Once Is Not Enough Quotes

A politician is not allowed to get too emotional in public, so what he does is drop subtle hints that, over time, cause the public to get emotional. Once the same emotions are generated by enough people, the politician can use it to steer the public in his desired direction. Fear is an emotion that is often used this way. A smart politician knows that if he can create fear in enough people, those people will give up what they truly want in order to give the politician what he says they need. ~ Victor L. Wooten

You once said you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write (I can't do much, anyway), but in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of selfrevelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind - for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive - even that degree of selfrevelation and surrender is not enough for writing. Writing that springs from the surface of existence - when there is no other way and the deeper wells have dried up - is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes that surface shake. This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough. This is why there is never enough time at one's disposal, for the roads are long and it is easy to go astray, there are even times when one becomes afraid and has the desire - even without any constraint or enticement - to run back (a desire always severely punished later on), how much more so if one were suddenly to receive a kiss from the most beloved lips! I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my roo ~ Franz Kafka

No woman in any of my cases has ever left a man the first time he behaved abusively (not that doing so would be wrong). By the time she moves to end her relationship, she has usually lived with years of verbal abuse and control and has requested uncountable numbers of times that her partner stop cutting her down or frightening her. In most cases she has also requested that he stop drinking, or go to counseling, or talk to a clergyperson, or take some other step to get help. She has usually left him a few times, or at least started to leave, and then gotten back together with him. Don't any of these actions on her part count as demonstrating her commitment? Has she ever done enough, and gained the right to protect herself? In the abuser's mind, the answer is no. Once again, the abuser's double standards rule the day. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Once you have done a man a service, what more reward would you have? Is it not enough to have obeyed the laws of your own nature, without expecting to be paid for it? ~ Marcus Aurelius

I immediately thought of the stars. Stars. Heavenly bodies formed by huge clouds of dust and gas bumping
into one another, getting bigger, their gravity getting stronger. Once hot enough, nuclear fusion occurs. And then a star is formed.
People are shaped in a similar way - just like stars - excessive amounts of dust and hot gas. And like stars, everyone's life has a turning point prior to their big bang. The shit show before the creation. Y 'know, one of those moments that can fuck you up.
Cleopatra's was when her father named her joint regent at fourteen. Fucked-up.
Bruce Wayne's when he witnessed his parents get murdered. Fucked-up.
Charles Manson's when his mother sold him for a pitcher of beer. Fucked. Up.
Not to mention 'Helter Skelter. ~ Jorge Enrique Ponce

The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair to the President of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I remember watching Mel Gibson on some show once, and he was being asked about his belief in the afterlife. Gibson said: 'Well, I can't believe this is all there is'. And I thought: 'Wait a minute. You're Mel Gibson. You have millions of dollars. You're a great-looking chap with every conceivable blessing that could be bestowed upon a man. And that's not good enough ?' ~ Hugh Laurie

What a child does not know and does not want to know of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove like a penny or a sovereign in a banker's rack. Kibii, the Nandi boy, was my good friend. Arab Ruta (the same boy grown to manhood), who sits before me, is my good friend, but the handclasp will be shorter, the smile will not be so eager on his lips, and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together. ~ Beryl Markham

Although Mengele's subjects could be operated on without any painkillers at all, a remarkable example of Nazi zoophilia is that a leading biologist was once punished for not giving worms enough anesthesia during an experiment. ~ Diane Ackerman

About me as a drinker: I wasn't much of one and had a short, bad history of doing it. The few times I'd tried drinking I either became too much like myself or not enough, but either way it was always calamity on top of calamity and I found myself saying way too much about too little and doing the wrong things in the wrong places. Once, at my boss's Christmas party, I passed out for a minute - passed out but still, like a zombie, remained fully ambulatory and mostly functional - and when I came to, I found myself in my boss's kitchen, the refrigerator door open and me next to it at the counter, spreading mayonnaise onto two slices of wheat bread and licking the knife after each pass before I stuck it back in the jar. I heard someone cough or gag, looked up, and saw the kitchen's population staring at me, all of their mouths open and slack, obviously wondering what I thought I was doing, exactly, and all I could think to say was, "Sandwich." Which is what I said. And then, to prove my point, whatever the point was, I ate it. The sandwich, that is. ~ Brock Clarke

