Only the learned read old books, and... now... they are of all men the least likely to acquire wisdom by doing so. ...[G]reat scholars are now as little nourished by the past as the most ignorant mechanic who holds that "history is bunk..." [for] ...when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man's colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the "present state of the question." To regard the ancient writer as a possible source of knowledge-to anticipate that what he said could possibly modify your thoughts or your behavior-this would be rejected as unutterably simple-minded. ... [Therefore, even though] learning makes a free commerce between the ages... every generation [is cut] off from all others... [and] ...characteristic errors of one [are not] corrected by the characteristic truths of another.

You haven't lost Iraki, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinions, or your hair has turned like his.'There are no more facts about him, that part is over. Now is the time for essential things. You'll see visions of him wherever you go. You'll see his eyes so moist, his intentions so blinding, you'll think he is more alive than you. You will look around and wonder if it was you who died.'Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son. 'In the future, you'll live astride the line separating life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them. You'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgement falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.'

There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly. …in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness the first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards—they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

A fine line exists between quitting on ourselves and letting go of a restrictive position in life and moving forward to reach our ultimate destination based upon our natal predisposition honed by a lifetime of experimentation. Who has not been forced to stop and ask ourselves, ‘who are we,’ ‘what are we doing,’ and ‘where are we going?’ Who has not been forced to pause by life’s dynamic forces and ask ourselves, ‘what mystical chords bind us as a species; what is the meaning of life; and how do we give birth to our genetic blueprint while shaping a sense of purposefulness out of our own existence and striving to bring joy to other people’s hearth?’ To answer these life affirming questions that gnaw most voraciously at our consciousness at the time when tension and unsettling trauma besieges us, we must appreciate our heritage, be mindful our epoch, accept responsibility for our adult decisions, and strive to accumulate wisdom that segues our entrance into the future. Each of us must arrive at a unifying philosophy that guides our living quest, and the sooner we come to terms with our eccentric self the quicker we will perceive and appreciate the ineffable beauty of nature.

The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

For the Church, the option for the poor is primarily a theological category rather than a cultural, sociological, political, or philosophical one. God shows the poor "his first mercy." This divine preference has consequences for the faith life of all Christians, because we are called to have "this mind...which was in Jesus Christ" (Phil. 2:5). Inspired by this, the Church has made an option for the poor, which is understood as a "special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the Church bears witness." This option - as Benedict XVI has taught - "is implicit in our Christian faith in a God who became poor for us, so as to enrich us with his poverty." This is why I want a Church that is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the center of the Church's pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them, and to embrace the mysterious wisdom that God wishes to share with us through them.

The Native Americans, whose wisdom Thoreau admired, regarded the Earth itself as a sacred source of energy. To stretch out on it brought repose, to sit on the ground ensured greater wisdom in councils, to walk in contact with its gravity gave strength and endurance. The Earth was an inexhaustible well of strength: because it was the original Mother, the feeder, but also because it enclosed in its bosom all the dead ancestors. It was the element in which transmission took place. Thus, instead of stretching their hands skyward to implore the mercy of celestial divinities, American Indians preferred to walk barefoot on the Earth: The Lakota was a true Naturist – a lover of Nature. He loved the earth and all things of the earth, the attachment growing with age. The old people came literally to love the soil and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The birds that flew in the air came to rest on the earth and it was the final abiding place of all things that lived and grew. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. Walking, by virtue of having the earth’s support, feeling its gravity, resting on it with every step, is very like a continuous breathing in of energy. But the earth’s force is not transmitted only in the manner of a radiation climbing through the legs. It is also through the coincidence of circulations: walking is movement, the heart beats more strongly, with a more ample beat, the blood circulates faster and more powerfully than when the body is at rest. And the earth’s rhythms draw that along, they echo and respond to each other. A last source of energy, after the heart and the Earth, is landscapes. They summon the walker and make him at home: the hills, the colours, the trees all confirm it. The charm of a twisting path among hills, the beauty of vine fields in autumn, like purple and gold scarves, the silvery glitter of olive leaves against a defining summer sky, the immensity of perfectly sliced glaciers … all these things support, transport and nourish us.

