Choices fall away, without you even noticing, until there are very few left, and you realize that you are nothing but what you are.
We must fight to earn our right to all we would claim for ourselves. This is the struggle of all life. There are those who would deny us this right – they feel it belongs to them alone. Today, we shall assert otherwise.
Balance has an eternal enemy, and its name is ambition.
Because true friends knew when to keep silent, to give all the patience needed.
It plagues the young, this need to find reasons for things.
It is only the dumb beast that understands futile gestures – the cold necessity for them, in the face of all the hard truths. We who hold to the higher aspirations of the intellect, we surrender too quickly. And yet, in looking upon that dog – a creature knowing only loyalty and courage – we find flavours to wound our own souls.
And the fact remained, whatever games the gods played, it was hard-working dirt-poor bastards like him who suffered for it.
Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game.
Invaders did not stay invaders for ever. Eventually, they became no different from every other tribe or people in a land. Languages muddied, blended, surrendered. Habits were exchanged like currency, and before too long everyone saw the world the same way as everyone else. And if that way was wrong, then misery was assured, for virtually everyone, for virtually ever.
A state that employs torture invites barbarism and deserves nothing better than to suffer the harvest of its own excesses.
Among humans, cold indifference was often manifested in acts of brutal cruelty, was often the true visage of evil.
Wisdom grows by stripping away beliefs, until the last tether is cut, and suddenly you float free. Only, because your eyes are wide open, you see right away that you can’t float in what you’re in. You can only sink. That’s why the meanest religions work so hard at keeping their followers ignorant. Knowledge is poison. Wisdom is depthless. Staying ignorant keeps you in the shallows.
To grieve is the gift of the living – a gift so many of our kin have long lost.
Arrogance. A vice of being undead, Toc the Younger.
When frozen between life and death, in the glacial in-between, what can exist of mortal feeling? Not even an echo. Only memories of ice, of ice and no more than that.
But I understand, now, that the cold and darkness were within me, death’s own touch upon my soul.
Has it not occurred to you that clinical examination of oneself is yet another obsession? What you dissect has to be dead first – that’s the principle of dissection, after all.
Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land’s unseen meaning, such that touches the souls of all who would look – truly look – upon it. Touches, in faintest whisper, old, almost shapeless echoes – to which a mortal life adds its own.
Make no assumptions. About anything. Ever. Stay mindful, my friend, and suspicious. Suspicious, but not frightened by complexity.
Memories belong in the soil, in stone, in wind. They are the land’s unseen meaning, such that touches the souls of all who would look – truly look – upon it.