen) to spare a female gypsy fortune-teller, impersonated by “The Great Sylvester” (Hope) from walking the plank. The pirate crew is perplexed by Featherhead’s lascivious designs on this none too appetizing dish, but he practically slavers over his prize, which he bears away with great glee. Brennan plays Featherhead with devouring relish. But as soon as he has Hope to himself, Featherhead confesses he has known all along that she is a he. The shocked Sylvester recovers enough to say, “If you don’t tell anybody I’m not a gypsy, I won’t tell anybody you’re not an idiot.” Featherhead has appropriated the performer in a scheme to outwit The Hook and to capture a buried treasure. Brennan takes out his teeth for this role, and either through added weight or makeup, presents a rubicund complexion and a robust, rounded face that is startlingly different from the gaunt and rickety Eddie of To Have and Have Not.

When his theory of relativity had been challenged by a fellow physicist—whose own theories, Einstein contended, relied too much upon random events and coincidences—he had replied: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not.” He still believed that to be true; there was an order to everything in the universe, and the greatest achievement would lie in deciphering it.

There is a saying amongst my people that reflects this. Within every heart lives two dragons, a dragon of Hope and a dragon of Hate, both mighty and powerful in equal measure. They war constantly, always struggling for dominance to be the rightful ruler of your heart. You feed them with your actions. All that drives us in life is fuelled by either hope or hate. Hate is the dark mirror of hope, empowering our hearts with the same fire and energy but striving for different ends. Hate drives us to bring those above us to ruin, while hope exalts us to raise ourselves up beyond where we are. We want to better ourselves, or drag down someone else so we are on top. The destruction of the gnomes had taken with it the dragon of our hate, but hope could not flare up to take its place; hope was already dead within us. We were soulless, cast adrift and ready to settle down to wait for death. I remember these times as being some of the hardest of them all, not because of pain, or suffering, or loss…but because I no longer felt anything at all. Both dragons lay dead, and my heart was a barren wasteland cloaked in winter. While this wounded me greatly, it was better than the alternative. I said many things, did many things, that I regret in this time of my life, but I always feel the slightest bit of pride that at that moment, right when I had nothing, I didn’t feed Hate and nurse it back to health. Most manage to find an equilibrium in their hearts between Hate and Hope, controlling the former while encouraging the latter, and for most, this is a happy and content existence. Some find that Hope’s strength overpowers Hate easily, and that they are able to do noble things effortlessly and naturally simply by following their intrinsic sense of righteousness. However, some embrace that hateful dragon within them, that boiling black pit of rage that simmers and bubbles out of sight, ushering them into darkness and wickedness too numerous to count. They embrace this powerful ally and use it to great effect. Sometimes my surface friends wonder why anyone would do this, would willingly plunge themselves into shadow and wrath. Even humans, that most flexible and different of species, almost universally espouse the idea that good is preferable to evil, and that it is better to be noble than to be malicious, even when they do not believe it. Why would anyone listen to that whisper from Hate, the dark voice urging them to abandon Hope and to

Miles’s pause had lasted just a little too long. Genially taking his turn to fill it, Illyan turned to Ekaterin. “Speaking of weddings, Madame Vorsoisson, how long has Miles been courting you? Have you awarded him a date yet? Personally, I think you ought to string him along and make him work for it.” A chill flush plunged to the pit of Miles’s stomach. Alys bit her lip. Even Galeni winced. Olivia looked up in confusion. “I thought we weren’t supposed to mention that yet.” Kou, next to her, muttered, “Hush, lovie.” Lord Dono, with malicious Vorrutyer innocence, turned to her and inquired, “What weren’t we supposed to mention?” “Oh, but if Captain Illyan said it, it must be all right,” Olivia concluded. Captain Illyan had his brains blown out last year, thought Miles. He is not all right. All right is precisely what he is not . . . Her gaze crossed Miles’s. “Or maybe . . .” Not, Miles finished silently for her. Ekaterin

It is not to be supposed that Frederick felt much sympathy with the free young Republic established in America. And if he sent a sword of honor to Washington in 1783, it was because he recognized the greatness of the man; and perhaps, too, because he felt a malicious pleasure in the humiliation of George III.! The

