Mirror Glass Darkly: Seneca on God, Kate Chopin on passion, Thoreau on Slavery, and Marcus Aurelius on the Universe.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?  

-Seneca on God

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"Do you remember--in Assumption, Calyxta?"  he asked in a low voice broken by passion.  Oh! she remembered: for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight.  If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail.  Now--well, now--her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.

They did not heed the crashing torrents, and the roar of the elements made her laugh as she lay in his arms.  She was a revelation in that dim, mysterious chamber; as white as the couch she lay upon.  Her firm, elastic flesh that was knowing for the first time its birthright, was like a creamy lily that the sun invites to contribute its breath and perfume to the undying life of the world.

-Kate Chopin

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They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.  Their measures are half measures and make-shifts, merely.  They put off the day of settlement indefinitely, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.  Though the Fugitive Slave Law had not been the subject of discussion on that occasion, it was at length faintly resolved by my townsmen, at an adjourned meeting, as I learn, that the compromise compact of 1820 having been repudiated by one of the parties, 'Therefore, the Fugitive Slave Law must be repealed'.  But this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed.  The face which the politicians faces is merely, that there is less honor among thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves.

Again it happens that the Boston Court House is full of armed men, holding prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE.  Does any one think that Justice or God awaits Mr. Loring's decision?  For him to sit there deciding still, when this question is already decided from eternity to eternity, and the unlettered slave himself, and the multitude around, have long since heard and assented to the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous.  We may be tempted to ask from whom he received his commission, and who he is that received it; what novel statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to him of authority.  Such an arbiter's very existence is an impertinence.  We do not ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack.

I listen to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-In-Chief of the forces of Massachusetts.  I hear only the creaking of crickets and the hum of insects which now fill the summer air.  The Governor's exploit is to review the troops on muster days.  I have seen him on horseback, with his hat off, listening to a chaplain's prayer.  It chances that is all I have ever seen of a Governor.  I think that I could manage to get along without one.  If he is not of the least use to prevent my being kidnapped, pray of what important use is he likely to be to me?  When freedom is most endangered, he dwells in deepest obscurity.

-Henry David Thoreau on Slavery in Massachusetts

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Willingly give thyself up to Clotho, one of the Fates, allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases.

Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are and to make new things like them.  For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.  But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion.

-Marcus Aurelius