Howling Dark (The Sun Eater #2)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The poets say that one’s fears grow less with trial, that we become men without fear if tried enough. I have not found it to be so. Rather, on each occasion we are tested, we become stronger than our fears. It is all we can do. Must do. Lest we perish for our failings.

No one can swim, Gibson said. Had said. The rightly tuned mind does not deny its emotions, but floats with them. It accepts what it feels and so incorporates that feeling to itself. Thus the mind is not subject, but rules itself.

“Sad is like a big ocean, and you can’t breathe deep down. You can float on it, you can swim a little, but be careful. Grief is drowning. Grief is deep water.

True lessons require not only knowing, but that the student practices his knowledge again and again. Thus knowledge becomes us, and we become more than the animal and the machine. That is why the best teachers are students always, and the best students are never fully educated.

The bright line, he writes, between man and what was before man is drawn by that dignity with which we honor the dead. Man does not leave her dead to rot, but burns or buries or builds, protecting the body and the memory of the fallen. There is civilization: its cornerstone a grave.

We have little control over our ends, and none over what passes beyond them. But if we live well and truly, those who follow on may remember us for our lives and not our deaths.

Critics of the oldest stories used to say that men believe women to be goals, prizes to be won or bought. They did not understand. No man could think such a thing and remain a man, for to love is in part the attempt to become a creature worthy of love.

There are two sorts of men. One hears an order from his better and obeys. The other sees order in himself and obeys that. All men obey something, even if it is only themselves.