Frist from The Arm and the Darkness.
He said somewhat childlishly "I am your sworn enemy,"
The old man regarded him with genuine surprise. Then he began to smile as at a child with true mirth "No man is my enemy," he said, "unless I admit him to be so."
"That is a mystical sophistry" remarked Arsine with disdain.
"No", said the priest, "it is a living truth. No man can hurt another, unless that other admits his enemy's capacity to hurt him. There is no evil if we deny its existance, there is no menace to the soul unless that soul has conceded the reality of evil."
"And if you refuse to believe there is evil?" asked Arsine with pitying scorn and amusement.
He was again ashamed at the old man's sudden sadness The abbe' glanced away and fixed his mournful eyes in space.
"I am frail, old and sinful," he whispered, "Had I true faith I would know that evil lives only in the imagination of men, in the corrupt hearts of the enemies of God. God has created no wicked thing, Threfore good is the only reality. How can one then believe in the existence of evil?"
And from Glory and the Lightning
A jeweled lizard ran along the stones of the portico and a slave would have struck the small
creature with a stone, but Zeno sain in a voice unusually sharp, "Let the beautiful thing live, for there is very little living beauty in the world, Besides has he offended you? Has he bitten your toe or poisoned you? Has he not as goodly a reason to live as you, and who are you to terminate his life?"From The Romance of Atlantis.
"Better to appreciate a sunset than to be lord of a thousand conqured cities. The man that can be moved by music is happier than he whose acclaim is shouted from the hilltops, The soul grows not by material things but only by thought. If a man thinketh not, even though he sits upon a throne his soul is still in embryo.
A wise woman!
ARTYAL Hugs, j