The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it "annihilates space." It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given. It is a vile inflation which lowers the value of distance, so that a modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten. Of course if a man hates space and wants it to be annihilated, that is another matter. Why not creep into his coffin at once? There is little enough space there. ~ C.S. Lewis

. . . what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough - it is said - to grow a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had perished in the search. ~ Joseph Conrad

I've seen enough to know that hate is something learned, not something inherent. I saw it firsthand in Cress, in how she treated me when we were children and how she treated me once her father and her world convinced her that I was less than her. ~ Laura Sebastian

It is not enough that the conditions of labour are concentrated at one pole of society in the shape of capital, while at the other pole are grouped masses of men who have nothing to sell but their labour-power. Nor is it enough that they are compelled to sell themselves voluntarily. The advance of capitalist production develops a working class which by education, tradition and habit looks upon the requirements of that mode of production as self-evident natural laws. The organization of the capitalist process of production, once it is fully developed, breaks down all resistance. ~ Karl Marx

I've thought all my life, 'Lord Christ in heaven! what did I live for?' Beatings, work! I saw nothing except my husband. I knew nothing but fear! And how Pasha grew I did not see, and I hardly know whether I loved him when my husband was alive. All my concerns, all my thoughts were centered upon one thing - to feed my beast, to propitiate the master of my life with enough food, pleasing to his palate, and served on time, so as not to incur his displeasure, so as to escape the terrors of a beating, to get him to spare me but once! But I do not remember that he ever did spare me. He beat me so - not as a wife is beaten, but as one whom you hate and detest. ~ Maxim Gorky

We do not converse. She visits me to talk. My task to murmur. She talks about her grandsons, her daughter who lives in Delphi, her sister or her husband - both gone - obscure friends - dead - obscurer aunts and uncles - lost - ancient neighbors, members of her church or of her clubs - passed or passing on; and in this way she brings the ends of her life together with a terrifying rush: she is a girl, a wife, a mother, widow, all at once. All at once - appalling - but I believe it; I wince in expectation of the clap. Her talk's a fence - shade drawn, window fastened, door that's locked - for no one dies taking tea in a kitchen; and as her years compress and begin to jumble, I really believe in the brevity of life; I sweat in my wonder; death is the dog down the street, the angry gander, bedroom spider, goblin who's come to get her; and it occurs to me that in my listening posture I'm the boy who suffered the winds of my grandfather with an exactly similar politeness, that I am, right now, all my ages, out in elbows, as angular as badly stacekd cards. Thus was I, when I loved you, every man I could be, youth and child - far from enough - and you, so strangely ambiguous a being, met me, h eart for spade, play after play, the whole run of our suits. ~ William H. Gass

Physicists often quote from T. H. White's epic novel The Once and Future King , where a society of ants declares, 'Everything not forbidden is compulsory.' In other words, if there isn't a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.) ~ Michio Kaku

Guts," never much of a word outside the hunting season, was a favorite noun in literary prose. People were said to have or to lack them, to perceive beauty and make moral distinctions in no other place. "Gut-busting" and "gut-wrenching" were accolades. "Nerve-shattering," "eye-popping," "bone-crunching" - the responsive critic was a crushed, impaled, electrocuted man. "Searing" was lukewarm. Anything merely spraining or tooth-extracting would have been only a minor masterpiece. "Literally," in every single case, meant figuratively; that is, not literally. This film will literally grab you by the throat. This book will literally knock you out of your chair…

