"If you want to find Cherry-Tree Lane all you have to do is never make assertions. That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell — we show. We do not claim — we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw — we can help you to…
POLICE CAPTAIN: Monseigneur Bishop
we have apprehended this man – a known criminal – outside your gates with a set of silver candlesticks he claims you gave him
what say you?
BISHOP MYRIEL: Yes, he stole them. [to Jean Valjean] You wretched leech, if you wanted silver candlesticks, you should have created them.
JAYNE: When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels.
"Whatever the Free Market ordains, is full of wisdom. What we ascribe to fortune, happens not without a presiding nature, nor without a connection and intertexture with the things ordered by the Market. From the Market all things flow."
It was terribly cold, like the inside of a train station after all the trains have left for the evening. It was the last night of the year, and in its cold and darkness there walked a poor little girl, bareheaded and with naked feet. Her slim frame was out of scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing…
"But we have received a sign, Edith – a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm...in the middle of the web there were the words 'Some Pig'...we have no ordinary pig." "Well," said Mrs. Zuckerman, "it seems to me you're a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider." "Ah, there you have it," said her husband. "The extraordinary spider is acting not out of altruism but out of a recognition…
"If the witch understood the true meaning of sacrifice, she might have interpreted the Deep Magic differently, for when a willing victim who has committed no treachery, dies in a traitor’s stead, the stone table will crack and even death itself will turn backwards." "Oh, how interesting," Lucy said. "What is the true meaning of sacrifice, Aslan?" "It is an artificial anti-concept," Aslan said in his low, golden voice. "It is the ultimate force of…
If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk, because charity encourages helplessness and ingratitude. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask you for a straw. Altruism does not result in gratefulness; it results in a sense of expectation and entitlement in the receiver. He has been given something for nothing. What have you taught him about the value of his own labor? Nothing. You have…
Joe Manganiello is living proof that the reader-response theory is the truest form of literary criticism. Reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature" (154). In this way, reader-response theory shares common ground with…
The idea sets the detail. An idea, like a man, is alive; its integrity is to serve its own truth, its own single purpose. An idea cannot borrow hunks of its soul piecemeal any more than a man can borrow pieces of his body from another. The idea, and the Club, was mine. To say the four of us worked on it together is a form of truth, in the same way it is true…
Previously: Ayn Rand Reviews Children's Movies. Thomas the Tank Engine When I ride on the 20th Century Limited, nobody touches a lever on the control panel but me. To ride a train is to take ingenuity itself as your lover; children should be given books about trains early and often. All trains are important. Thomas the Tank Engine is the most important train that there is, because he believes himself to be so. Other,…
Previously in this series: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. "Should it be wizards first, then?" she asked. "We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving." Harry looked at Kingsley. His mouth opened slightly, then closed. "I will give you the gift of silence in exchange for that," he said at last, turning and reaching for the door. "Let's go."
Kathleen: I started helping my mother after school here when I was six years old. And I used to watch her. And it wasn't that she was just selling books, it was that she was helping people become whoever it was (that) they were going to turn out to be. Because when you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole…
Previously in this series (yeah, we’re doing all seven): Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix. "Felix Felicis," Professor Slughorn said in hushed tones, holding the amber bottle up to the light. "Liquid luck, they call it. Bottled fortune. Brewed correctly the drinker of this potion will be lucky in all their endeavours, but be warned...excessive consumption is highly toxic and can cause extreme recklessness." Harry knocked over his chair and…