The names of your informers, what backstabbing campaigns you’re embarking on, where you store your guns, your drugs, your money, the location of your hideout, the interchangeable lists of your friends and enemies, your contacts, the fences, your escape plans—all things you need to keep to yourself, and you will reveal every one if you are in love. Love is the Ultimate Informer because of the conviction it inspires that your love is eternal and immutable—you can no more imagine the end of your love than you can imagine the end of your own head. And because love is nothing without intimacy, and intimacy is nothing without sharing, and sharing is nothing without honesty, you must inevitably spill the beans, every last bean, because dishonesty in intimacy is unworkable and will slowly poison your precious love. When it ends—and it will end (even the most risk-embracing gambler wouldn’t touch those odds)—he or she, the love object, has your secrets. And can use them. And if the relationship ends acrimoniously, he or she will use them, viciously and maliciously—will use them against you. Furthermore, it is highly probable that the secrets you reveal when your soul has all its clothes off will be the cause of the end of love. Your intimate revelations will be the flame that lights the fuse that ignites the dynamite that blows your love to kingdom come. No, you say. She understands my violent ways. She understands that the end justifies the means. Think about this. Being in love is a process of idealization. Now ask yourself, how long can a woman be expected to idealize a man who held his foot on the head of a drowning man? Not too long, believe me. And cold nights in front of the fire, when you get up and slice off another piece of cheese, you don’t think she’s dwelling on that moment of unflinching honesty when you revealed sawing off the feet of your enemy? Well, she is. If a man could be counted on to dispose of his partner the moment the relationship is over, this chapter wouldn’t be necessary. But he can’t be counted on for that. Hope of reconciliation keeps many an ex alive who should be at the bottom of a deep gorge. So, lawbreakers, whoever you are, you need to keep your secrets for your survival, to keep your enemies at bay and your body out of the justice system. Sadly—and this is the lonely responsibility we all have to accept—the only way to do this is to stay single. If you need sexual relief, go to a hooker. If you need an intimate embrace, go to your mother. If you need a bed warmer during cold winter months, get a dog that is not a Chihuahua or a Pekingese. But know this: to give up your secrets is to give up your security, your freedom, your life. The truth will kill your love, then it will kill you. It’s rotten, I know. But so is the sound of the judge’s gavel pounding a mahogany desk.

Even though this princess loved the oak and the castle and her mother, the queen, she tired of the beautiful swamp, of her surroundings. You see, as she grew she came to realize that if she looked too closely, she could recognize evil things in the swamp as well as all the extraordinary things she loved. There were hurtful, malicious things, things that grew quickly, quick enough to ensnare her and smother her if she wasn't careful, maybe even quick enough to steal her life away.

Mel,” she said tentatively. “I’m a little worried about…” “What?” She took a breath. “Gossip. Everyone talking about us.” Mel’s eyes twinkled and she smiled. “Abby, you’re an unmarried woman pregnant with twins and you’ve been spending time with our pediatrician. He never misses a chance to sit by you at Jack’s. Surrender. The gossip is way ahead of you.” Abby gasped. She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “Do they think there’s something to us? Like a relationship?” One of Mel’s light brows lifted in amusement. “They hope.” “Oh God!” “Yeah, I’ve been there,” Mel said. “The whole town had me married to Jack before I had my first really good kiss with him.” She waved a hand. “Ah, hell, go with it. At least they’re not malicious. Just very nosey. I got through it. You can, too.” Heavy

Malice is rare. Most men are much too concerned with themselves to be malicious.

Weirdly, I hear music playing when I walk in. I must have left it on. I shut the door, locking it. Just as I turn the corner, something collides with my face like a hammer, and I’m thrown against the wall as a cry of pain escapes me. My keys and phone are knocked out of my hands and crash to the ground, but the sound is nothing more than a distant echo. Before my eyes can adjust to the darkness, an arm bears down on my throat, strangling me, while my dazed head tries to catch up, still reeling from the explosive pain. My hand shoots up, trying to connect with something, but a strong, vice-grip encases my wrist, twisting it painfully. “Feisty. I like that. And so pretty. Agent Bennett picks them well,” a deep, sinister voice says from the darkness, chilling my blood to the core. Just a glimmer of light highlights malicious eyes too close to mine.

