Hannah H. > Recent Status Updates

“This scene represents a snapshot of the doors that Spiritualism opened to some women. It created proximity to power but draped it in the layers of demure modesty that the era required. Women’s ambition had to be some sort of discretely shared secret.[…]They were inserting themselves into the narrative of history and power; they were normalizing the presence of women as advisers and experts to male decision-

“Grief is a chronic illness. It flares, it subsides, it mutates and metastasizes; it remains in the blood long after the initial infection, waiting for its moment to return regardless of its host’s wishes and plans and treatments. There is no known cure. […] Mourning, the public actions of going through those feelings, is more of a short term process these days.”

“Will she set alarms obsessively
to check in on your breath?
Does she know the ways to touch you
with her lips upon your neck?
Is she agreeable and careless?
Does she answer all your calls?
Because I know you needed someone
who was fine with feeling small.”

“How strange to write about
‘having’
when for so long
I’ve drawn inspiration only from
longing?”

“‘Haven’t told you in a while,
but you’re the reason for it all.
You’re a vital complication
I never seem to resolve.’
I say,
‘Why all this silence?’
You answer,
‘Mind’s been so violent,
a tyrant.’”

“I guess I found it easier
For me to charm a man
‘Cause a woman always crumbled in my hands.”

“Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.”

“To be violent at first and wind up fearing one’s people is the epitome of ineptitude.
To act inconsiderately and later be afraid is bravery without firmness, which is extremely incompetent.”

“Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent’s fate.”

“If you make opponents come to fight, then their force will always be empty. If you do not go to fight, then your force will always be full. This is the art of emptying others and filling yourself.”

“Those skilled in defense hide in the deepest depths of the earth, those skilled in attack maneuver in the highest heights of the sky. Therefore they can preserve themselves and achieve complete victory.
They hide in the depths of the earth by taking advantage of the fastness of the mountains, rivers, and hills. They maneuver in the heights of the sky by taking advantage of the times of nature.”

“Nation, army, division, battalion, unit—great or small, keep it intact and your dignity will be improved thereby; destroy it, and your dignity will suffer.”

“A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective. […] Without deception you cannot carry out strategy, without strategy you cannot control the opponent.”

“Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive sternness of command results in cruelty.”

“If the people are treated with benevolence, faithfulness, and justice, then they will be of one mind, and will be glad to serve. The I Ching says, ‘Joyful in difficulty, the people forget about their death.’ […] If the leaders can be humane and just, sharing both the gains and the troubles of the people, then the troops will be loyal and naturally identify with the interests of the leadership.”

“Rulers of men are not egotists. They create nothing. They exist entirely through the persons of others. Their goal is in their subjects, in the activity of enslaving. They are as dependent as the beggar, the social worker and the bandit. The form of dependence does not matter.”

“And here man faces his basic alternative: he can survive in only one of two ways—by independent work of his own mind or as a parasite fed by the minds of others. The creator originates. The parasite borrows. The creator faces nature alone. The parasite faces nature through an intermediary.”

“You were a ruler of men. You held a leash. A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends.”

“Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice—run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”

“That, precisely, is the deadliness of second-handers. They have no concern for facts, ideas, work. They’re concerned only with people. They don’t ask: ‘Is this true?’ They ask: ‘Is this what others think is true?’ […] Their reality is not within them […] Not an entity, but a relation—anchored to nothing. That’s the emptiness I couldn’t understand in people.

“He’s paying the price and wondering for what sin and telling himself that’s he’s been too selfish. In what act or thought of his has there ever been a self? What was his aim in life? Greatness—in other people’s eyes. Fame, admiration, envy—all that which comes from others. Others dictated his convictions, which he did not hold, but he was satisfied that others believed he held them.”

“He thought that she owed him nothing, or every kind of anger and scorn she could command; and yet there was a human obligation she still had toward him: she owed him evidence of strain in this meeting. There was none.”

“He thought, it’s not intentional, not just to hurt me, he can’t help it, he doesn’t even know it—but it’s in his whole body, that look of a creature glad to be alive. And he realized he had never actually believed that any living thing could be glad of the gift of existence.”

“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that’s much harder?”

“‘There’s so much nonsense about human inconstancy and the transience of all emotions,’ said Wynand. ‘I’ve always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place. There are books I liked at the age of sixteen. I still like them.’”

“…they should realize that the worst curse of poverty was the lack of privacy; only the very rich or the very poor of the city could enjoy their summer vacations […]; the people of good taste and small income had no place to go, if they found no rest or pleasure in herds. Why was it assumed that poverty gave one the instincts of cattle?”

“So he felt anger that he should find exultation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost when he would return to men and men’s work. He thought that this was not right; that man’s work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, not a degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them.”

“The young man hoped he would not die. Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rocks instead of words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone […], where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world.”

“She was always smiling. Always polite in that way that southern people were taught to be. Like nothing dark had ever touched her.”

“Do you mind… if we just sit here for a little while longer… and not talk about that… but just talk, as if everything were right… just an armistice for half and hour out of years…. Tell me what you’ve done every day you’ve been here, everything you can remember….”