Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
Henry MillerRead
I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a state of neutrality where one is free from attachments and biases.
Henry Miller's quote highlights the concept of neutrality, suggesting that true freedom comes from not being bound by allegiances, responsibilities, or emotional investments. By declaring himself as 'a neutral,' Miller conveys a philosophical stance that values objectivity and detachment, allowing for a clearer perspective on life and the world around him.
In practice
Using this quote during a debate to emphasize the importance of impartiality.
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?
We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
You are born with a character; it is given, a gift, as the old stories say, from the guardians upon your birth...Each person enters the world called.
The Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest Fairy Story — and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.
The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.
I’m not clear enough in the head to feel anything but varieties of dull anger and arrows of sadness.
If it is true that only misfortune can awaken a man's soul, it is a bitter truth, one that is hard to hear and accept, and it is only natural that many people deny it and say it is better for a man to live on in a trance than to wake up to torture.
[...] to introduce into the philosophy of war itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity
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