She felt anxious. She wanted to talk to Maggie, too, and she hoped she could find the right words, but even now some things came out wrong, or too abruptly, as if her tongue had a malicious life of its own

Is there something you’d like to do instead?” he said. I wanted to lie down on his bed while he lay next to me, but that’s not a profession. “No,” I said. “I don’t know.” “Well,” he said. “You don’t have to know what you want in order to know what you don’t want.” “I’m afraid I don’t know what I don’t want either, not really,” I said, sighing, beginning to be exhausted with my own not knowing. None of my questions ever have answers that create new questions; nothing is moving along here. Linny smiled. Then he started chuckling, with no maliciousness, just humor, and maybe fondness too. He lay back, pulling Bir onto his stomach. While he laughed, Bir bounced around, blinking his copper eyes crossly. “Hava,” Linny said, “you’re my favorite.” “Because my problems are so amusing?” I said dryly. “No,” he said, “because you’re wonderful. I can’t explain it.

No, Sonia, that’s not it... ...that’s not it! Better … imagine—yes, it’s certainly better—imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive and … well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let’s have it all out at once! They’ve talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I turned sulky and wouldn’t. (Yes, sulkiness, that’s the right word for it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You’ve been in my den, you’ve seen it.… And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn’t go out of it! I wouldn’t on purpose! I didn’t go out for days together, and I wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Nastasya brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn’t, I went all day without; I wouldn’t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking … And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy that.… No, that’s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid, that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one waits for every one to get wiser it will take too long.… Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won’t change and that nobody can alter it and that it’s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that’s so. That’s the law of their nature, Sonia, … that’s so!… And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a law-giver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!... ...I divined then, Sonia... ...that power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I … I wanted to have the daring … and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!

Of one thing I feel very sure – it is nonsense to pretend to desire sanctification unless we follow after the meekness, gentleness, longsuffering, and forgiveness of which the Bible makes so much. People who are habitually giving way to irritable and grouchy tempers in daily life and are constantly harsh with their tongues and disagreeable to all around them – spiteful people, vindictive people, revengeful people, malicious people – of whom, sadly, the world is only too full – they do not know much about sanctification. Such

The root of anger is attachment to someone who is whining, complaining, finding fault, pointing out that something is missing, something not good enough. Every angry person is attached to a soft headed, downer, whiner, fault finder. The angry person also has to deal with the malicious, someone who asks the insufferably stupid question such as, "Can I use your bank card? If you give me your bank card, I can make you some money." Anyone who asks that question deserves to have their nose broke. Or then there are other malicious rhetorical question such as, "Why do you look so weak?" I see no foundation for ever having children or getting married. I've been disgusted and nauseated by too many people.

[...] In general terms, the sadistic tendency also manifests itself in one aspect of the kind of art and literature which enjoys highlighting those human types and situations that reflect a shattered, broken-down or corrupted mankind. As is well known, one invokes the pretext here that ‘this too is part of life’, or that one only wishes to bring all this to light in order to elicit a reaction. What is really at work here is what the Germans call Schadenfreude, a malicious pleasure — which is to say, a kind of sadism, a sadistic enjoyment. One enjoys gazing not at the upright man, but at the falling, failed or degenerate man: the lower — not higher — limit of the human condition [...] [Chapter 9 - The Taste for Vulgarity]

Emma flashed him a sinister smile as he screamed and begged her for help. “Oh, Jamie,” she said, her tone malicious, “I thought you liked dogs. At least that’s what Izzy told me. Woof! Woof! Woof! You big dick! She told me what you made her do, you fucking perverted prick!” Jamie’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. He realized too late that she had set him up. Terror devoured him

Got plenty of special features, hasn’t it?’ said Malfoy, eyes glittering maliciously. ‘Shame it doesn’t come with a parachute – in case you get too near a Dementor.’ Crabbe and Goyle sniggered. ‘Pity you can’t attach an extra arm to yours, Malfoy,’ said Harry. ‘Then it could catch the Snitch for you.

