A Book Meme

I don’t normally take part in meme’s but Page 123 is kind of hard to resist. The idea is that you take the closest book, open it to page 123 and go to the 5th sentence then post the next three. The first closest book to me was Venus In Furs, by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whom masochism was named, but it didn’t have enough sentences to really follow the rules, so instead of just doing one book, I’m doing two. The first, from Venus In Furs:

You must carry out anything I demand, good or evil, and if I demand a crime from you, then you must become a criminal in obedience to my will. Your honor belongs to me as do your blood, your mind, your capacity for work; I am your Mistress over life and death. If ever you can no longer bear my domination, and the chains become too heavy for you, then you must kill yourself – I will never give you your freedom.

I cannot wait to see what variety of search results will lead to this page thanks to the above excerpt. The second, from The Outsider, by Colin Wilson:

The lesson sank deep; when he read Emerson’s essays at sixteen he was elated to find Novalis and his own intuitions confirmed in the pronouncements on ‘Self-reliance’ and ‘The Oversoul’. From Emerson he absorbed an element of Stoicism that never left him till the end. Once, listening to a conversation among schoolboys about Mucius Scaevola, Nietzsche set a heap of lighted matches on fire on the palm of his hand to demonstrate that it could be done.

I don’t follow the rules when it comes to being tagged, and neither should you.