Sometimes the assault mode took the form of peremptory orders. See it. Read it. Go at once…Many sentences carried with them their own congratulations, Suffice it to say…or, The only word for it is…Whether it really sufficed to say, or whether there was, in fact, another word, the sentence, bowing and applauding to itself, ignored…There existed also an economical device, the inverted-comma sneer - the "plot," or his "work," or even "brave." A word in quotation marks carried a somehow unarguable derision, like "so-called" or "alleged…"

"He has suffered enough" meant if we investigate this matter any further, it will turn out our friends are in it, too…

Murders, generally, were called brutal and senseless slayings, to distinguish them from all other murders; nouns thus became glued to adjective ~ Renata Adler

Who's that hot piece of cowboy standing with Nathan?" She pointed toward one end of the barn by a stack of hay bales.
A scowl tightened all the muscles in his face as he followed the length of her arm to the direction of her fingertip. Before he could answer, she was already pulling him again. This time toward his cousin.
"Nate, who's your friend?" she asked, not bothering with hellos. Letting go of Caleb's hand and leaving him feeling empty, she shifted her weight to her toes when she stopped in front of Preston. "Your eyes remind me of those old Sprite bottles. I found one at a flea market once. I think it's still lying around somewhere in my room."
Nathan's chuckle caught her attention. "Diana Alexander, let me introduce you to Preston Grant. He's a childhood friend of mine and Caleb's. Pres, this is Didi."
"Can I paint you naked?" she asked, unabashed, looking up at him. Nathan's chuckles became full-blown laughter. She hiked her thumb at Caleb. His scowl deepened. "This one's too shy."
"It's nice to meet you, Didi," Preston said. He seemed unperturbed by her request. The bastard.
She danced to Nathan's side and leaned in conspiratorially, not taking her eyes away from Preston. "Between you and me," she whispered loud enough for Caleb and the object of her fascination to hear, "just how far does his tan go?"
That had done it. The words came out of his mouth without thinking. "If you're going to paint someone naked, it will be me." With i ~ Kate Evangelista

Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they're not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down. ~ Diane Setterfield

A marvel," the sheikh said. "Truly, the work of the Lord of the Worlds surpasses all our puny understanding. You know, I read once that the human mind is incapable of imagining anything that does not exist somewhere, in some form. It seemed a paltry enough truth at the time-I thought, of course it must be so, since in a sense everything we will ever discover or invent has, in the eyes of God, already been discovered and invented, as God is above time. Seeing this, though, I begin to understand how much more profound that statement is. It does not simply mean that man's innovation is entirely known to God; it means there is no such thing as fiction. ~ G. Willow Wilson

Gold when first struck is crowded with 'dirt', uncertain, might not be flashy enough to be noticed. However, if you are alert in your senses, you'd see that little glitter; if you're persistent enough, it'll be polished to be one of the finest 'possessions' you could ever acquire. The beauty about gold, though, is that in all states from uncertainty to conviction, it never for once gives up its lustre. We're sometimes too hasty and 'fly searching' that we miss the little uncertain glitters that sparkle in the corners of our eyes. In such rare moments, stop for a while, and hold on to it with the best grip you could muster. ~ Ufuoma Apoki

# The Star of Seagull
Once again I looked up to the outreach, the Seagull screeching along the blue line of the sky ,wondering no matter how devouring the beauty of a sky is , that is not enough for it . It's more than a call, that it can't be departed from the engulfing sea.The power of taking everything in and still looks so serene is a magnificent made .The star of the Seagull is now shining in the sea brighter and brighter up to the coast line and I can see Indeed the sea is waving a mystical muse at my solitary soul . Once again I hibernate within my restless rendezvous !! ~ Madhushree Das

Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it's exciting, and if you do it every day it's exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it's not good any more. ~ Andy Warhol

