Currently Reading The Idiot By Fyodor Dostoevksy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky see related

For my other groups

Book Quiz

     The hero sings, flashing in the light of holy glory. He stands upright, though alone before the foe, caring not for safety or death, but only for the inflamed passion of standing for a life of worth. Though other men may form in rank, and make passionless plans that assure victory, the hero cannot do so. For it matters not whether he survives or not, but that he stood, and that he believed, and that he spat into the wind, caring not if he was hit again. This is the hero, who values passion and courage and the search for truth before aught else.

                                                            But a hero is buried every moment.

    The moment a hero sees the odds are too great, or that the price is too dear... that is when he dies. He ceases to be a hero. He cowers, when fear covers him, and shrinks back into the phalanx, with men who have no passion. Men who care only for victory. Men who search not for glory, who care not for honour. Men who would grow into a civilization and make atomic bombs. So that victory would be assured, and that passion would not needed, so that courage would no longer be necessary. But these men, are not men, they are not heros. They are but passionless observers. These are the men who stand around a pit at the Burial at Ornans. They have nothing of the Oath of the Horatii. They stand for nothing, and they believe in nothing, and they have ceased to love honour, or glory, or virtue, or the striving for truth. They care only for safety, and for surety.

    And God will not honour these, for they did not honour him; for they did not esteem the search for wisdom, truth, honour, or glory worth the loss of life. They do not care enough for truth to grasp at it until certainty is absolutely attained. Until they know objectively that truth can be had. They do not risk battle until they know it is won. They would not stand in the gap of Thermopylae, an escort against all of the might of Persia. Only a hero would search not knowing if his prize could be found. Only a hero would risk shame for glory, would risk being mistaken in order to possess truth. Those who desire only to be right, will never believe anything; for when you believe something, you might be believing a lie. And these do not think truth a worthy enough goal to risk the shame of believing a lie. But the hero thinks truth to be far and away worth suffering shame and degradation for. And that is why he will stand, even alone before the phalanx and fight until he is torn asunder by the foes who give him honour. For it is not shameful to fall fighting for everything you hold dear. It is no shame to risk The Village if end is truth. Walker was ashamed! Ashamed that he had not the courage to risk everything to save his daughter's eyes. Ashamed that he could not wager everything to do what was right. Ashamed that comfort and safety had more weight with him than what good. Ashamed that he was a coward, and not a hero. Ivy was willing to risk life, and safety and Evil for the sake of truth and justice and right. And that is the place in which only a hero will stand. To risk life and shame and dishonour, and scorn, and Evil itself, for the sake of truth, even when truth is not promised to him, that is the lair into which only a hero will creep. And God will honour those who honour him.

P.S. Sp. Lartius and T. Herminius were heros. http://www.bibliomania.com/0/5/194/560/8475/1/frameset.html

Currently Reading Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics) By Fyodor Dostoyevsky see related

Dickens- A tale of Two Cities.

      A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost. When the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?

This is the tragedy, that we live in a broken world. And yes, that we are broken too, and that our teachers tell us what is unnatural is natural, and so we are forced against our nature. And though often innocent, we must fight against evil around us. And still we cannot tell the noble from the wicked within us. This is a tragedy.