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f1ec9c8
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The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?
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R. Scott Bakker |
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8b15e7e
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Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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fb4c48b
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Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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ef5b956
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I rememeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark?' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visible.' 'And do Men despise ignorance?' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible.
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fear
pg-323
ignorance
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R. Scott Bakker |
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9ef1011
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This is the problem of all great revelations: their significance so often exceeds the frame of our comprehension. We understand only after, always after. Not simply when it is too late, but precisely because it is too late.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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c311ff2
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History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.
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philosophy
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R. Scott Bakker |
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d619f7b
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Darkness shields as much as it threatens.
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pg-342
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R. Scott Bakker |
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5a8da83
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Love is lust made meaningful. Hope is hunger made human.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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65b0af6
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Do not mistake me, Inrithi. In this much Conphas is right. You are all staggering drunks to me. Boys who would play at war when you should kennel with your mothers. You know nothing of war. War is dark. Black as pitch. It is not a God. It does not laugh or weep. It rewards neither skill not daring. It is not a trial of souls, nor the measure of wills. Even less is it a tool, a means to some womanish end. It is merely the place where the iro..
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R. Scott Bakker |
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404c7b4
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A beggar's mistake harms no one but the beggar. A king's mistake, however, harms everyone but the king. Too often, the measure of power lies not in the number who obey your will, but in the number who suffer your stupidity.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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42dc143
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There's faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there's faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they're not entirely certain they're in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God's mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence.
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religion
god
intolerance
ignorance
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R. Scott Bakker |
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4dff592
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To be ignorant and to be deceived are two different things. To be ignorant is to be a slave of the world. To be deceived is to be the slave of another man. The question will always be: Why, when all men are ignorant, and therefore already slaves, does this latter slavery sting us so?
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R. Scott Bakker |
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999e4cb
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There was such a difference, he thought, between the beauty that illuminated, and the beauty that was illuminated.
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insight
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R. Scott Bakker |
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37b13c7
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If soot stains your tunic, dye it black. This is vengeance.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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3cb8aad
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Saying 'I could have done more,' Zin, is what marks a man as a man and not a God.
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wisdom
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R. Scott Bakker |
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a4cb8c5
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Here we find further argument for Gotagga's supposition that the world is round. How else could all men stand higher than their brothers?
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R. Scott Bakker |
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c55d17e
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Water everywhere, falling in thundering cataracts, singular drops, and draping sheets. Kellhus paused next to one of the shining braziers, peered beneath the bronze visage that loomed orange and scowling over his father, watched him lean back into absolute shadow. "You came to the world," unseen lips said, "and you saw that Men were like children." Lines of radiance danced across the intervening waters. "It is their nature to believe as the..
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R. Scott Bakker |
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0564fdf
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The world has long ceased to be the author of your anguish.
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responsibility
suffering
blame
recovery
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R. Scott Bakker |
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edda854
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Where no paths exist, a man strays only when he misses his destination. There is no crime, no transgression, no sin save foolishness or incompetence, and no obscenity save the tyranny of custom.
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truth
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R. Scott Bakker |
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a7a594f
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The world is a circle that possesses as many centres as it does men.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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b93dac4
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Consequences lost all purchase when they became mad. And desperation, when pressed beyond anguish, became narcotic.
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insight
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R. Scott Bakker |
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81b6952
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Men, Kellhus had once told her, were like coins: they had two sides. Where one side of them saw, the other side of them was seen, and though all men were both at once, men could only truly know the side of themselves that saw and the side of others that was seen--they could only truly know the inner half of themselves and the outer half of others. At first Esmenet thought this foolish. Was not the inner half the whole, what was only imperfe..
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R. Scott Bakker |
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ac83846
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To piss across water is to piss across your reflection
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R. Scott Bakker |
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9e8e978
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To be a student required a peculiar kind of capitulation, a willingness not simply to do as one is told, but to surrendor the movements of one's soul to the unknown complexities of another's. A willingness, not simply to be moved, but to be remade.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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36de510
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Complexity begets ambiguity, which yields in all ways to prejudice and avarice. Complication does not so much defeat Men as arm them with fancy.
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man
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R. Scott Bakker |
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df19328
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You've learned the lesson,' Kellhus had said on one of those rare mornings when he shared her breakfast. 'What lesson might that be?' 'That the lessons never end.' He laughed, gingerly sipped his steaming tea. 'That ignorance is infinite.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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c4eec76
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You can count the bruises on your heart easily enough, but numbering sins is a far tricker matter. Men are eternally forgetting for their benefit. They leave it to the World to remeber, and to the Outside to call them to harsh accout. One hundred Heavens . . . for one thousand Hells.
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sin
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R. Scott Bakker |
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6e1f692
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If we're nothing more than our thoughts and passions, and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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b312b89
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When one believed, one's soul moved. When one didn't, everything else moved.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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4a471bb
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Answers are like opium: the more you imbibe, the more you need. Which is why the sober man finds solace in mystery.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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83e2afc
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For all things there is a toll. We pay in breaths, and our purse is soon empty.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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8001b86
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Doubt, he would say, set men free ... Doubt, not truth! Beliefs were the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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ef6cc76
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When a man possesses the innocence of a child, we call him a fool. When a child possesses the cunning of a man, we call him an abomination. As with love, knowledge has its seasons.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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68d57d9
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Let us be moved, you and I, by the things themselves. Let us discover each other.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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b90c00c
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Old women are more reconciled to death than old men. By bringing life to the world, we come to see ourselves as debtors. What's given is taken.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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bd8ebf9
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Mystery made thing gigantic. Knowledge made small.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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ad43a51
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So he came to realize that learning a language was perhaps the most profound thing a man could do. Not only did it require wrapping different sounds around the very movement of your soul, it involved learning things somehow already known, as though much of what he was somehow existed apart from him. A kind of enlightenment accompanied these first lessons, a deeper understanding of self.
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philosophy
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R. Scott Bakker |
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3a7b987
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No soul moves alone through the world, Leweth. Our every thought stems from the thoughts of others. Our every word is but a repetition of world spoken before. Every time we listen, we allow the movements of another should to carry our own...NO one's soul moves alone, Leweth. When one love dies, on must learn to love another.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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080f2ed
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and that revelation murdered all that I once did know. Where once I asked of the God, 'Who are you?' now I ask, 'Who am I?
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R. Scott Bakker |
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8f0461a
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Most men would rather die in deception than live in uncertainty.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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0fb91d8
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One might sooner wash shit from shit than cleanse a soul so wicked!
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R. Scott Bakker |
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3afa9d2
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The vulgar think the God by analogy to man and so worship Him in the form of the Gods. The learned think the God by analogy to principles and so worship Him in the form of Love or Truth. But the wises think the God not at all. They know that thought, which is finite, can only do violence to the God, who is infinite. It is enough, they say, that the God thinks them.
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R. Scott Bakker |
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4bd01da
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He struck his own fire, listened to the night wind roar through the trees. Sometimes, when he could see it, he stared at the Conriyan encampment and counted fires like an idiot child. ,,Always number your foemen," his father had once told him, ,,by the glitter of their fires." Sometimes he gazed at the stars and wondered if they too were his enemies."
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R. Scott Bakker |
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3224c84
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all men are frauds. Some, the wise, fool only others. Others, the foolish, fool only themselves. And a rare few fool both others and themselves--they are the rulers of Men
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R. Scott Bakker |