They used my name and permit to grow the weed and earn money to repay their debts and compensate their investors. To keep my girlfriend. To take her. I am uncertain if any of them have ever spent a minute in jail for any of these activities. Adam proudly showcases his new motorcycles on Instagram, posing on a hill above Barcelona. He also displays his brand new electric camper van, which they use to travel and transport drugs across Europe and Iberia, as well as his gigantic marijuana cultivation located in Portugal. People like Ruan and Martina admire his public images. I came across a picture of Ruan and Martina together in Berlin, where their mother Fernanda visited them. Martina became member of the Evil Eye Cult, and the custom made mafia group in Spain, which used her as a pawn in their porn and drug-related activities. She now operates as their representative in Berlin. Martina and I have lost the ability to genuinely smile. Her social media posts only show disinterest or a malicious demeanor. ‘A boot stomping on a human face.’ In a picture with her brother and mother, she puts on a forced fake “good vibe” and “happy” smile, revealing her flawless teeth and the subtle lines of aging. With each passing day, she bears a greater resemblance to her rich and so happy mother, the bad person. As far as I know, none of these individuals have faced consequences for their actions, such as having their teeth broken. As I had. Innocently. Taking care of business and their lives. With love. I find this to be incredibly unjust. In the 21st century. In Europe. On planet Earth. By non-EU criminals. “Matando – ganando” – “killing and gaining” like there were no Laws at all. Nowadays, you can observe Sabrina flaunting her fake lips and altered face, just like Martina her enhanced breasts. Guess who was paying for it? It seems that both girls now sustain themselves through their bodies and drug involvement, to this day, influencing criminals to gain friends in harming Tomas and having a lavish lifestyle filled with fun and mischief. Making a living. Enjoying Spain. Enjoying Life. My money. My tears. This is the situation as it stands. I was wondering what Salvador Dali was trying to tell me. I stood in front of the Lincoln portrait for a long time, but I couldn't grasp the point or the moral behind it. I can listen to Abraham Lincoln and ‘trust people. To see. If I can trust them.’ But he ultimately suffered a tragic fate, with his life being taken. (Got his head popped.) I believe there may have also been a female or two involved in that situation, too, possibly leading to his guards being let down. While he was watching: Acting performances, he was facing a: Stage. Theater. It is disheartening, considering he was a good person. Like Jesus, John Lennon and so on. Shows a pattern Machiavelli was talking about. Some individuals are too bright for those in darkness; they feel compelled to suppress those brighter minds simply because they think and act differently. Popping their heads. Reptilian lower brain-based culture, the concept of the Evil Eye, Homo erectus. He couldn't even stand up properly when I was shouting at him, urging him to stand up from the stairs. ‘Homo seditus reptilis.’ But what else was there in the Lincoln image that I didn't see? What was Dali trying to convey or express or tell me? Besides the fact that the woman is in his mind, on his mind, in the image, exactly, his head got popped open. Perhaps because he was focusing on a woman, trusting her for a split second, or turning his head away for a moment.

At one particular moment, with my eyes closed, I was crying and asking the question over and over aloud, „Does true love exist? Does true love exist in girls? Does true love exist? Does Sabrina love me? Does true love exist? Does true love exist?” - I had suddenly seen a flash. As if I was poking the Devil in the dark, staring too long into the darkness until it looked back at me as they say. I have never told anyone about this before. I try to describe what I had seen that night in that windowless, dark, and cold place deep inside under that big, old building, with my eyes closed. It made a half turn, flashing one of its eyes at me for a moment before disappearing again into the dark. As if it was nodding to me, I still get goosebumps years later when I try to describe it. As if it had been standing there all along, and just tried to reassure me that it had heard my question and would answer. Quite close. Just to make me be quiet finally. His eyes were yellow and red. I'm not actually sure if it had two eyes; I only saw one of them. One Evil Eye. Perhaps he had lost an eye, that's why I had seen the light of only one of them. His eye was malicious, but not particularly. It was more tired and angry yet understanding, as if he had heard this question over a billion times before from fools like me and I did not amuse him with my question and demand. As if he was about to show me a trick he had known for a long time. As if Satan had seen it all already. He knows all the tricks, he invented them, he inspired them all. As if he was bored of humanity already. (There is only One Evil Eye. The planet Saturn.) I was cuddling with Adam's cat, crying a lot, asking the darkness, about Love, and reflecting on Sabrina. Perhaps it was merely an optical illusion. I leave it up to the reader to decide what they believe about what I was facing and how I miraculously survived, as an atheist goy, as well as who truly supported me throughout the ordeal. If anyone or anything supported me in Spain at all. I had seen an advertisement somewhere saying that Miss Kittin would be playing on Saturday night, November 16th, 2013 in Barcelona at The Marhes. Satan. Saturn. Saturday. Coincidence? Maybe. So far. Perhaps. I knew I had to see her again after such a long time; she had been playing drum and bass in the early 2000s across the globe, and also in Budapest. I checked the map; The Marhes was next to Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium. I thought of buying a bottle of champagne, which I didn't like, unless it’s Italian, but I wanted to celebrate, and I would walk along Avenida Roma to get there straight. I knew I'd get drunk; I didn't want to drive, I wanted to arrive intoxicated. I re-posted the Miss Kittin party’s flyer, on Instagram, writing underneath it : ‘All roads lead to Rome.

