Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.
But Beatrix knew very well that there were no jobs, not even the most pitiful office routine - she wasn't even qualified for that - and that no one would allow her to sleep until late in the afternoon because these ill-advised people all around her let themselves be squeezed into schedules; that she would never work, least of all learn a trade, because she had no ambition whatsoever to earn a single shilling, become self-supporting and spend eight hours a day with people who smelled bad.
As usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.
But you are not your bank account, or your ambition. You're not the cold clay lump you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are Spirit, you are love, and even though it is hard to believe sometimes, you are free. You're here to love, and be loved, freely. If you find out next week that you are terminally ill - and we're all terminally ill on this bus - what will matter are memories of beauty, that people loved you, and that you loved them.
The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.
Do you think that romantic love is natural; that the life of trade is honorable; that freedom of worship is desirable? Very likely you think none of those things; you have uncritically absorbed them, and only since you came to college begun to learn that they are al comparatively recent and local notions, the products of past conflicts and choices. As the hand of the dyer is tinged by what it works in, so your tastes, ambitions, and values take their quality from a context that was created for you before you were born.
Once you succeed at everything you realize the ultimate truth. Everything is useless, nothing is permanent, pleasure lasts but a second and is quickly deadened. All ambition is but chasing after the wind. No drug, no lover, no victory, no conquest, no invention, no discovery, no amount of wealth or passion could ever fill the gaping void in the center where the soul is supposed to be but isn't. All pursuits are a distraction against the inevitability of death. Even achieving the crown dream of humanity, immortality and youth eternal, is but a pitiful delay in the face of the inevitable destruction of all things.
You’re a dreamer, boy,” he said. “Your mind is on the moon, and from the looks of things, it’s nevergoing to be anywhere else. You have no ambitions, you don’t give a damn about money, and you’retoo much of a philosopher to have any feeling for art. What am I going to do with you? You needsomeone to look after you, to make sure you have food in your belly and a bit of cash in your pocket.Once I’m gone, you’ll be right back where you started.
“We have all these movies from the '50s, but they're told from such a male perspective and such a '50s ideology. You wouldn't see Bettie's story from her point of view. People wouldn't be interested in what it was really like or take her story at face value, ... Films from that time are hilarious because of their complete condemnation of any kind of female initiative or ambition. It was such a contradictory world that even the law itself didn't have a clear handle on it.... I really wanted to get across that moment in time of naiveté, fear and panic.”
Though there are many barriers to expressing unreserved love, no such impediments to a developing a loving and generous heart deter a spiritual warrior. He who is without love is bereft of richness of life. Compassion, empathy, kindness, tenderness, and patience are essential for love. Anger, frustration, jealously, greed, and hatred are the antonym to love. When we love other people with all our ferocity, we transcend the misuse, waste, pain, tragedy, death, anguish, erotic obsessions, unaccountable confusion, and self-absorbed personal ambitions that, if left unchecked, numb our earthly existence.