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" His Majesty needs a can-I girl anyway. And I'm not it." " A can-I girl?" Andrea frowned. I leaned back. " 'Can I fetch your food, Your Majesty? Can I tell you how strong and mighty you are, Your Majesty? Can I pick your fleas, Your Majesty? Can I kiss your ass, Your Majesty? Can I..." It dawned on me that Raphael was sitting very still. Frozen, like a statue, his gaze fixed on the point above my head. " He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Andrea nodded slowly." Technically it should be 'may I'," Curran said, his voice deeper than I remembered. " Since you're asking for permission." Why me? " To answer your question, yes, you may kiss my ass. Normally I prefer maintain my personal space, but you're a Friend of the Pack and your services have proven useful once or twice. I strive to accommodate the wishes of persons friendly to my people. My only question is, would kissing my ass be obeisance, grooming, or foreplay? "
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" -BDB on the board-Knitter's AnonimousMay 8, 2006Rhage (in his bedroom posting in V's room on the board)Hi, my name is V.(" Hi, V" )I've been knitting for 125 years now.(*gasping noises*)It's begun to impact my personal relationships: my brothers think I'm a nancy. It's begun to affect my health: I'm getting a callus on my forefinger and I find bits of yarn in all my pockets and I'm starting to smell like wool. I can't concentrate at work: I keep picturing all these lessers in Irish sweaters and thick socks.(*sounds of sympathy*)I've come seeking a community of people who, like me, are trying not to knit. Can you help me?(*We're with you*)Thank you (*takes out hand-knitted hankie in pink*)(*sniffles*)(" We embrace you, V" )Vishous (in the pit): Oh hell no...you did not just put that up. And nice spelling in the title. Man...you just have to roll up on me, don't you. I got four words for you, my brother.Rhage: Four words? Okay...lemme see... Rhage, you're so sexy.hmmm....Rhage, you're SO smart. No wait! Rhage, you're SO right! That's it, isn't it...g'head. You can tell me. Vishous: First one starts with a " P" Use your head for the other three. Bastard.Rhage: P? Hmm... Please pass the yarnVishous: Payback is a bitch!Rhage: OhhhhhhhhhhhhI'm so scuuuuuurred. Can you whip me up a blanket to hide under? "
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" It's a thought," I said with a grin." That's exactly what it is, Dan - a thought - no more real than the shadow of a shadow. Consciousness is not In the body; the body is In Consciousness. And you Are that Consciousness - no the phantom mind that troubles you so. You are the body, but you are everything else, too. That is what your visions revealed to you. Only the mind resists change. When you relax mindless into the body, you are happy and content and free, sensing no separation. Immortality is Already yours, but not in the same way you imagined or hope for. You have been immortal since before you were born and will be long after the body dissolves. The body is in Consciousness; never born; never dies; only changes. The mind - your ego, personal beliefs, history, and identity - is all that ends at death. And who needs it?" Socrates leaned back into his chair." I'm not sure all of that sank in." " Of course not." He laughed. " Words mean little unless you realize the truth of it yourself. And when you do, you'll be free at last. "
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" The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was. "
― Lin Yutang , The Importance of Living
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" There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world? "
― John Stuart Mill , On Liberty