LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe! Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber. And the mirror was dimmed with dust and overlaced with cobwebs. This so angered him that he fisted it hard, shattering the glass, and was sorely hurt. Enraged all the more by this mischance, he commanded that the ungrateful courtier be thrown into prison, and that the glass be repaired and taken back to his own palace; and this was done. But when the king looked again on the mirror he saw not his image as before, but only the figure of a crowned ass, having a bloody bandage on one of its hinder hooves --as the artificers and all who had looked upon it had before discerned but feared to report. Taught wisdom and charity, the king restored his courtier to liberty, had the mirror set into the back of the throne and reigned many years with justice and humility; and one day when he fell asleep in death while on the throne, the whole court saw in the mirror the luminous figure of an angel, which remains to this day.
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An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
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Once Confucius was walking on the mountains and he came across a woman weeping by a grave. He asked the woman what here sorrow was, and she replied, We are a family of hunters. My father was eaten by a tiger. My husband was bitten by a tiger and died. And now my only son! Why don't you move down and live in the valley? Why do you continue to live up here? asked Confucius. And the woman replied, But sir, there are no tax collectors here! Confucius added to his disciples, You see, a bad government is more to be feared than tigers.
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Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks of what might called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.
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That ready wit, which you so partially allow me, ... may create many admirers; but, take my word for it, it makes few friends. It shines and dazzles like the noonday sun, but, like that, too, it is very apt to scorch, and therefore is always feared. The milder morning and evening light and heat of that planet soothe and calm our minds. Never seek for wit; if it present itself, well and good; but even then, let your judgement interpose, and take care that it be not at the expense of anybody.
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The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.
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We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.
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Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
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A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary...
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Excluded by my birth and tastes from the social order, I was not aware of its diversity. Nothing in the world was irrelevant: the stars on a general's sleeve, the stock-market quotations, the olive harvest, the style of the judiciary, the wheat exchange, flower-beds. Nothing. This order, fearful and feared, whose details were all inter-related, had a meaning: my exile.
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If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared
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Further, we can now explain the widespread custom of covering up mirrors or turning them to the wall after a death has taken place in the house. It is feared that the soul, projected out of the person in the shape of his reflection in the mirror, may be carried off by the ghost of the departed, which is commonly supposed to linger about the house till the burial. The custom is thus exactly parallel to the Aru custom of not sleeping in a house after a death for fear that the soul, projected out of the body in a dream, may meet the ghost and be carried off by it. The reason why sick people should not see themselves in a mirror, and why the mirror in a sick-room is therefore covered up, is also plain; in time of sickness, when the soul might take flight so easily, it is particularly dangerous to project it out of the body by means of the reflection in a mirror. The rule is therefore precisely parallel to the rule observed by some peoples of not allowing sick people to sleep; for in sleep the soul is projected out of the body, and there is always a risk that it may not return.
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Prohibit the taking of omens, and do away with superstitious doubts. Then, until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared.
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We were that generation called silent, but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period's official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate.
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America -- rather, the United States -- seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the world.
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He would have liked his own funeral if he could have seen it. It was small and quiet, and really not at all pompous, as Michael had feared it might be. 'The dead,' he had said once, 'need nothing from the living, and the living can give nothing to the dead.' At 22, it had sounded precocious; at 34, it sounded mature, and this pleased Michael very much. Essentially a romantic, he had put away the trappings of romance, although he had loved them deeply and never known.
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To see a man fearless in dangers. untainted with lusts, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and laughing at all those things which are generally either coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a beam of divinity that influences a mortal body.
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We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we ... remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.
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I never yet feared those men who set a place apart in the middle of their cities where they gather to cheat one another and swear oaths which ...
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It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of
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Hebrews 5:7:
During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
(NIV)
In the days of His flesh [Jesus] offered up definite, special petitions [for that which He not only wanted but needed] and supplications with strong crying and tears to Him Who was [always] able to save Him [out] from death, and He was heard because of His reverence toward God [His godly fear, His piety, in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father].
(AMP)
Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
(KJV)
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She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.
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Nothing in this world is to be feared... only understood.
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Enthusiasm is the inspiration of everything great. Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
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Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
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And he said unto Jether his firstborn, Up, and slay them. But the youth drew not his sword: for he feared, because he was yet a youth.
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I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.
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Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
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An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand.
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Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
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