"Leisurely Independence"

"He seems to have thought for a time of the law. From that too he recoiled, and leaving the legal profession for his brother Christopher, he had decided that the only life possible for himself was one of leisurely independence, dedicated wholly to scholarship and literature[…]For the six years from 1632 this accordingly, was Milton’s position. In perfect leisure, and in a pleasant rural retirement with Windsor at the distance of an easy walk, and London only about 17 miles off, he went through, he tells us, a systematic course of reading in the Greek and Latin classics, varied by mathematics, music, and the kind of physical science we would now call cosmography”

David Mason “A Brief Life of Milton” from “Paradise Lost” p. 318-319

Ukraine, with its austerity and complete lack of phony American behaivor, was horrible preparation for law school, where one can probably find the paradigm of this kind of person. I even ran into an American girl in Ukraine and it just reminded me of how much I don’t like the typical American. In two weeks I will be in the midst of the very people in this world that I do not want to be around. However, this will is unalterable. Amor Fati. This time around though I have the benefit of a lot of hard lessons learned...

Here, however, Zarathustra interrupted the foaming fool and put his hand over the fool’s mouth. “Stop at last!” cried Zarathustra; “your speech and your manner have long nauseated me. Why did you live near the swamps so long that you yourself have become a frog and a toad? Does not putrid swamp-blood flow through your veins now that you have learned to croak and revile thus? Why have you not gone into the woods or to plow the soil? Does not the sea abound in green islands? I despise your despising; and if you warned me, why did you not warn yourself?[…] What was it that first made you grunt? That nobody flattered you sufficiently; you sat down to this filth so as to have reason to grunt much – to have reason for much revenge. For all your foaming is revenge, you vain fool; I guessed it well[…] This doctrine, however, I give you fool, as a parting present: where one can no longer love, there one should pass by.”

Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he passed by the fool and the great city.

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Book III “On Passing By”