A Man in Full

[Luthor Rex]

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"What little bit Conrad had learned about philosophy at Mount Diablo had seemed to concern people who were free and whose main problem was to choose from among life’s infinite possibilities. Only Epictetus began with the assumption that life is hard, brutal, punishing, narrow, and confining, a deadly business, and that fairness and unfairness are beside the point. Only Epictetus, so far as Conrad knew, was a philosopher who had been stripped of everything, imprisoned, tortured, enslaved, threatened with death. And only Epictetus had looked his tormenters in the eye and said, ‘You do what you have to do, and I will do what I have to do, which is live and die like a man.’ "

 

[Turncoat]

Excellent quote. Very noble and dignified.

 

[Unregistered]

I love Tom Wolfe, and I love that fvcking novel. I read it right after I turned 22, and it was the first thing I'd ever read that really inspired me and taught me about manliness. I consider it a turning point in my life. It introduced me to Stoicism, it taught me about morals, and it taught me about respect.

Tom Wolfe has a way of celebrating manliness while satirizing it at the same time: celebrating it with characters or real people like Conrad Hemsley, Chuck Yeager, Al Shepard, Robert Noyce, and Junior Johnson, while satirizing the strutting, posturing types such as Charlie Croker, Sherman McCoy, Hoyt Thorpe, etc.