Trying To Ignite Ice

“You will always be a child if you expect men to be more than they are.  If you are walking through the woods, you do not get angry at a tree that happened to grow up directly in your path.  The tree could not help it.  It existed.  You do not sit on the ground in front of that tree and lecture it.  You ignore it.  And if cannot ignore it, you remove it.  So you must act with people.  They are for the most part, like trees.  They do what they do because they are what they are.”
“And so I should ignore all those that I can and remove those that I can’t?”
“Now you are seeing the light of wisdom,” Chiun said, folding his hands in front of him with a movement as smooth as an underwater plant.
“Chiun, the world you give me is a world without morality.  Where nothing counts for anything except keeping your elbow straight and breathing right and attacking correctly.  You give me no morality and that makes my happy.  Smith gives me a shitpot full of morality and it disgusts me.  But, I like his world better than yours.”
Chiun shrugged, “That is because you do not understand the real meaning of my world.  I do not give you a world without morality.  I give you a world of total morality, but the only morality you totally control is your own.  Be moral.  You can do no greater thing in your life.”  He moved his arms around in a large slow circle.  “Try to make other people moral and you are trying to ignite ice with a match.”
—  Richard Sapir  & Warren Murphy
From their novel: “The Destroyer #30: Muggers Blood“
[I have a large number of “quotes” in my journal which are simply attributed to “House of Sinanju”.  I am sure they are all (each) from one of the 70+ books in “The Destroyer” series (co-written by Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy) which I was reading back in the 1970’s.  I didn’t record which book each quote came out of at the time I found them.  So, I’m just leaving them as recorded.  If anyone finds the book with the quote in it, and lets me know, I will be happy to attribute the quote accurately.  As this quote followed the entry saying I read #30, I assume the quote is from that book.  —  KMAB]
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Robbery

“It is a terrible thing to teach children to kill is it not?”  Remo asked.
“It is the worst of all crimes because it not only robs the present of life, it robs the future of hope.”  [Chiun replied]
—    Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy
Excerpt from their novel: “The Destroyer #23: Child’s Play“
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The Ideal Man

“The ideal man,” Remo said, “has a calm within him, a peace that is linked to the forces of the world.  The ideal man seeks no unnecessary danger but accepts whatever danger there is, knowing that death is a natural part of life, knowing that it is how he dies, not when, that matters.  I see the ideal man capable of sitting quietly for hours, his long, thin hands resting at peace upon his robes.  I see the ideal man in command of his craft and doing what he must do as well as man can do it.  I see the ideal man as a teacher of someone he loves.”
—  Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy
From their novel: “The Destroyer #6: Death Therapy“
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