Are these people who call themselves warriors simple and austere, or dependent on and attached to material things, living unnecessarily complicated lives? Simple lifestyles, disciplined surroundings, and a healthy existence characterized by cleanliness and organization are the traits of a warrior. • Are they kind and generous, living for others, especially the poor, in what Buddhist teachers call accepting responsibility for being “the strength of the weak” instead of living a showy, braggart, and arrogant life? • Are they accustomed to self-sacrifice? Do they have a fit body, do physical training, and eat a moderate and healthy diet of natural foods, as oppose to living the slovenly and poisoned lives expected of colonized beings? • Do they benefit from some form of spiritual introspection that deepens their existence beyond the fast-paced, frenetic, and essentially meaningless modern lifestyle of the mainstream? • Do they have self-control and self-discipline? • Have they conquered their rage and do they engage challenges without anger but with non-violence, forbearance, and the oft-derided but very warrior-like trait of stoicism? • Are they honest people who keep their word? Do they believe in and practice integrity and democracy and all dealings with other people? • Are they incorruptible in public affairs and sincere in their private lives? In contrast to the hypocritical self-serving ethic of contemporary politics, do they truly serve the people? • Do they understand and respect the power of words? Or do they tell lies, speak maliciously, use sharp or harsh words, or engage in useless gossip? Colonial beings use words to harm, destroy, and divide; warriors use words to restore harmony to situations. • Are they moral? Or are they, like for too many of our people, abusive or prone to stealing? Does the use of drugs or alcohol caused them to lose control, leading to further abuses of their senses and a crazed or obsessively damaging sexuality? • Are they humble? Warriors are students in search of knowledge and recognize that the world is full of teachers and mentors. Warriors seek to place themselves as humble learners in the care of learned elders and mentors, recognizing that the mentor knows more than they do. Unlike the precocious, the know-it-all , and the smart ass, the knowledge-seekers lead exemplary lives based on their growing understanding and do not hoard or profit from what they have gained on the warrior’s journey. • Is their life-goal spiritual enlightenment and empowerment? Not money, not revenge, not prestige and status, but the cultivation of the ability to bring enlightenment and power to others, to have the capacity to bring back balance in the world and in people.

The first letter from Hayek began thusly: “I have never before written a fan letter to a professional colleague, but to discover that you have in your Economics of Population Growth provided the empirical evidence for what with me is the result of a life-time of theoretical speculation, is too exciting an experience not to share it with you.” Another letter included the following: I have now at last had time to read [The Ultimate Resource] with enthusiastic agreement.… Your new book I welcome chiefly for the practical effects I am hoping from it. Though you will be at first much abused, I believe the more intelligent will soon recognize the soundness of your case. And the malicious pleasure of being able to tell most of their fellows what fools they are, should get you the support of the more lively minds about the media. If your publishers want to quote me, they are welcome to say that I described it as a first class book of great importance which ought to have great influence on policy.14

Nine are named, and three of these, longsuffering, gentleness, and meekness, are unquestionably passive graces (Galatians 5:22-23). I must plainly say that I do not think this subject is sufficiently considered by Christians. The passive graces are no doubt harder to attain than the active ones, but they are precisely the graces that have the greatest influence on the world. Of one thing I feel very sure – it is nonsense to pretend to desire sanctification unless we follow after the meekness, gentleness, longsuffering, and forgiveness of which the Bible makes so much. People who are habitually giving way to irritable and grouchy tempers in daily life and are constantly harsh with their tongues and disagreeable to all around them – spiteful people, vindictive people, revengeful people, malicious people – of whom, sadly, the world is only too full – they do not know much about sanctification.

