Cass

“Rise to the occasion. Roar like a lion.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Wake

“No society can understand itself without looking at its shadow side.”
― Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

“The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown:
The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the town.
Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown:
Some gave them plum-cake and drummed them out of town.”
― Lewis Caroll, Alice au pays des merveilles

“His brow is seamed with line and scar;
His cheek is red and dark as wine;
The fires as of a Northern star
Beneath his cap of sable shine.

His right hand, bared of leathern glove,
Hangs open like an iron gin,
You stoop to see his pulses move,
To hear the blood sweep out and in.

He looks some king, so solitary
In earnest thought he seems to stand,
As if across a lonely sea
He gazed impatient of the land.

Out of the noisy centuries
The foolish and the fearful fade;
Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes,
Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.”
― Walter de la Mare