7
" Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do it. But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the sky - under each bulb - down to there, see that spark over the river which is not a star? - there are people whom you will never see and who are your masters. At the supper tables, in the drawing rooms, in their beds and in their cellars, in their studies and in their bathrooms. Speeding in the subways under your feet. Crawling up in elevators through vertical cracks around you. Jolting past you in every bus. Your masters, Gail Wynand. There is a net - longer than the cables that coil through the walls of this city, larger than the mesh of pipes that carry water, gas and refuse - there is another hidden net around you; it is strapped to you, and the wires lead to every hand in the city. They jerked the wires and you moved. You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends. "
― Ayn Rand , The Fountainhead
10
" Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature. "
― Sogyal Rinpoche , The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
18
" What is going to happen to the Aurorans?" " They are prisoners of war," Albion said. " I should imagine they will be set to work at the base of the Spire." Grimm tightened his jaw. " No, sir." " No?" " No, sir," Grimm said. " I've seen that place. You might as well tie a noose around their necks and stand them on blocks of ice, if you want them to die a slow death. It will be cleaner." " I'm not sure why this concerns you, Captain," Albion said." Because they surrendered to me," Grimm said. " They gave me their parole, sir. They could have fought on with no real chance of victory, and it would have been bloody. But that surrender saved blood and lives of Albions and Aurorans alike. I will not see Captain Castillo repaid with such churlish treatment. "