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It takes time and thought, and a great deal of looking within, to find dignity in the face of circumstances like ours.
“The gods have given us many pleasures, but they are best taken in moderation. When we fling moderation to the wind, we can lose our mastery over ourselves, and become a captive to those same pleasures. Then our joys may imprison us, you see. We fall under their power, and they control us, so that they are no longer joys at all, but torments.”
New experiences are only frightening the first time. After that, they aren’t new anymore, and so there’s no fear left in them.
What’s new can only frighten me once.
The whole of the city still glowed, golden-red, with the long, lingering sunset of the New Year, while low in the sky, with a flash of fire like an African opal, the Dog Star had returned to coax the Nile to its fullness.
“I don’t speak of hetaerae. I speak of us all—hetaerae, pornae, slaves. Wives and sisters and daughters. To powerful men—and even many weak men—women are nothing more than trade goods. Just little bits of nothing, to be used in any way they please and discarded like trash afterward.”
