his thoughts QUOTES

62 " Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white,' said the Major, trying to soften his tone slightly. 'It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders.' He stopped to organize his thoughts into some statement short enough for a youthful attention span. 'However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing. Not in your case, of course—you are very neat.' Abdul Wahid looked confused, which was an improvement over the frown.

'You are very strange,' he said. 'Are you saying it is wrong, stupid, to try to live a life of faith?'

'No, I think it is admirable,' said the Major. 'But I think a life of faith must start with remembering that humility is the first virtue before God. "

― Helen Simonson , Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

64 " You should always aim to be your own mouse, Lieam. In fact...you already are. You are not so quick to jump into danger as Saxon and not as pensive of mind as Kenzie. They rely on each other too much. Saxon knows he can afford to be reckless since Kenzie acts as his conscience. And Kenzie can linger in his thoughts and plans, because he knows Saxon can defend him. I tested Kenzie earlier. I wanted to see if he would be swayed by my advice. It took Saxon's coaxing to make up the greyfur's mind. Be compleete with in yourself young redfur...you will never disappoint. Even in solitude. "

― David Petersen , Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 (Mouse Guard, #2)

66 " The observations and encounters of a man of solitude and few words are at once more nebulous and more intense than those of a gregarious man, his thoughts more ponderable, more bizarre and never without a hint of sadness. Images and perceptions that might easily be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions occupy him unduly; they are heightened in the silence, gain in significance, turn into experience, adventure, emotion. Solitude begets originality, bold and disconcerting beauty, poetry. But solitude can also beget perversity, disparity, the absurd and the forbidden. "

― Thomas Mann , Death in Venice

68 " From other stories that have been handed down to me I know that my people, like many others in the slave states, went to church with their slaves, were baptized with them, and presumably expected to associate with them in heaven. Again, I have been years realizing what this means, and what it has cost.

First, consider the moral predicament of the master who sat in church with his slaves, thus attesting his belief in the immortality of the souls of people whose bodies he owned and used. He thus placed his body, if not his mind, at the very crux of the deepest contradiction of his life. How could he presume to own the body of a man whose soul he considered as worthy of salvation as his own? To keep this question from articulating itself in his thoughts and demanding an answer, he had to perfect an empty space in his mind, a silence, between heavenly concerns and earthly concerns, between body and spirit. If there had ever opened a conscious connection between the two claims, if the two sides of his mind had ever touched, it would have been like building a fire in a house full of gunpowder: somewhere down deep in his mind he always knew of the danger, and his nerves were always alert to it. "

― Wendell Berry , The Hidden Wound