One of the most important virtues in social life, a virtue that is becoming less common by the day, is discretion.
Maybe, he said hesitantly, maybe there is a beast. The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement. You, Simon? You believe in this? I don't know, said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. But ... The storm broke. Sit down! Shut up! Take the conch! Sod you! Shut up! Ralph shouted. Hear him! He's got the conch! What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us. Nuts! That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. Simon went on. We could be sort of. . . . Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness. Inspiration came to him. What's the dirtiest thing there is? As an answer Jack dropped into the uncomprehending silence that followed it the one crude expressive syllable. Release was immense. Those littluns who had climbed back on the twister fell off again and did not mind. The hunters were screaming with delight.(note: The inherent evils within man appear once law and order are taken from society.)
William Golding, Lord of the Fli
They the hazers or eversores were rightly called Overturners, since they had themselves been first overturned and perverted, tricked by those same devils who were secretly mocking them in the very acts by which they amused themselves in mocking and making fools of others.on the eversores (translation: Overturners) who bedeviled new students at Cartage in the 4th Century. Confessions
Saint Augustine of Hippo
You'll be subjected to hazing all your life.
Martin Luther, (Source: Smithson
It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.
George Washington
Mark Twain, in an interview today, spoke about hazing at West Point, and denounced the practice as a brutal one and men who indulge in it as bullies and cowards. Why, he said, the fourth class man who is compelled to fight a man from the first class hasn't a show in the world, and it is not intended that he should. I have read the rules provided to prevent such practices, and they are wholly deficient, because one provision is omitted. I would make it the duty of a cadet to report to the authorities any case of hazing which came to his notice; make such reports a part of the vaunted West Point 'code of honor' and the beating of young boys by upper class men will be stopped. I am not opposed to fights among boys as a general thing. If they are conducted in a spirit of fairness, I think it makes boys manly, but I do oppose compelling a little fellow to fight some man big enough to whip two of him. When I was a boy, going to school down in the Mississippi Valley, we used to have our fights, and I remember one occasion on which I got soundly trounced, but we always matched boys as nearly of a size as possible, and there was none of the cowardly methods that seem to prevail at West Point.
Mark Twain, "New York Times", on
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Mark Twain
Many of the rites of passage, those rituals of growing up found in our society, are in the form of such comic, practical joking affairs--which we ignore in the belief that they possess no deeper significance. Yet it is precisely in their being regarded as unimportant that they take on importance. For in them we ritualize and dramatize attitudes which contradict and often embarrass the sacred values which we proclaim through our solemn ceremonies and rituals of nationhood.
Ralph Ellison, on initiations at
Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Hazing is an extraordinary activity that, when it occurs often enough, becomes perversely ordinary as those who engage in it grow desensitized to its inhumanity.
Hank Nuwer, Wrongs of Passage
Few of us go through life without taking part in some kind of rite of passage.
Hank Nuwer, The Hazing Reader
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Woodrow Wilson
Why do so many young people literally die to belong to fraternities, sororities, and other college social organizations? The answer is complicated, but here is a starting point:Ever since the medieval universities were founded, young people have done whatever it takes to gain acceptance, to break with their past lives, to achieve a sense of power, to carve out a society of their own that isn't quite what their tutors and teachers had in mind. In the United States, hazing and drinking have been endemic since colonial days.
Hank Nuwer, Wrongs of Passage, p
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
Albert Einstein
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Leonardo da Vinci
I put forward formless and unresolved notions, as do those who publish doubtful questions to debate in the schools, not to establish the truth but to seek it.
Michel de Montaigne
Her eyes beginning to water, she went on, So I would like you all to make me a promise. From now on, on your way to school, or on your way home, find something beautiful to notice. It doesn't have to be something you see it could be a scent - perhaps of freshly baked bread wafting out of someone's house, or it could be the sound of the breeze slightly rustling the leaves in the trees, or the way the morning light catches the autumn leaf as it falls gently to the ground. Please look for these things, and cherish them. For, although it may sound trite to some, these things are the stuff of life. The little things we are put here on earth to enjoy. The things we often take for granted. We must make it important to notice them, for at any time...it can all be taken away. The class was completely quiet. We all picked up our books and filed out of the room silently. That afternoon, I noticed more things on my way home from school than I had that whole semester. Every once in a while, I think of that teacher and remember what an impression she made on all of us, and I try to appreciate all of those things that sometimes we all overlook. Take notice of something special you see on your lunch hour today. Go barefoot. Or walk on the beach at sunset. Stop off on the way home tonight to get a double-dip ice cream cone. For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn't do. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.http://www.theallengroup.com/members/newsletter0101.html
Anon., from a story The Teacher
Friendship is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Plautus
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who matter don't mind, and those that mind, don't matter.
Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.
Aldous Huxley
There's no use in weeping, Though we are condemned to part:There's such a thing as keepingA remembrance in one's heart...
Charlotte Bronte, Parting
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
Samuel Butler
Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.
Napoleon Bonaparte
At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain, - the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man - perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend?No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest - a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, ch.
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
Winston Churchill
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites...Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
Edmund Burke
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Oscar Wilde
GOD, give us men! A time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office can not buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty, and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, Their large professions and their little deeds, Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps, Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
Josiah Gilbert Holland
The wisest is he that knows only that he knows nothing. God only knows. We mortals are only troubled with morbid little ideas, sired by circumstance and damned by folly. The human head can absorb only the flavorings of its surroundings. We assume that our faith political and our creed religious are founded upon our reason, when they are really made for us by social conditions over which we had little control.The book is becoming rare but some can still be found on the internet. It was printed and hard bound using private funds. Number of copies unknown. It bears no Library of Congress number. See also, Brann and the Iconoclast University of Texas Press, author Charles Carver, date 1957
William Cowper Brann, Brann, the
The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.
Dalai Lama
I believe in the sun even if it isn't shining. I believe in love even when I am alone. I believe in God even when He is silent.
Anon., (sometimes attributed to
A really great talent finds its happiness in execution.
I try to believe like i believed when I was five... when your heart tells you everything you need to know
Lucy Liu, Magazine
Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.
Albert Camus
Do not mistake consequence for fate.
Kirstin Brown
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
Warren Buffett
The life most pleasing to God, is that which is spent in most usefulness to our fellow-creatures. A man cannot love his God, and hate his brother: he cannot expect mercy, who shows none.Alexander Campbell, Editor
S. M. M'Corkle, The Sign of the
Give me your tired, your poor,
Emma Lazarus, Excerpted from a p
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