in china there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. his deep affections for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. it is said that he died of fright. he was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing.

Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

I have little doubt that when St. George had killed the dragon he was heartily afraid of the princess.

The Dying Gladiator

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand - his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low -
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,
Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him - he is gone,
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not - his eyes
Were with his heart and that was far away;
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young-barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother - he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday -
All this rushed with his blood - Shall he expire
And unavenged? - Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire!

by making himself a priest made himself a demon.

This ain't your fight,' he said to the distant creature. 'Fucking dragon.

He also wanted to destroy something, everything, perhaps himself.

That child of earth too, the inhabitant of Cilician caves, hostile, monstrous, with a hundred heads — I saw and pitied him as he was violently overcome, Typhon furious for war, who stood against all the gods, hissing terror with dreadful jaws, and who flashed a fierce gleam from his eyes, intent on the violent ruin of tyranny. Zeus’ unsleeping bolt came to him, however, the lightning which descends in a blast of flame; it hit him out of his lofty boastings; he was struck to the very soul of his being, blazing like a coal, and his strength blasted from him in thunder.

"There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all. The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing m

His ironies were ghoulish now.

Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others’ good,
But not in pity, not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought,
That swayed him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally in crime;
So much he soared beyond, or sunk beneath,
The men with whom he felt condemned to breathe,
And longed by good or ill to separate
Himself from all who shared his mortal state.

Here the spirit becomes a lion who would conquer his freedom and be master…

Who is the great dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and go? ‘Thou shalt’ is the name of the great dragon.

But the spirit of the lion says, ‘I will.

I dreamed... in the black of night a man asks all the questions he dare not ask by daylight. For me, the past years, only one question has remained. Why would the gods take my eyes and my strength, yet condemn me to linger on so long, frozen and forgotten? What use could they have for an old done man like me? ... I remember, Sam. I still remember.
Remember what?
Dragons, Aemon whispered.

Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.