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"The President is merely the most important among a large number of
public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the
degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his
efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested
service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely
necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about
his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him
when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other
attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce
that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to
stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing
but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is
even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about
him than about any one else."
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The eye was terrible, lowering toward me. I felt as if I were
tumbling down into it — dropping endlessly down through a soundless
void. He let me fall, down and down toward a black sun and spiders,
though he knew I was beginning to die. Nothing could have been more
disinterested: serpent to the core.
But then he spoke after all, or rather laughed, and reality snapped
back. Laughed, spoke, and broke my fall not as a kindness to me but
because of his cold pleasure in knowing what he knew. I was in the
cave again, and his horrible smile was snaking up his wrinkled cheek
and his eye was once more half-closed. "You want the word," he said.
"That's what you've come for. My advice is, don't ask! Do as I do!
Seek out gold — but not my gold — and guard it!"
"Why?" I said.
"BE STILL!"
Exchange between Grendel and the dragon in John Gardner's Grendel.
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