C. S. Lewis
"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love."
Thomas Merton
"Sorrow can do one of two things to us. It can make us hard, bitter, resentful, rebellious against God. Or it can make us kinder, softer, more sympathetic. It can despoil us of our faith; or it can root faith ever deeper. It all depends how we think of God."
William Barclay, Commentary on Luke 2:36-40
"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it."
John Henry Newman
"In the past thirty years it seems that Anglo-American culture has grown increasingly narcissistic. I do not know if there are more narcissistic individuals in society now, and perhaps there are not. But I do think that narcissism is much more widely tolerated, rewarded, and even admired now than it would have been in the period of 1930 to 1950 for example. And that is what makes all the difference. More people feel free to indulge their selfish and egotistical tendencies, and to cultivate them, in order to be fashionable and competitive.
Power expresses itself in the assertion of the will over others, and the cultivation of unrestrained personal power, the triumph of their will, is the lifeblood of the narcissist."
Jesse, Empire of the Exceptional: The Age of Narcissism, 1 October 2012
"The humble live in continuous peace, while in the hearts of the proud are envy and frequent anger."
Thomas à Kempis
And so we are back to business, from the holiest week in the Christian calendar again.
And Wall Street marked it with a fairly clumsy and obvious wash and rinse, from the backwash of the Non-Farm Payrolls report from Friday.
The Dollar edged higher.
Gold and silver struggled a bit but ended all right enough.
There will be some important inflation data on Wednesday,
Geo-politics are heating up, with the encouragement of those superior beings the Neo-cons.
The west seems in thrall to the sickness unto death.
Hi ho.
Have a pleasant evening.