Are you too hurting, Filinna? You too sick, wasting away with sleepless eyes? Or is your sleep the sweetest possible, no thought of me, no reckoning, no consideration? The same thing will strike you some day, miserable girl, and I'll watch the tears go tumbling down your cheeks. The goddess of love, always malicious, has one virtue: she really hates a pompous prude.

One of the most comprehensive biblical discussions of anger is found in Ephesians 4. The Apostle Paul suggests ways to put off the old style of life and put on the new (vv.22-24). We are to put away falsehoods and speak only truth (v.25), to put away stealing and work honestly (v.28), to avoid unwholesome talk, while speaking only things that build others up (v.29). He tells us to develop new ways of handling our anger: “In your anger do not sin,” that is, don’t become aggressive (v.26a). “Never let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold;” that is, don’t be passive (vv.26b, 27). After dealing with other ways to put off the old way of life, Paul returns to the topic of how to effectively handle anger and frustrations effectively: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (vv.31, 32). These words describe the entire range of passive-aggressive responses that occur when we suppress or repress anger: thumos (the outburst of anger that occurs when too many resentments have built up), orge (chronic anger and ill-temper), krauge (brawling or anger that makes sure everyone hears the grievance), pikria (bitterness, the emotional state that comes when we nurse grudges), blas-phemia (slanderous, abusive speech toward an irritating party), pasa kakis (Paul’s catch-all term for any malicious feeling not already mentioned). We are to learn how to handle frustrations without being passive, aggressive or passive-aggressive.

Vaughn tells a story about a call girl he once represented who went by the name of Wednesday. “So I asked her why not pick some other day of the week, say, Saturday or Monday? She looks at me like I’m dumb as wood. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ she says. ‘Wednesday is hump day.’” We all burst out laughing. Vaughn’s punch line opens a valve, unleashing the pressure that’s been building inside of us for the past few months. Susan and I take turns regaling the table with our own tales, and I realize this is what I love about practicing in a firm like ours. It is a truism among lawyers that the practice of law would be great were it not for the clients. And criminal-defense attorneys complain the loudest of all. After all, our clients are not only needy and demanding—they are also, for the most part, criminals. Some are violent criminals, sociopaths, or pathological narcissists. But these are the worst of the lot, and the fewest. Most of our clients don’t find themselves in orange jumpsuits because they harbor a truly malicious nature. They run afoul of the law because their neighborhoods and schools teem with indolence, indifference, and outright criminality. They fail not because they’re unable to adapt to society’s mores, but because they adapt too well to the rules of poverty and violence that govern the world in which they’re raised. Lawyers like me, firms like mine, do our best to guide these men and women through the intestines of the dragon they woke up inside. If they’re lucky, we’ll get them out the other end before too much more damage is done. If we’re lucky, we’ll get paid fairly and enjoy a few laughs along the way—to go with the tears, frustrations,

him?” “Not me. Not Calvin. I just have to wait. Maybe he’ll come over or something.” She sighed. “I wish life didn’t have to be so complicated. Do you suppose I’ll ever be a double Ph.D. like you, Mother?” Mrs. Murry looked up from slicing peppers, and laughed. “It’s really not the answer to all problems. There are other solutions. At this point I’m more interested in knowing whether or not I’ve put too many red peppers in the spaghetti sauce; I’ve lost count.” They had just sat down to dinner when Mr. Murry phoned to tell them that he was going directly from Washington to Brookhaven for a week. Such trips were not unusual for either of their parents, but right now anything that took either her father or mother away struck Meg as sinister. Without much conviction she said, “I hope he has fun. He likes lots of the people there.” But she felt a panicky dependence on having both her parents home at night. It wasn’t only because of her fears for Charles Wallace; it was that suddenly the whole world was unsafe and uncertain. Several houses nearby had been broken into that autumn, and while nothing of great value had been taken, drawers had been emptied with casual maliciousness, food dumped on living-room floors, upholstery slashed. Even their safe little village was revealing itself to be unpredictable and irrational and precarious, and while Meg had already begun to understand this with her mind, she had never before felt it with the whole of herself. Now a cold awareness of the uncertainty of all life, no matter how careful the planning, hollowed

These were the men that roamed forests for food. They hunted with equipment that gave their prey great odds. They set foot in lands with no guides or maps. They realized that sometimes torches and pitchforks were necessary when grievances to the king would take too long or go unanswered. Your ancestors were men that were not afraid to take action with their own hands, with their brothers and neighbors, and to suffer the consequences. This was their order, their way, and their set of norms. This is not our way, as we are more civilized. What is civilized about enduring the small cuts or humiliations at the hands of an indifferent system and malicious individuals? We are more cowardly. There are countless other behaviors that we engage in that are uncivilized or degraded from those old days that no amount of legal restraint is going to make up for us to claim superiority. We are mollified. We are pacified. We have been conned into the belief that words on paper mean that the men behind them do not matter.

Your mother will die some day, and you and I will have to die some day, too. Yet My God has never died. Perhaps you haven’t heard clearly the story that tells how He goes on living for ever and ever. In appearance only did He die. But three days after He had died He came to life again and with great pomp He rose up to heaven.” “How often?” the chief asked in a dry tone. Astonished at this unexpected question, the monk answered, “Why . . . why . . . eh . . . once only, quite naturally once only.” “Once only? And has he, your great god, ever returned to earth?” “No, of course not,” Padre Balmojado answered, his voice burdened with irritation. “He has not returned yet, but He has promised mankind that He will return to earth in His own good time, so as to judge and to . . .” “. . . and to condemn poor mankind,” the chief finished the sentence. “Yes, and to condemn!” the monk said in a loud and threatening tone. Confronted with such inhuman stubbornness he lost control of himself. Louder still he continued: “Yes, to judge and to condemn all those who deny Him and refuse to believe in Him, and who criticize His sacred words, and who ignore Him, and who maliciously refuse to accept the true and only God even if He is brought to them with brotherly love and a heart overflowing with compassion for the poor ignorant brethren living in sin and utter darkness, and who can obtain salvation for nothing more than having belief in Him and having the true faith.” Not in the least was the chieftain affected by this sudden outburst of the monk, who had been thrown off routine by these true sons of America who had learned to think long and carefully before speaking. The chieftain remained very calm and serene. With a quiet, soft voice he said: “Here, my holy white father, is what our god had put into our hearts and souls, and it will be the last word I have to say to you before we return to our beautiful and tranquil tierra: Our god dies every evening for us who are his children. He dies every evening to bring us cool winds and freshness of nature, to bring us peace and quiet for the night so that we may rest well, man and animal. Our god dies every evening in a deep golden glory, not insulted, not spat upon, not spattered with stinking mud. He dies beautifully and glori¬ously, as every real god will die. Yet he does not die forever. In the morning he returns to life, refreshed and more beautiful than ever, his body still trailing the veils and wrappings of the dead. But soon his golden spears dart across the blue firmament as a sign that he is ready to fight the gods of darkness who threaten the peoples on earth. And before you have time to realize what happens, there he stands before wondering human eyes, and there he stays, great, mighty, powerful, golden, and in ever-growing beauty, dominating the universe. “He, our god, is a spendthrift in light, warmth, beauty, and fertility, enriching the flowers with perfumes and colors, teaching the birds to sing, filling the corn with strength and health, playing with the clouds in an ocean of gold and blue. As my beloved mother does, so does he give and give and never cease giving; never does he ask for prayers, not expect¬ing adoration or worship, not commanding obedience or faith, and never, never condemning anybody or thing on earth. And when evening comes, again he passes away in beauty and glory, a smile all over his face, and with his last glimmer blesses his Indian children. Again the next morning he is the eternal giver; he is the eternally young, the eternally beautiful, the eternally new-born, the ever and ever returning great and golden god of the Indians. “And this is what our god has put into our hearts and souls and what I am bound to tell you, holy white father: ‘Do not, not ever, beloved Indian sons of these your beautiful lands, give away your own great god for any other god.’ ” ("Conversion Of Some Indians")

