26
" She turned and walked down the musty, dimly-lighted corridor, along a strip of carpeting that still clung together only out of sheer stubbornness of skeletal weave. Doors, dark, oblivious, inscrutable, sidling by; enough to give you the creeps just to look at them. All hope gone from them, and from those who passed in and out through them. Just one more row of stopped-up orifices in this giant honeycomb that was the city. Human beings shouldn't have to enter such doors, shouldn't have to stay behind them. No moon ever entered there, no stars, no anything at all. They were worse than the grave, for in the grave is absence of consciousness. And God, she reflected, ordered the grave, for all of us; but God didn't order such burrows in a third-class New York City hotel. "
― , Deadline at Dawn
30
" Deep despair, dear Lord, deep despairMy heart yearns to be your heirBut my prayer remains unheardSpeak to me that I may hearAnd I will know that you can hearDeep despair, dear Lord Jesus , deep despair !Deep despair, dear Lord, deep despairYour voice I wait to hearYour presence I seek to be nearThat I may not live with fearAnd I will always be your heirDeep despair, dear Lord Jesus, deep despair! Deep despair, dear Lord , deep despairWhen expectations become desperationMay your might be my light That I may see you as my guideAnd do all things in your mightDeep despair, dear Lord Jesus, deep despair !Deep despair, dear Lord , deep despairMay I know who You really areThat I may know who I am really areAs I stand between my me and where I want to beIn a world that seeks hinder all I have to be Deep despair, dear Lord Jesus, deep despair!Deep despair, dear Lord, deep despairWhen all hope is goneAnd all I have leave my handsMay I smile for what you have doneAs You overcome condemnation with redemptionDeep despair, dear Lord Jesus, deep despair! "
33
" Why don't you just do it, then?" Racath hissed. " Just kill me. I dare you." Now, I assume you know what this is. You've seen this before in other stories - the part where the disgruntled villain stands over the hero. He is triumphant, the hero now at his mercy. But when commanded to slay him, he hesitates. He lowers his sword. And he says: " I cannot." If you are to take away but one thing from the words I have spoken, let it be this: there is a world of difference between " I Cannot" and " I will not" . " I cannot" is a surrender. It implies a lack of options. Someone who says such a thing does so only because they have no other choice. They do not WISH to relent - in fact, they usually want to obey their mandate and destroy the hero at their feet. But they cannot, because the guilt is too unbearable. But that does not make him a better man; all that a man who says " I cannot" has done, is given in to the compulsion to repent.Allow me to make myself perfectly clear - I HAD other options. Easy options. Simple options. I could have killed Racath Thanjel that day. I could have killed him and all the others, too. I could have left them dead and bloody on that grassy hill, and gone trotting back to the Imperator's lap. I could have shrugged off the attrition that had dogged my every step, thought better of my disenssion, given up on all hope of absolution and accepted my damnation. And I could have spent the rest of eternity destroying God's green earth at Lavethion's side.I could have. It would have been so easy. So simple. So wrong. And I didn't want to.And so I took a sickened step away. Stabbed Osveta into the grass. Shook my head. And said: " I won't. "
34
" [A man], who is in prosperity, while he sees that others have to contend with great wretchedness and that he could help them, thinks: What concern is it of mine? Let everyone be as happy as Heaven pleases, or as he can make himself; I will take nothing from him nor even envy him, only I do not wish to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in distress! Now no doubt, if such a mode of thinking were a universal law, the human race might very well subsist, and doubtless even better than in a state in which everyone talks of sympathy and good-will, or even takes care occasionally to put it into practice, but, on the other side, also cheats when he can, betrays the rights of men, or otherwise violates them. But although it is possible that a universal law of nature might exist in accordance with that maxim, it is impossible to will that such a principle should have the universal validity of a law of nature. For a will which resolved this would contradict itself, inasmuch as many cases might occur in which one would have need of the love and sympathy of others, and in which, by such a law of nature, sprung from his own will, he would deprive himself of all hope of the aid he desires. "
― Immanuel Kant , Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals