Seaweed: Literary Thief

"This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism and so frustrate spiritual development."

Egotism: A tendency to talk excessively about oneself; a belief that one is superior to or more important than others.

You got that right.  Who's better than me?  You?  You're better than me?  I don't think so.

"How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.  We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee success in the world we live in.  This philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off.  Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin."

God, I love Bill W and his often florid, over-the-top language.  A bone-crushing juggernaut . . .  Who comes up with that kind of shit except a guy with an out-of-control egotism?

Juggernaut:  A literal or metaphorical force regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path.

That's an impressive force.  Not sure I would characterize my self-sufficiency - powerful as it is - as a crushing - a bone-crushing - force.  I can't imagine what it would take to crush a bone.  

"So it is by circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to A.A.  Chances are that the alcoholic has become convinced that he has more problems than alcohol, and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster.  A dependence on a higher power was their chief source of strength."

Dependence:  The state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else.

So the only thing worse than a writer throwing in the towel and just copying some shit that someone else wrote is to take the quotes and add and subtract words and ideas, cram it together or tease it apart, so that it says what he wants it to say which may or may not be the intent of the original, plagiarized writer.

Harrumph.