arye-o

[arye-o]

I Am A Cat — Sōseki Natsume

The cat defines those that tease to their ill-hearted content. What causes one to torment another in this way?

🐾:"Study of the annals of history discloses that there are two main types of people disposed to indulge in teasing: those of an utterly bored or witless mind and those who need to prove to themselves their superiority to others."

—Characteristics of the First Type:

• Infantile & mentally stunned •Seeks stimulation

•Lives out their fool pleasures on others by teasing to bring vitality to their own lives

— Characteristics of the Second Type:

• Insecure & self-ridiculed

• Seeks vanity

• Demonstrates their entitlements by teasing a weaker person to solidify superiority

SN.V3.C1

Clement Burlison: White cat

#classical literature #booklr #book quotes #literature #dark academia #i am a cat #japanese literature #soseki natsume #bsd authors #book review #bungou stray dogs authors #bungou stray dogs #art #cat

[arye-o]

On the subject of the 10th Letter: In the Devil's favor, the devout human subject has made friends with non-believers. Screwtape lectures on the 3 methods of influence to ruin our subjects faith.

1 ✧ Two Parallel Lives, He will not only appear to be, but will actually be a different man in each of the circles he frequents,

"Get him to realize the character of his friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism."

2 ✧ Exploitating Vanity, He can be made to see the positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent,

". .he can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabitated on Saturday"

3 ✧ A Pleaser, In defiance of conscience, persuade him to continue the new acquaintences on the ground that he is doing these people good,

"By the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be "priggish," "intolerant," and (of course) "Puritanical."

-L.X

C.S. Lewis

#dark academia quotes #dark academia #the screwtape letters #cs lewis #paradise lost #epistolary #book review #booklr #literature #classical literature #book quotes #bookblr #books #book update

[arye-o]

On the subject of the 8th Letter, Screwtape writes to his pupil the mechanisms of God's Will.

✒️"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon the universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

Screwtape teaches a devil how to tempt a human soul. Referring to God as the Enemy who also tempts his will upon humans, they must act when the soul desperately seeks a blessing in the absence of God,

▫️"Sooner or later He withdraws,. leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs. .it is during the peak periods that it is growing into the sort of creature he wants it to be. Hence, the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please him best."

In the time of unanswered prayers- should the devil do best in cauterizing one's faith and sealing the human's virtue as it's accursed own,

📍"Our goal is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense."

L.VII

#the screwtape letters #screwtape #classical literature #british literature #c.s. lewis #cs lewis #british author #paradise lost #christianity #christian apologetics #epistolary #temptation #devil #god #dark academia #dark aesthetic #dark art #booklr

[arye-o]

I Am a Cat — Sōseki Natsume

The Cat associates the human inability of perfect imitation with God's incompetence in creating identical copies of mankind.

🐾: " If God originally intended to create every man-jack of mankind with the same face, he found the task impossible, and that he consequently produced so long a string of botched appearances as to end up with the present disorderly state of the human physiognomy."

—Human Inability of Perfect Imitation

• Human beings learn their various languages purely by imitation: the noises made by the daily mouthings of whomever they happen to hear. Nevertheless, the languages thus produced by imitation show distinct changes in pronunciation. Which amply demonstrates the human inability to make perfect imitations

• Inability in calligraphy to write the exact same characters as written moments before

• inability to paint the exact same painting.

"Now, if God had shown himself able to create human beings indistinguishable from each other that would have been impressive. But the actual state of affairs— a situation in which God has let loose under the sun all manner of different faces, could well be taken to prove the limited competence of his creative power."

Sn.V2.C2.

Pittock Mansion: Portrait of a White Cat

#booklr #classical literature #i am a cat #japanese literature #literature #soseki natsume #dark academia #book reading #bsd authors #bungou stray dogs authors #book update #book review #light academia #book quotes #bookblr

[arye-o]

I Am A Cat – Sōseki Natsume

The cat critiques human conversations. Now that it has a caretaker, the guests that enter receive judgment from the cat– as well as his guardian in social interactions. There is found: Hypocrisy and Pretentiousness.

🐾: "I merely concluded that human beings were good for nothing except for this strenuous employment of their mouths for the purpose of whiling away their time and laughter at things which are not funny and in the enjoyment of amusements which are not amusing".

~The Cat's Complaints About His Caretaker:

• Why can't he listen to the stories of the other two in silence? What good purpose can he serve by talking such utter rubbish just because his competitive spirit has been roused?

~The Cat's Complaints About the Caretaker & Their Friends:

• Though they adopt a nonchalant attitude keeping themselves aloof from the crowd, in reality they, too, are shaken by just the same greed and worldly ambition as their fellow men.

• The urge to compete in their anxiety to win are revealed flickeringly in their everyday conversation and only a hair's breadth separates them from the Philistines whom they spend their idle days denouncing. They are all animals from the same den.

SN.V1.C2.

Carl Kahler: Whos The Fairest of Us All

#dark academia quotes #dark academia #art #quotes #booklr #book reading #book review #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs authors #bsd authors #i am a cat #soseki natsume #books #classical literature #japanese literature #literature

[arye-o]

I Am a Cat — Sõseki Natsume

The cat has not been given a name. In exchange for a homestead, it's been given a front row seat as an observant of human nature.

🐾: "Living as do with human beings, the more that I observe them, I am forced to conclude that they are selfish.":

•For taking away their kittens

•Taking away food that they rightfully stumble upon

•Cursing them for pursuing their natural liberties as a cat

"Humans are puffed by their extreme self-satisfaction. Unless some creatures more powerful than humans arrive on earth to bully them, there's just no knowing to what dire lengths their fool presumptuousness will eventually carry them!"

SN.V1.C1

Jean-jacques Bachelier : Angora Cat Chasing a Butterfly

#literature #soseki natsume #i am a cat #japanese literature #booklr #book annotations #book quotes #book reading #currently reading #human nature #classical literature #bungou stray dogs authors #bsd authors