# Who Wants to be a Torturer? (was Quotehunt) *The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 06 Jul 2000* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### William Ansley *06 Jul 2000, 23:43* Is that your final answer? Sorry. Ooooh, you were so close! The correct answer is: "In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity. That we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable sin." But you still get some lovely parting gifts. William Ansley > At 2:06 PM -0400 7/5/00, Robert King wrote: > I think it's at the very end of Claw, in the scene where Jolenta dies. > > As I recall, it goes something like: "In the end there is only love, only > that divinity. That we are capable of being only what we are remains our > unforgivable sin." > > Believe it or not, I used the line when I had to give my speech as the > valedictorian in high school. I figured Severian was a cooler reference > than Polonius ("to thine own self be true," yadda yadda yadda). Damned if > I can remember what context I placed it in, though. > > -- Bob > > > > > On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Alex David Groce wrote: >> Ok, I'm trying to find where in New Sun Severian says something roughly >> like "Our one unforgivable sin is that we remain capable only of being >> > what we are." I can't find it anywhere, and I'm not sure I have the >> phrasing correct. Anyone remember this? --- ### Alex David Groce *07 Jul 2000, 13:55 · follows William Ansley* Thanks, Robert and William! A side note: I "stole" (with attributions I'm sure no one paid any attention to) much of my high school graduation speech from LITTLE, BIG and Eliot's "Little Gidding." ``` "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32 -- Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu) Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department 8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066 http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce ``` --- ### Charles Dye *08 Jul 2000, 10:31 · follows Alex David Groce* William Ansley writes: > The correct answer is: > > "In the final reckoning there is only love, only that divinity. That > we are capable only of being what we are remains our unforgivable > sin." Oddly enough, that second sentence appears twice in _Claw_: near the end of the first chapter, and near the end of the last. Vodalus and Jolenta -- what's the connection? raster at highfiber.com ---