Ah, so ye will escort me to my cousin’s then, will ye?” she said in a voice so sweet she was surprised it did not make her teeth ache. “Nay, they willnae,” drawled an all too familiar voice from behind her. Inwardly cursing, Bridget turned to face Cathal. “I have decided ’tis time for me to continue on my journey.” “And ye decided ye had to do it now? Right now? Without most of your belongings?” “Aye. I got to thinking—” “A dangerous thing for a lass to do. Ow!” Jankyn rubbed his stomach where Bridget had just hit him with her sack of belongings, and grinned at her. “Why are ye nay out with the others, howling at the moon?” “At least I am nay dancing beneath it.” He laughed when she blushed. “Ye were watching me?” “I heard ye singing.” “That was so rude.” If he had been drawn by her singing then he could not have seen her naked, Bridget mused, and relaxed. “I had left the camp to seek a few moments of privacy.” Cathal grasped Bridget by the arm, turning her attention back to him. “Why were ye leaving?” Bridget could feel the blunt truth on the tip of her tongue, but could not bring herself to speak it. It was as if she feared that, in speaking the words, the truth could no longer be ignored. That was absurd. She knew the truth. By the way the three men looked at her, they knew she had guessed all their secrets. It made no difference. She simply could not utter the dark, terrifying name aloud. In some odd, twisted way, she was actually concerned about offending them. “I decided I wasnae going to play your game any longer,” she replied. “I was going to my cousin’s.” “Alone? At night?” “Tis the best time for an escape.” But not here, she realized, and inwardly cursed her own stupidity. At Cambrun high noon on a sunny day would have been a better choice. “I have prepared for a visit with Barbara for months. I want to go to court, to see all the fine clothes, and to watch all the courtiers and their ladies. I want to sit down to a feast and listen to all the whispers about who is sinning with whom. I want to hear the minstrels sing and I want to dance with some fine, courtly gentlemon who will tell me all manner of sweet lies about how bonnie I am. I want—” A squeak of surpise and outrage escaped her when Cathal suddenly picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. The soft laughter of Jankyn and Raibeart only added to her anger over being so roughly handled. Bridget dropped her belongings and proceeded to pound her fists against his broad back. Cathal did not even flinch as he continued to take her back to her bedchamber and that, too, increased her fury. Under her breath she cursed him and his stubborness. “Tis nay just me who is blindly stubborn,” muttered Cathal as he entered the bedchamber and kicked the door shut behind him. “Tis ye who refuses to give up this plan to go to court. And for what? To hear empty flatteries and malicious tales?” He paused by the bed. “Undo your cloak.” Even as she blindly obeyed that terse command, Bridget wondered why she did so. Such quick obedience was not in her nature. She growled softly when her cloak was pulled from her and tossed to the floor. Before she could say anything, she was tossed down onto the bed. Her body was still bouncing slightly when Cathal sprawled on top of her, gently but firmly pinning her down. Bridget scowled at him, more angry than afraid, and tried not to let the beauty of his face distract her. She had a right to be angry and she would hold fast to that feeling no matter how warm and itchy he made her feel. “Ye are staying here,” Cathal said. “I am going to woo ye and then we will be married.” “Oh! What arrogance! Ye may woo me, but that doesnae necessarily mean ye will win me.” Bridget

The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too many in bars were considered only partially responsible for their actions, and because most of the popular jokes that made it to court had been told in bars, the verdicts were accordingly lenient.)

Hofstadter’s terror was in response to something entirely different. It was not about AI becoming too smart, too invasive, too malicious, or even too useful. Instead, he was terrified that intelligence, creativity, emotions, and maybe even consciousness itself would be too easy to produce—that what he valued most in humanity would end up being nothing more than a “bag of tricks,” that a superficial set of brute-force algorithms could explain the human spirit.