A Quote by William Winwood Reade
Reade was an emancipating writer because he seemed to speak as man to man to resolve history into an intelligible pattern in which there was no need for miracles. Even if he was wrong, he was grown-up.
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One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man...It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.
Miracles are like candles lit up until the sun rises, and then blown out. Therefore, I am amused when I hear sects and churches talk about having evidence of Divine authority because they have miracles. Miracles in our time are like candles in the street at midday. We do not want miracles. They are to teach men how to find out truths themselves; and after they have learned this, they no more need them than a well man needs a staff, or a grown-up child needs a walking-stool.
The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action.
The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.
Mind you, I have had in my sojourn on earth as good a time of it as any man, so I can speak with some knowledge. A writer in the Manchester Guardian who is unknown to me lately described me as "the richest man in the world." That sounds a pretty big order, but when I come to think it out I believe he is not far wrong. A rich man is not necessarily a man with a whole pot of money but a man who is really happy. And I am that.
It is better to be a self-made man,--filled up according to God's original pattern,--than to be half a man, made after some other man's pattern.
I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of everybody.
Because one does not want to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, he establishes a pattern of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationships to man. He then becomes a slave to the pattern and takes the pattern to be the real thing.
To make of human affairs a coherent, precise, predictable whole one must ignore or suppress man as he really is. It is by eliminating man from their equation that the makers of history can predict the future, and the writers of history can give a pattern to the past.
It's exciting when kids look up to you or kids come up to you and ask for your autograph. When grown ups come up to you, that's really not exciting. Why would a grown man be excited for meeting another grown man?
For the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as though it were something, just as the only way one can speak of God is to speak of him as though he were a man, which to be sure he was, in a sense, for a time, and as the only way one can speak of man, even our anthropologists have realized that, is to speak of him as though he were a termite.
If people depend on me to be a man of truth, I have to prove again and again and again and again that I am a man of truth. It cannot be that on Monday I am a man of truth, on Tuesday I speak three-quarters truth, Wednesday I speak half-truth, on Thursday I speak one-quarter truth, on Friday I don't speak at all, and on Saturday I can't even think how to speak the truth.
All history is an attempt to find pattern and meaning in a section of human experience, and every historian worthy of the name raises questions about man's ultimate destiny and the meaning of all history to which, as history, he can provide no answers. The answers belong to the realm of theology.
The longer I live, the more I feel that the individual is not so much to blame - not even the worst individuals, not even the 'best' citizens - as the system of corruption which has grown up about us, and which rewards an honest man with a mere living and a crook with all the magnificence of our magnificent modern life.
I totally trust fate and I have faith and I trust faith. I actually have an incredible pattern of what I think are full-tilt miracles. Very strange things that have happened in my life and they've been dictated by a lot of the things I have done. It is so much more than even what you call the ultimate synchronistic pattern. It's like miracles and I believe in them.
If a woman could take care of herself, would she still need a man? Would she even want one? And if she didn't want a man, what kind of woman would she be? Would she even be a woman? Because it seemed if you were a woman, the only thing you were really supposed to want was a man.
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