Quotations

Most of these quotations are relevant to Master/slave relationships to some greater or less extent. As you can see, they are drawn from a wide variety of sources and I don't endorse them all by any means (although they are all worth thinking about or even reacting to.)

Master: "A man having control or authority: the owner of a living creature, as a dog, horse, slave; also the man whom an animal is accustomed to obey; the male head of a house or household."

slave: "One who is the property of, and entirely subject to another person, whether by capture, purchase or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights."

The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition

"I am your servant. I shall not be free. You will protect me; you will keep me safe; you will guard me. You will keep me sound; you will protect me from every demon."

An Ancient Egyptian woman's slave contract with the priests of Saknebtynis.

"If a captive, suddenly reduced to servitude, still retains some traces of his freedom and does not run nimbly to mean and toilsome tasks, if sluggish from inaction he does not keep pace with the speed of his master's horse and carriage, if worn out by his daily vigils he yields to sleep, if when transferred to hard labour from service in the city with its many holidays he either refuses the toil of the farm or does not enter into it with energy - in such cases let us discriminate, asking whether he cannot or will not serve. We shall acquit many if we begin with discernment instead of with anger."

Seneca, c.4 BC - 65 AD, On Anger (IV XXIX 1-2)

"Let a wife who wishes to perform sacred ablution, wash the feet of her lord, and drink the water; for a husband is to a wife greater than Shankar and Vishnu. The husband is her god, and priest, and religion, and its services, wherefore, abandoning every thing else, she ought chiefly to worship her husband. No sacrifice is allowed to women apart from their husbands; no religious rites, no fasting; as far only as a wife honors her lord, so far is she exalted in heaven."

From Skanda Purana (a Hindu scripture). "Charanamrit" is water made sacred by using it to wash the feet of a god or holy person.

"In trutina mentis dubia
fluctuant contraria
lascivus amor et pudicitia.
Sed eligo quod video,
collum iugo praebeo;
ad iugum tam suave transeo."

("In the wavering balance of my feelings set against each other lascivious love and modesty. But I choose what I see, and submit my neck to the yoke; I yield to the sweet yoke.")

From the Carmina Burana c.1200 (Number 21 in Carl Orff's version set to music - also used for the theme of Timewatch, if you're a BBC viewer.)

"When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold, I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, for which I was born. There I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives for their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexations, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass into their world."

Niccolo Machiavelli, letter to Francesco Vettori, 1513.

"As for gentlemen they be made good cheape in England. For whosoever studieth the lawes of the realme, who studieth in the Universities, who professeth liverall sciences, and to be short, who can live idly and without manuall labor, and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called master, for that is the title which men give to esquires and other gentlemen, and shall be taken for a gentleman"

Sir Thomas Smith, "De Republica Anglorum" 1584.

"Nature, that fram'd us of four elements
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Wills us to wear ourselves and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown."

Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, 1587

Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease."

Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

"When I consider how my light is spent
E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny'd,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite."

John Milton, 1608-74, On his blindness

"Slavery consists in this, that a man is obliged, for his whole life, to devote his labour and services to a master. Now as anybody may justly bind himself, for the sake of some anticipated reward, to give his entire services to a master for a year, and he would in justice be bound to fulfil this contract, why may not he bind himself in like manner for a longer period, even for his entire lifetime, an obligation which would constitute slavery?"

John de Lugo, De Justitia et Jure, 1642 (disp. VI, sec. 2. no. 14.)

"Beware the Fury of a Patient Man."

John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1681

"I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is I believe too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost for ever."

Mr Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" (Vol. 1, Ch. 11), Jane Austen, 1813

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Henry David Thoreau, "Walden", 1854

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!"

Rudyard Kipling, 1865-1936, If

"That which does not kill me, makes me stronger."

Friedrich Nietzsche, "Gotzen-Dammerung" ("Twilight of the Idols"), 1889

(Also Trevor Goodchild in "Aeon Flux" (1995): "That which does not kill us, makes us stranger." and donsideb AT aol.com's Usenet signature: "That which does not kill us is a good scene.")

"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

William Ernest Henley, 1849-1903, Invictus ("Unconquered")

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

G.B. Shaw, "Maxims: Liberty and Equality," Man and Superman, 1903

"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don't mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don't mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling - all that I am capable of doing - but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."

Anais Nin, diary entry, 1932.

"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?" Winston thought. "By making him suffer," he said. "Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?"

George Orwell, "1984", 1948.

