And now...farewell to kindness, humanity and gratitude. I have substituted myself for Providence in rewarding the good; may the God of vengeance now yield me His place to punish the wicked.
I know there are people who believe you should forgive and forget. For the record, I'd like to say I'm a big fan of forgiveness as long as I'm given the opportunity to get even first.
But secondly you say 'society must exact vengeance, and society must punish'. Wrong on both counts. Vengeance comes from the individual and punishment from God.
And now,' said the unknown, 'farewell kindness, humanity, and gratitude! Farewell to all the feelings that expand the heart! I have been heaven's substitute to recompense the good - now the god of vengeance yields to me his power to punish the wicked!
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.
"You are a woman, my lady," the Greatjon rumbled in his deep voice. "Women do not understand these things." "You are the gentle sex," said Lord Karstark, with the lines of grief fresh on his face. "A man has a need for vengeance." "Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark , and you would see how gentle a woman can be," Catelyn replied."
Winter is coming, warned the Stark words, and truly it had come to them with a vengeance. But it is high summer for House Lannister. So why am I so bloody cold?
There exists a limit to the force even the most powerful may apply without destroying themselves. Judging this limit is the true artistry of government. Misuse of power is the fatal sin. The law cannot be a tool of vengeance, never a hostage, nor a fortification against the martyrs it has created. You cannot threaten any individual and escape the consequences.
"When the ships had lifted, they returned across the river to the silence of death. Then his grandfather told him, "Many fine things your father had planned for you: learning and useful work and a life of satisfaction and peace. Do you recall this?" "Yes, Grandfather." "The learning you shall have. You will learn patience and resource, the ability of your hands and your mind. You will have useful work: the destruction of evil men. What work could be more useful? This is Beyond; you will find that your work is never done--so therefore you may never know life of peace. However, I guarantee you ample satisfaction, for I will teach you to crave the blood of these men more than the flesh of woman." The old man had been as good as his word."
Vengeance and forgiveness are about reconciling the accounts, but accounting is an ugly description of the tangled ways we're connected. I sometimes think everything comes out even in the end, but an end that arches beyond the horizon, beyond our capacity to perceive or measure, and that in many cases those who trespass against you do so out of a misery that means the punishment preceded and even precipitated the crime. Maybe that's acceptance.
if people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and injust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they will never be afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should- so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again
"Tell me something about her. People make fun of her?" "Some did," she said. "I never liked it, but..." "Crap." I looked at Molly and said, "Code Carrie. We're in trouble."
Every decent man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!
"If the secret core of potlatch is the reciprocity of exchange, why is this reciprocity not asserted directly, why does it assume the "mystified" form of two consecutive acts each of which is staged as a free voluntary display of generosity? Here we encounter the paradoxes of forced choice, of freedom to do what is necessary, at its most elementary: I have to do freely what I am expected to do. (If, upon receiving a gift, I immediately return it to the giver, this direct circulation would amount to an extremely aggressive gesture of humiliation, it would signal that I refused the other's gifts -- recall those embarrassing moments when elderly people forget and give us last year's present once again ... ) ...the reciprocity of exchange is in itself thoroughly ambiguous; at its most fundamental, it is destructive of the social bond, it is the logic of revenge, tit for tat. To cover this aspect of exchange, to make it benevolent and pacific, one has to pretend that each person's gift is free and stands on its own. This brings us to potlatch as the "pre-economy of the economy," its zero-level, that is, exchange as the reciprocal relation of two non-productive expenditures. If the gift belongs to Master and exchange to the Servant, potlatch is the paradoxical exchange between Masters. Potlach is simultaneously the zero-level of civility, the paradoxical point at which restrained civility and obscene consumption overlap, the point at which it is polite to behave impolitely."
Art thou so deeply read in nature and her large philosophy, and I am yet to teach thee that deadliest hellebore or the vomit of a toad are qualified poison to the malice of a woman?
I had been agitating for a pet for some time. In my head I had a white rabbit called Ezra who bit people who ignored me. Ezra's pelt was as white as the soul in heaven but his heart was black...
Her favourite song was 'God Has Blotted Them Out,' which was meant to be about sins, but really was about anyone who had ever annoyed her, which was everyone. She just didn't like anyone and she just didn't like life. Life was a burden to be carried as far as the grave and then dumped. Life was a Vale of Tears. Life was a pre-death experience.