Down By Law Quotes

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

It is a sad and beautiful world. ~ Jim Jarmusch

He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murders. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I'll go see what it was," said Cinder, slipping into the hallway and darting down the stairs. Jacin was siting at the bottom, hunched over something and working intently.
"That was Thorne," he said, without glancing up at her.
"What did he do? Knock down a wall?" Cinder stepped past Jacin, but hesitated when she saw the vase of white flowers on the floor at his feet. He was meticulously pulling the flowers out of the water, one by one, and wiring their stems together. His brow was knotted in concentration.
"Are you making a bouquet?" she asked incredulously.
"Shut up." He held the cluster in one hand and turned it a few different directions, before plucking out a white hydrangea and adding it to the mix. ~ Marissa Meyer

American fighter planes came in under the smoke to see if anything was moving. They saw Billy and the rest moving down there. The planes sprayed them with machine-gun bullets, but the bullets missed. Then they saw some other people moving down by the riverside and they shot at them. They hit some of them. So it goes. The idea was to hasten the end of the war. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant B ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K oln in 1653. ~ Mike Harding

During that night the blessed Antony told us this, too. 'A whole year long I prayed that the place of the righteous and of the sinners be revealed to me, and I saw a huge giant, high as the clouds and black. He had his hand stretched out to heaven, and beneath him there was a lake the size of a sea and I saw souls, flying like birds. 17. " 'Those flying above his hands and his head were being saved; they that were struck by his hands were falling into the lake. A voice came to me saying, "Those souls that you see flying above are the souls of the righteous, the ones that are being brought safely into Paradise; the others are they that are being dragged down to Hades, having followed the desires of the flesh and the remembrance of injuries." ' "* ~ John Wortley

He touched her arm. "Frau Steadman, how old are you?" "I am twenty-nine." She looked up at him, puzzled by the question. "Why?" He removed his hand and slid it into his trouser pocket. "You were a young bride, then." She tipped her head. "Yes, I suppose I was. No one seemed to think I was too young, however. My sister-in-law was very eager to see me wed. She could be rid of me then, you see." She offered a weak smile. "You are still a young woman. Do you - " his ears turned bright red - "do you ever wish to have another family?" Immediately she turned her attention to the pot of bubbling cornmeal mush. "I don't know." Why was he asking this? ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer

By midmorning, my excitement and anticipation had turned into complete misery because of the cold. But all of a sudden two mallard ducks flew by me at eye level. I grabbed my duck call and blew on it about three times. The ducks stopped, turned, floated down, and sat in the decoy spread in front of me. I grabbed my gun, but my body was so cold that I couldn't raise it to my shoulder. Actually, I was even colder than before, because when nature called, I was forced to unzip my coveralls. When I was finished doing my business, my fingers were too numb to zip the coveralls back up!
Despite not being able to shoot, I felt a great sense of pride and accomplishment as I reflected on calling in wild ducks for the first time. It was amazing to me that the ducks were swimming around painted decoys because of the sounds I made with a call. I was instantly hooked and it really didn't matter to me that I was too cold to shoot. Unfortunately, my dad pulled up to my blind in his boat about the same time. He watched the ducks fly away from my decoys. He pointed at them in amazement.
"Why didn't you shoot?" he asked me.
Due to my pride, I decided to tell him, "I didn't want to mess y'all up with my gunfire."
My dad shook his head in disbelief.
"But I called them in with these duck calls I made," I proudly told him. ~ Jase Robertson

The fight for sanity in our gun safety laws is not by any means over. In many ways it's just beginning. ~ Michael D. Barnes

Long, long ago, before eruptions were invented, the molten lava had to be carried down the mountainside, bucket by bucket, and poured over the sleeping villagers. This took time. ~ Dave Barry

The demagogic propagandist must therefore be consistently dogmatic. All his statements are made without qualification. There are no grays in his picture of the world; everything is either diabolically black or celestially white. In Hitler's words, the propagandist should adopt "a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with." He must never admit that he might be wrong or that people with a different point of view might be even partially right. Opponents should not be argued with; they should be attacked, shouted down, or, if they become too much of a nuisance, liquidated. The morally squeamish intellectual may be shocked by this kind of thing. But the masses are always convinced that "right is on the side of the active aggressor. ~ Aldous Huxley

