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Quote by Amy I Long, The Desert Queen

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Amy I Long, The Desert Queen

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“There was something behind the glass, behind her reflection and the wash of clouded sky above her. She gazed past the surface, as though she were looking deep into clear water, ignoring the ripples and movements on the surface to search out what lived beneath. A tree, she realized, bending in a faint breeze, draped with purple leaves like streamers. Pure-silver flowers winked and sparkled in the deep foliage, swinging gently like bells, though Alaine couldn't hear anything. She gazed deeper, drinking in the beauty of a silver mist of moss on the ground, of a tangle of pale branches woven into knot-work unnaturally symmetrical, down to thorns bowing deeply to one another in vine-wrought curls. Something moved in the purple-and-silver forest, a figure, sliding like mist through the boughs. A woman--- Alaine started. She was tall and slim, shaped more than anything like a birch tree, with the same silver-pale gleam. Her hair was loose behind her, wound through with purple flowers, painfully bright against her fair waves. She looked up, gazing right at Alaine, almost meeting her eyes--- And then the mirror shattered in her hands.”

WomanFairyDark FantasyForestDryadMirror Reflection
Book:The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill
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“....a tirade against Paolo Sorrentino’s film The Great Beauty........It struck me. But what struck me even more was what happened a few months later, when I finally saw the film and, at the same time, got to know him better. And I realized he was exactly one of the characters Sorrentino had portrayed: obsessed with appearances, caught up in social rituals, incapable of deep desire. A man tired on the inside, moving through the world like an actor on a stage with no more script. That’s when I understood: it wasn’t the film that had disturbed him. It was the reflection it had given him. He had recognized himself — and that had frightened him. That kind of fear that makes you say: “How dare you judge me?” when in reality, no one has judged you. You’ve simply seen yourself. And sometimes, seeing ourselves is far more unsettling than being seen.”

Mirror ReflectionMirrors ReflectionPaolo SorrentinoThe Great Beauty
Book:The Island of What Could Have Been: Back to the Middle Lands
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“The “noble” person has a completely naïve and non-reflective awareness of his own value and of his fullness of being, an obscure conviction which enriches every conscious moment of his existence, as if he were autonomously rooted in the universe. This should not be mistaken for “pride.” Quite on the contrary, pride results from an experienced diminution of this “naive” self-confidence. It is a way of “holding on” to one’s value, of seizing and “preserving” it deliberately. The noble man’s naive self-confidence, which is as natural to him as tension is to the muscles, permits him calmly to assimilate the merits of others in all the fullness of their substance and configuration. He never “grudges” them their merits. On the contrary: he rejoices in their virtues and feels that they make the world more worthy of love. His naive self-confidence is by no means “compounded” of a series of positive valuations based on specific qualities, talents, and virtues: it is originally directed at his very essence and being. Therefore he can afford to admit that another person has certain “qualities” superior to his own or is more “gifted” in some respects—indeed in all respects. Such a conclusion does not diminish his naïve awareness of his own value, which needs no justification or proof by achievements or abilities. Achievements merely serve to confirm it. On the other hand, the “common” man (in the exact acceptation of the term) can only experience his value and that of another if he relates the two, and he clearly perceives only those qualities which constitute possible differences. The noble man experiences value prior to any comparison, the common man in and through a comparison. For the latter, the relation is the selective precondition for apprehending any value. Every value is a relative thing, “higher” or “lower,” “more” or “less” than his own. He arrives at value judgments by comparing himself to others and others to himself”

Self Confidence Comparison
Book:Ressentiment
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