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To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist: and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.

 

Muriel Rukeyser

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At certain points, reading [A Man in Full] can even be said to resemble the act of making love to a three-hundred pound woman. Once she gets on top, it's over. Fall in love, or be asphyxiated. So you read and you grab and you even find delight in some of these mounds of material. Yet all the while you resist -- how you resist! -- letting three hundred pounds take you over.

 

Tom Wolfe

 

“People fear stone,” Usha said, “because it contains never-life.”
“Non-life? You mean, death?”
“Nonsense,” she repeated vehemently. “What’s to fear about death? Death is natural. Stone is never-life.”
Spinel took another tack. “If they fear it, then how come enough Sharers want it so the traders stock shelves full?”
“How should I know? Why do Valans drink the toxic waste product of sugar-eating yeast?”

 

Joan Slonczewski

 

Why do we resist giving help to homeless men? In part because we don’t understand how our pressure on men to support families often forces men to take transient jobs that are but a step away from homelessness (the death-of-a-salesman jobs, the migrant worker jobs…) and in part because we respond differently to men who fail [than women who fail].

 

Warren Farrell

 

Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to attack their own salvation. When there was need to observe the Law, they trampled it under foot. … On this account Stephen said: "You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you always resist the Holy Spirit", not only by transgressing the Law but also by wishing to observe it at the wrong time.

 

John Chrysostom

 

There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty. Arren found himself unwilling to stay on these cold summits. He said after a little while, “I see why you say that only men do evil, I think. Even sharks are innocent; they kill because they must.”
"That is why nothing else can resist us. Only one thing in the world can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it.”

 

Ursula K. Le Guin