2
" Charlotte, darling, Henry said to his wife, who was staring at im in gape-mouthed horror. Jassamine, beside her, was wided eyed. Sorry im late. You know, i think i might nearly have the sensor working-
Will interrupted. Henry, he said, your on fire. You do know that, don't you?
Oh, yes, Henry said eagerly. The flames were now nearly to his shoulder. I've been working like a man possessed all day. Charlotte, did you hear what i said about the sensor?
Charlotte dropped her hand from her mouth. Henry! She shrieked. Your arm!
Henry glanced down at his arm, and his mouth dropped open.
Bloody hell! "
― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)
4
" There was a dragon who had a long-standing obsession with a queen's breasts," she said, growing breathless. " The dragon knew the penalty to touch her would mean death, yet he revealed his secret desire to the king's chief doctor. This man promised he could arrange for the dragon to satisfy his desire, but it would cost him one thousand gold coins." She spread her soapy hands over his nipples, then down his arms. " Though he didn't have the money, the dragon readily agreed to the scheme." Grace," Darius moaned, his erection straining against her stomach.She hid her smile, loving that she had this much power over such a strong man. That she, Grace Carlyle, made him ache with longing. " The next day the physician made a batch of itching powder and poured some into the queen's bra… uh, you might call it a brassiere… while she bathed. After she dressed, she began itching and itching and itching. The physician was summoned to the Royal Chambers, and he informed the king and queen that only a special saliva, if applied for several hours, would cure this type of itch. And only a dragon possessed this special saliva." Out of breath, she paused.Continue," Darius said. His arms wound around her so tightly she could barely breathe. His skin blazed hot against hers, hotter than even the steamy water.Are you sure?" Continue." Taut lines bracketed his mouth.Well, the king summoned the dragon. Meanwhile, the physician slipped him the antidote for the itching powder, which the dragon put into his mouth, and for the next few hours, the dragon worked passionately on the queen's breasts.Anyway," she said, reaching around him and lathering the muscled mounds of his butt, " the queen's itching was eventually relieved, and the dragon left satisfied and touted as a hero." This does not sound like a joke," Darius said.I'm getting to the punch line. Hang on. When the physician demanded his payment, the now satisfied dragon refused. He knew that the physician could never report what really happened to the king. So the next day, the physician slipped a massive dose of the same itching powder into the king's loincloth. And the king immediately summoned the dragon." -Heart of the Dragon "
8
" I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.
From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.
We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know. "
― Socrates
15
" Wanting to Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection. "
― Anne Sexton
18
" Actually, this is a poem my father once showed me, a long time ago. It has been bastardized many times, in many ways, but this is the original:The Cold Within Six men trapped by happenstance,in bleak and bitter coldEach possessed a stick of wood,or so the story's told. Their dying fire in need of logs,the first man held his back For of the faces round the fire,he noticed one was black. One man looking cross the way, saw one not of his churchAnd could not bring himself to givethe fire his stick of birch. The third one sat in tattered clothes,he gave his coat a hitchWhy should his log be put to useto warm the idle rich?The rich man just sat back and thoughtof the wealth he had in store And how to keep what he had earnedfrom the lazy, shiftless poor.The black man's face bespoke revengeas the fire passed from his sight,For all he saw in his stick of woodwas a chance to spite the white.And the last man of this forlorn groupdid naught except for gain,Giving only to those who gave,was how he played the gameThe logs held tight, in death's stillhands,was proof of human sinThey didn't die from the cold without,they died from the cold within. "
20
" More profoundly, Nihilist " simplification" may be seen in the universal prestige today accorded the lowest order of knowledge, the scientific, as well as the simplistic ideas of men like Marx, Freud, and Darwin, which underlie virtually the whole of contemporary thought and life.We say " life," for it is important to see that the Nihilist history of our century has not been something imposed from without or above, or at least has not been predominantly this; it has rather presupposed, and drawn its nourishment from, a Nihilist soil that has long been preparing in the hearts of the people. It is precisely from the Nihilism of the commonplace, from the everyday Nihilism revealed in the life and thought and aspiration of the people, that all the terrible events of our century have sprung. The world-view of Hitler is very instructive in this regard, for in him the most extreme and monstrous Nihilism rested upon the foundation of a quite unexceptional and even typical Realism. He shared the common faith in " science," " progress," and " enlightenment" (though not, of course, in " democracy" ), together with a practical materialism that scorned all theology, metaphysics, and any thought or action concerned with any other world than the " here and now," priding himself on the fact that he had " the gift of reducing all problems to their simplest foundations." He had a crude worship of efficiency and utility that freely tolerated " birth control" , laughed at the institution of marriage as a mere legalization of a sexual impulse that should be " free" , welcomed sterilization of the unfit, despised " unproductive elements" such as monks, saw nothing in the cremation of the dead but a " practical" question and did not even hesitate to put the ashes, or the skin and fat, of the dead to " productive use." He possessed the quasi-anarchist distrust of sacred and venerable institutions, in particular the Church with its " superstitions" and all its " outmoded" laws and ceremonies. He had a naive trust in the " natural mom, the " healthy animal" who scorns the Christian virtues--virginity in particular--that impede the " natural functioning" of the body. He took a simple-minded delight in modern conveniences and machines, and especially in the automobile and the sense of speed and " freedom" it affords.There is very little of this crude Weltanschauung that is not shared, to some degree, by the multitudes today, especially among the young, who feel themselves " enlightened" and " liberated," very little that is not typically " modern. "