For though the law of nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures; yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases. ~ John Locke

However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic - they develop a fear of fear itself. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Shall we amaze them?" I said, looking out into the crowd.
Shane smiled down at me. "Grace, trust me, they were amazed just by you walking in. ~ Christine Zolendz

Adversity is what illuminates quagmires, but all that really matters is destiny.We cannot be blinded by present circumstances which roar like Goliath and sent shivers down the spine. That's not what destiny holds, remember; mercy spurned is demise embraced. ~ Trinity Tinashe Masunungure

Before the war Sofya Levinton had once said to Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, 'If one man is fated to be killed by another, it would be interesting to trace the gradual convergence of their paths. At the start they might be miles away from one another – I might be in Pamir picking alpine roses and clicking my camera, while this other man, my death, might be eight thousand miles away, fishing for ruff in a little stream after school. I might be getting ready to go to a concert and he might be at the railway station buying a ticket to go and visit his mother-in-law – and yet eventually we are bound to meet, we can't avoid it... ~ Vasily Grossman

I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them ~ Wilfred Thesiger

I know that. I just don't feel it sometimes. Over there I felt like I
hadn't a care in the world. Things felt so good and it was almost as
if every muscle in my body relaxed the moment I landed there. I
haven't laughed so much in years. I felt like a 23-year-old, Steph. I
haven't felt like that much lately. I know this probably sounds weird
but I felt like the me that I could have been.
I liked that I didn't have to look out for somebody else while I
walked down the street. I didn't have the fifty near heart attacks per
day that I usually get when Katie goes missing or puts something in
her mouth that she shouldn't. I didn't have to dive onto the road
and hold her back just in time from being hit by a car. I liked that I
didn't have to give out, correct people on their pronunciation or
make threats. I liked laughing at a joke without my sleeve being
tugged at and being asked to explain. I liked having adult conversations
without being interrupted to cheer and applaud a silly dance
or the learning of a new word. I liked that I was just me, Rosie, not
mummy, thinking just about me, talking about things I liked, going
places I liked to go without having to worry about nappy changes,
bottle feeding or sleepy-head tantrums. Isn't that awful? ~ Cecelia Ahern

The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves. ~ James Madison

Wishing I had a towel, I used my fingers to wipe the raindrops off my face. My wet face that had been partially protected by the brim of his cap. Which would have worked if the rain fell straight down. This had been slashing across.
"Oh, no."
"What?" Jason said.
"Turn on the light."
He did. I lowered the sun visor, looked at my reflection in the mirror, groaned, and slapped the visor back into place. "Turn the light off."
"What's wrong?"
I didn't look at him, didn't want him to see. "The makeup ran."
Not as badly as I'd expected, but I had dark smudges beneath my eyes and my bruising was more visible.
"So what?"
I leaned my head back. "I look worse than I did the night you met me."
"I thought you looked fine."
I rolled my head to the side, so I could see him. Hoping the shadows made it so he couldn't see me. "What are you talking about? I looked like a Cirque de Soleil performer."
"What are you talking about?"
"The black dots around my eyes?"
He shook his head. "I'm lost."
"You were staring--"
"Oh, yeah." He gazed through the windshield. "Sorry about that. I've just never seen eyes as green as yours. I was trying to figure out if you wore contacts."
"You were looking at my eyes?"
"Yeah."
"Not the makeup."
He turned his attention back to me. "I didn't realize you were wearing any. That night, anyway. Tonight it's pretty obvious."
"Oh." Didn't I feel silly? "I thought--" I ~ Rachel Hawthorne

But Miss Ferguson preferred science over penmanship. Philosophy over etiquette. And, dear heavens preserve them all, mathematics over everything. Not simply numbering that could see a wife through her household accounts. Algebra. Geometry. Indecipherable equations made up of unrecognizable symbols that meant nothing to anyone but the chit herself. It was enough to give Miss Chase hives.

The girl wasn't even saved by having any proper feminine skills. She could not tat or sing or draw. Her needlework was execrable, and her Italian worse. In fact, her only skills were completely unacceptable, as no one wanted a wife who could speak German, discuss physics, or bring down more pheasant than her husband. ~ Eileen Dreyer

(Lorelei is accosted by Galbraith.)
If you ever lay hands on what's mine again, as God is my witness, I'll lay you down dead. (Jack) ~ Kinley MacGregor

According to the New Testament, Christ fulfills the Old Testament law and prophets with its sacrificial system. He is the true covenant sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. By his sacrifice he acquired his own exaltation and, for his own, the blessings of salvation, notably the forgiveness and removal of our sins, peace with God. ~ Anonymous

By day, or on a cloudless night, a pilot may drink the wine of the gods, but it has an earthly taste; he's a god of the earth, like one of the Grecian deities who lives on worldly mountains and descended for intercourse with men. But at night, over a stratus layer, all sense of the planet may disappear. You know that down below, beneath that heavenly blanket is the earth, factual and hard. But it's an intellectual knowledge; it's a knowledge tucked away in the mind; not a feeling that penetrates the body. ~ Charles Lindbergh

Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The thing I notice first about such people is their wonderful Christian charity. What kind of an electorate could, term after term, vote in a man of such ill-informed bigotry as Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina? A man who has sneered: 'The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.'122 The answer, I suppose, is the kind of electorate that sees morality in narrowly religious terms and feels threatened by anybody who doesn't share the same absolutist faith. I ~ Richard Dawkins

The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough. ~ Augustus De Morgan

And so what moved him onward and down the office building's stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic. ~ Neal Stephenson

Anastasia reached the attic stairs, slowed down, and listened. She knew that the first step to asking about secrets is seeing how much you can find out by sneaking. ~ N.D. Wilson

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque water, startled by the illumination. Coming at last, and so suddenly, on life like his own, Mr. Lecky moved closer. The fixed flood of his light enveloped these small fish dimly, glowed back on him. They came sliding, drifting, mouths in motion, gills rippling, up the light, against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at Mr. Lecky. Idling with great grace, the extravagant products of selective breeding - fringetails, Korean, calico - passed, swayed about, came languidly back. Moving faster, stub-finned, crop-tailed danios from the Malabar coast appeared, hovered, taking the light on their fat flanks, now spotted, now iridescent pearl or opal.

Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Mr. Lecky felt an unexpected compunction. He was their only proprietor; and soon, trapped unnaturally here in the big tank, they would starve to death. His light went back to a counter he had just passed, showing him again the half-noticed packages - food for birds and pet animals, food, too, for fish. Returning to the tank, his light found many of the fish still waiting, the rest rushing back. He went and took a package, tore the top off, and poured the contents onto the rectangle of open water. It would perhaps postpone the time when, having eaten each other, the sick rema ~ James Gould Cozzens

Why are we talking about talking? Why negotiating about negotiating? It's very simple. If you want to get to peace, put all your preconditions on the side, sit down opposite a table, not in a studio, by the way. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

It was a Wednesday, but it was a holiday, and Hattie was spending her day off from the local library (bookish by curling up on her favorite understuffed sofa with her newest purchase - a dime-store romance novel featuring bare-chested, oiled down pirates ("bookish" need not always be confused with literary") - and one of her two cats, the calico one named Mimsy. ~ Clayton Smith

Lately, because computer technology has made self-publishing an easier and less expensive venture, I'm getting a lot of review copies of amateur books by writers who would be better advised to hone their craft before committing it to print. The best thing you can do as a beginning writer is to write, write, write - and read, read, read. Concentrating on publication prematurely is a mistake. You don't pick up a violin and expect to play Carnegie Hall within the year - yet somehow people forget that writing also requires technical skills that need to be learned, practiced, honed. If I had a dollar for every person I've met who thought, with no prior experience, they could sit down and write a novel and instantly win awards and make their living as a writer, I'd be a rich woman today. It's unrealistic, and it's also mildly insulting to professional writers who have worked hard to perfect their craft. Of course, then you hear stories about people like J.K. Rowling, who did sit down with no prior experience and write a worldwide best-seller...but such people are as rare as hen's teeth. Every day I work with talented, accomplished writers who have many novels in print and awards to their name and who are 'still' struggling to make a living. The thing I often find myself wanting to say to new writers is: Write because you love writing, learn your craft, be patient, and be realistic. Anais Nin said about writing, "It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it bre ~ Terri Windling