"The diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained."
"She clasped the metal bracelet on her wrist. She liked the feel of the weight against her skin. Inexplicably, she felt a touch of feminine vanity, the kind she had never experienced before: the desire to be seen wearing this particular ornament."

Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged", 1957.

"Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty." (Chapter House Dune)

"You cannot manipulate a marionette with only one string." (Chapter House Dune)

"The person who takes the banal and ordinary and illuminates it in a new way can terrify. We do not want our ideas changed. We feel threatened by such demands. 'I already know the important things!' we say. Then the Changer comes and throws our old ideas away." (Chapter House Dune)

"Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?" (Dune)

"The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: 'Now what is this thing doing?'" (Chapter House Dune)

"Our test is crisis and observation," and yet "Hope clouds observation." (Dune)

"A Royal Family is not like other families. Here was a new slave-concubine, then, red-haired like my father, willowy and graceful. She had a dancer's muscles, and her training obviously had included neuro-enticement. My father looked at her for a long time as she postured unclothed before him. Finally he said: "She is too beautiful. We will save her as a gift." You have no idea how much consternation this restraint created in the Royal Creche. Subtlety and self-control were, after all, the most deadly threats to us all." (Dune)

Frank Herbert, Dune series

"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived 300 years, and long to die. But death is no longer possible, I am immortal. I present now my story - full of mystery and intrigue. Rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep within a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred. But they may! Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale I am a fake god by occupation, and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero! I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events you will see. But I am invented too for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in showbusiness too?"

Arthur Frayn in Zardoz

"There's no excuse to go about your business in a half-assed way. We are only alive for a finite number of days, and we're poorer for ever hour we spend in soft-hearted pursuits. We rob ourselves when we submit to diluted entertainments, buy products that lack solid integrity and settle for second-rate gratifications. Life is short, and there's precious little time to fool around."

Larry Flynt

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox"

Ian Malcolm in the Jurassic Park screenplay

"When the fox hears the rabbit scream he comes a-runnin'... but not to help."

Mason Verger in the Hannibal screenplay

"I will continue to examine what people say about themselves and their relationships critically and make judgments from a level of experience that is unmatched in the world. You can either learn from it or not as you choose."

Jon Jacobs (speaking on the ISO-TPE-Partners group)

"All you need to do to be a very popular and admired cyber-dominant is to know what pat phrases to say at what times. ... Submissives who have only recently discovered or decided to pursue their sexuality are, as a rule, so sexually and emotionally needy for control, any kind of control, that they fall right over if you assume a stern, forceful demeanor in their cyber-presence and issue the sorts of orders that you read about in S&M pornography. Then, in public, if you repeat all the standard tenents accepted by the S&M Scene community as the highest wisdom (again, it's very easy to learn what these are -- you know, inanities like "safe, sane, and consensual" and "the best tops started out as bottoms" -- and then rattle them off like a parrot) you'll get a rep as a wise, respected and (cough cough) "loving" dominant, a paragon of the Scene."

Polly Peachum

"The creators always intended it to be that way. If it were easy to find, we would be overwhelmed by applicants. ... They hear of us, they instantly believe in us, and then spend months, sometimes years, trying to find their way to us. They haunt the clubs and the organizations, their need so real and desperate that they exude sensual tension when they glide through the crowds. Some of them are so ripe that they intimidate the poseurs, the weekend sadists and the furtive dilettantes that are so endemic to that world. And they never stop asking where we may be found."

Laura Antoniou, The Marketplace

"A slave should be in a continued state of bondage, from the chain locked around his neck to the chains or cage that he may sleep in over night. He is Captive to his Master."

The Dog House

"He was looking at me as a musician might look at an instrument just before he begins to play, with understanding and mastery. I felt that he could see into me as though I were a part of him. How I would have loved to be the instrument he played!"

Arthur Golden, "Memoirs of a Geisha"

"The submissive hunger is to be the object of an intense and penetrating understanding."

yaldahtvah@aol.com

"What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? It's the gift of anticipation. And I'm a good servant. I'm better than good. I'm the best. I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry - and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired - and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves."

Mrs Wilson from Gosford Park

"Live with a man 40 years, share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day you will finally meet the man."

"Shan Yu" quoted in Firefly episode, "War Stories"

"They made a statue of us
And it put it on a mountaintop
Now tourists come and stare at us
Blow bubbles with their gum
Take photographs for fun, for fun.

They'll name a city after us
And later say it's all our fault
Then they'll give us a talking to
Then they'll give us a talking to
Because they've got years of experience."

From Us by Regina Spektor