By hero, we tend to mean a heightened man who, more than other men, possesses qualities of courage, loyalty, resourcefulness, char...isma, above all, selflessness. He is an example of right behavior; the sort of man who risks his life to protect his society's values, sacrificing his personal needs for those of the community. Virgil's Aeneas is a hero in this sense of the word. He devotes his warrior skills, his pleasures, and finally his life to the historical destiny of founding Rome. Dante climbing to heaven in the Divine Comedy is a hero. Sergeant York risking his life to "end all wars" is a hero.... There is, of course, another sort of heightened man who bulks large in the popular imagination.... He is not "loyal," not a model of right behavior. Quite the contrary, he fascinates because he undermines the expected order. He possesses the qualities of the "hero": skill, resourcefulness, courage, intelligence. But he is the opposite of selfless. He is hungry; "heightened," not as an example, but as a presence, a phenomenon of sheer energy. One thinks of certain sports heroes, who boast and indulge their whims; who cannot be relied on, not because they are treacherous, but because the order of their needs is purely idiosyncratic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues,... horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The infernal storm, eternal in its rage, sweeps and drives the spirits with its blast; it whirls them, lashing them with punishmen...t. When they are swept back past their place of judgment then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they blaspheme God's almighty power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Midway along the journey of our life [Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita] I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandere...d off from the straight path.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If anyone should want to know my name, I am called Leah. And I spend all my time weaving garlands of flowers with my fair hands, t...o please me when I stand before the mirror; my sister Rachel sits all the day long before her own, and never moves away. She loves to contemplate her lovely eyes; I love to use my hands to adorn myself: her joy is in reflection, mine in act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud--wha...t stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »