Monday, July 19, 2010

"Ecce Homo"

"I AM THE MAN." -- Frederick Douglass


"I have often been asked, how I felt when first I found myself on free soil. And my readers may share the same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened upon me. If life is more than breath, and the 'quick round of blood,' I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: 'I felt as one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.' Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil."


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Rudolf Steiner: "The shadow-side of the rational soul, senseless aggression, depicted as a lion, can be overcome by the corresponding virtue, self-reliant courage."


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