Do you think they’ll ever be a place for us? I mean, do you think there’s a place for someone who lives under the radar, someone who has to pretend, someone who is a spy?” “Yes.” Daly said it with such confidence that I sat up in my bed, my cast dangling over the edge. “How do you know?” I asked. “There has to be. I don’t usually philosophize, but I do know one thing.” “What’s that?” “That even when we’re pretending, even when we’re hiding under wigs or accents or clothes that aren’t our style, we can’t hide our nature. Just like I knew from the moment I met you that you would choose this life. And just like I knew, when you told me about this mission, that you would agree to help the CIA find this girl. You would sacrifice yourself and your time with your brother to save someone. It’s just who you are.” “I’ve already messed things up, Daly. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do it?” “That’s the thing, though. You’ll find a way.” I lay back again and buried the side of my face into my pillow. “I’m just not sure how.” “If you continue to think as you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got,” Daly said. I considered that. I wasn’t ready to give up. At least not yet. “That one is Itosu wisdom, in case you wondered.” I yawned into the phone. “It’s good advice.” “I’ll let you go. You should be resting. Don’t you have school in the morning?” He said the last part in a teasing tone. “Yeah, if I make it through another day at school. Maybe they’ll get rid of me—kick me out or something. You’d think I would have inherited some of my mom’s artistic genius.” “Can I give you one last bit of advice, Alex?” “Sure.” “Throw it all out the window.” “What?” I stared at my open window. A slight breeze blew the gauzelike drapes in and out as if they were a living creature. “Everything you’ve learned about art, the lines, the colors, the pictures in your head from other artists—just throw it all out. And throw out everything you’ve learned from books and simulations about being a good spy. Don’t try to be like someone else. Don’t force yourself to follow a set of rules that weren’t meant for you. Those work for 99.99% of the people.” “You’re telling me I’m the .01%?” I asked skeptically. “No, I’m telling you you’re not even on the scale.” Daly’s soft breathing traveled through the phone line. “With a mind like yours, you can’t be put in a box. Or even expected to stand outside it. You were never meant to hold still, Alex. You have to stack all the boxes up and climb and keep climbing until you find you. I’m just saying that Alexandra Stewart will find her own way.” The cool night air brushed the skin of my arm and I wished it was Daly’s hand instead. “You sure have a lot of wisdom tonight,” I told him. I expected him to laugh. Instead, the line went silent for a moment. “Because I’m not there. Because I wish I was.” His words were simple, but his message reached inside my heart and left a warmth—a warmth I needed. “Thank you, James.”“Take care, Alex.” I wanted to say more, to keep him at my ear just a little longer. Yet the words itching to break free couldn’t be said from over two thousand miles away. They needed to happen in person. I wasn’t going home until I found Amoriel. Which meant I had to complete this mission. Not just for Amoriel anymore. I had to do it for me. (page 143)

There are some however more condescending, and gracious enough to confess, that many Women have wit and conduct; but yet they are of opinion, that even such of us as are most remarkable for either or both, still betray something which speaks the imbecility of our sex. Stale, thread-bare notions, which long since sunk'd with their own weight; and the extreme weakness of which seem'd to condemn to perpetual oblivion; till an ingenious writer, for want of something better to employ his pen about, was pleased lately to revive them in one of the weekly * papers, lest this age should be ignorant what fools there have been among his sex in former ones.To give us a sample then of the wisdom of his sex, he tells us, that it was always the opinion of the wisest among them, that Women are never to be indulged the sweets of liberty; but ought to pass their whole lives in a state of subordination to the Men, and in an absolute dependance upon them. And the reason assigned for so extravagant an assertion, is our not having a sufficient capacity to govern ourselves. It must be observed, that so bold a tenet ought to have better proofs to support it, than the bare word of the persons who advance it; as their being parties so immediately concern'd, must render all they say of this kind highly suspect.