God does most of his works nowadays thru people. So does Satan.
For a good part of my life I was an agent of darkness- committing a multitude of sins listed in the Bible ... and perhaps a few that aren't even listed.
Fortunately, at any given moment we are able to make a choice- and choose who we are going to be from this moment forward.
We can leave the darkness behind and try to shed light on th
ose who are lost in the darkness. I am the same person I have always been. At times I struggle to keep both my composure and my integrity. It can be hard, as we live in a world that is rich in hate, greed and selfishness. I am that same sinner, but every morning I get to choose to leave my old ways behind.
I thank God that this morning, once again, I am strong enough to choose kindness. Its not an easy choice. But I've tried everything else. Kindness is the only choice I have left. And for that, I am grateful. ~ Jose N Harris

Omo explains Buddhism to Robbie:
'Some human dudes believe in reincarnation. Being born more than once? As if once wasn't bad enough. Like, suppose the universe is a hologram, and the human dudes are outside the universe and some big ugly cosmic dude beams them into the hologram.'
'Why does he?' asked Robbie.
'Because he wants to fuck with their heads. And it's like his universe, his rules. So the proto-human dudes get sent into a body, and the body is male or female and more or less athletic, and more or less clever and good looking. And they live their lives and when it ends they are back in the place outside the universe until the big ugly cosmic dude decides he wants them back again to fuck with their heads some more, so the next time they might be a boy instead of a girl, and better looking, not so athletic, more quick tempered, less optimistic, whatever, whatever and so it goes on until they learn so much stuff that the big ugly cosmic dude can't fuck with them any more and the proto-human dudes don't get beamed into the universe any more. Unless the dudes want to be. Which would be weird. ~ D. Miller

You need me to strip you naked, bend you over my bed, and slide my cock inside you until you forget what it feels like not to have me filling you. And once you've come so hard you can't stand, you need me to flip you around, hike your legs over my shoulders, and do it again, head-on, until you scream loud enough to have management banging on the door. The only open question left in my mind is the order. ~ Samanthe Beck

How long have you had that cough?" "Ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh! - ugh! ugh! ugh!" My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes. "It is nothing," he said, at last. "Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was. You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi - " "Enough," he said; "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough." "True - true, ~ Edgar Allan Poe

It is clear enough that not every something can be elevated to the rank of a thing - otherwise everything and everyone would be speaking once more, and the chatter would spread from humans to things. Rilke privileges two categories of 'entities' [Seienden), to express it in the papery diction of philosophy, that are eligible for the lofty task of acting as message-things - artifices and living creatures - with the latter gaining their particular quality from the former, as if animals were being's highest works of art before humans. Inherent to both is a message energy that does not activate itself, but requires the poet as a decoder and messenger. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? ~ Truman Capote

Try to find something that makes you happy. Your life is not going to get easier once Queen Levana is your wife. If you had even one small thing that brought you happiness, or hope that things could someday be better, then maybe that would be enough to sustain you. ~ Marissa Meyer

And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet, your interlocutors will often ask: A PUBLISHED Poet? And when you tell them that you are, indeed, a published poet, they seem at least vaguely impressed. Why is that? Its not like they or anybody they know reads poetry journals. And yet there is something deeply right, I think, about this knee-jerk appeal to publicity. It's as if to say: Everybody can write a poem, but has your poetry, the distillation of your innermost being, been found authentic and intelligible by others? Can it circulate among persons, make of its readership, however small, a People in that sense? This accounts for the otherwise bafflingly persistent association of Poetry and fame - baffling since no poets are famous among the general population. To demand proof of fame is to demand proof that your songs made it back intact from the dream in the stable to the social world of the fire, that your song is at once utterly specific to you and exemplary for others. ~ Ben Lerner

Hemalurgy, it is called, because of the connection to blood. It is not a coincidence, I believe, that
death is always involved in the transfer of powers via Hemalurgy. Marsh once described it as a
"messy" process. Not the adjective I would have chosen. It's not disturbing enough. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Every person who comes into this world must make the decision as to what type of person they want to be. Establishing yourself once is not enough. It's an ongoing, constant effort to separate yourself from who you feel that you are, and from who you want to become. ~ Ali Warren

Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster. When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, a time finally comes when you have had enough and want to call a halt to the whole process. And if you are lucky enough not to run into something or someone else that catches your eye, you will have at least attained a fragile peace. That is the most that life can give you; and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love. ~ Anthony De Mello

Mimbrates are the bravest people in the world
probably because they don't have brains enough to be afraid of anything. Garion's friend Mandorallen is totally convinced that he's invincible."
"He is," Ce'Nedra said in automatic defense of her knight. "I saw him kill a lion once with his bare hands."
" ... I heard him suggest to Barak and Hettar once that the three of them attack an entire Tolnedran legion."
"Perhaps he was joking."
"Mimbrate knights don't know how to joke," Silk told him.
"I will not sit here and listen to you people insult my knight," Ce'Nedra said hotly.
"We'renot insulting hi, Ce'Nedra," Silk told her. "We're describing him. He's so noble he makes my hair hurt."
"Nobility is an alien concept to a Drasnian, I suppose," she noted.
"Not alien, Ce'Nedra. Incomprehensible. ~ David Eddings

Find what you love. Some people call their calling their passion, but I've always thought that's a strange word to use. Because passion burns bright, but it burns out – it has not love's endurance, nor it's grace. It is love that will pick you up when you have fallen; love that will nourish your spirit; and love that will outlast everything else. Beware of pride, and of fear, and of attaching value to the superficial splendors of this world. These things will betray you, but love will not.

Find what you love. You will know it because it scares you, just a little; it is always frightening to give of your whole heart, but to do any less is to live a small life. You know it because it loves you in return, which means it will never take from you without giving back ten thousandfold. Once you have found it, you must defend it against those who would diminish it, and you. Honour your own feelings, be true to your own heart, and never, ever let others define who you are, or who you should be.

I found what I loved, when I was young. Except I was not brave enough to hold onto it, and I abandoned my love for lesser things. Love kept faith when I did not; it was waiting when I returned. But don't make my mistake. Find what you love.

And never let it go. ~ Ambelin Kwaymullina

Do you know Einstein's theory of relativity?"

Connor just stares at me. "Let's assume I don't."

"Yeah, I didn't either, until . . . well." I shake my head to clear that line of thought. "Basically, space and time are really one thing, a kind of giant film stretched across the universe called space-time. Dense objects warp the fabric of space-time, like the way a trampoline dips when someone stands on it. If you've got something heavy enough, like insanely heavy, it can punch a hole right through."

"Okay, I get that."

"Well, in the future the government develops this massive particle collider called Cassandra. When they slam the right subatomic particles into one another under the right conditions, the particles hypercondense on impact and become heavy enough to punch a tiny hole in space-time. We came through that hole."

"Why?"

"Because the future needs to be changed. We need to destroy Cassandra before it's ever built, or it's going to end the world. People weren't meant to travel in time."

"But . . ." Connor presses his fingers into his temples. "If you destroy the machine before it gets built - "

"Then it will never have existed for us to travel back in time to destroy it?" Finn says.

"Right."

I nod. "It's a paradox. But the thing about time is that it's not actually linear, the way we think of it. This person I once knew, he had this theory about time, that it had ~ Cristin Terrill

Kerr found that a spinning black hole would not collapse into a pointlike star, as Schwarzschild assumed, but would collapse into a spinning ring. Anyone unfortunate enough to hit the ring would perish; but someone falling into the ring would not die, but would actually fall through. But instead of winding up on the other side of the ring, he or she would pass through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge and wind up in another universe. In other words, the spinning black hole is the rim of Alice's Looking Glass.

If he or she were to move around the spinning ring a second time, he or she would enter yet another universe. In fact, repeated entry into the spinning ring would put a person in different parallel universes, much like hitting the "up" button on an elevator. In principle, there could be an infinite number of universes, each stacked on top of each other. "Pass through this magic ring and-presto!-you're in a completely different universe where radius and mass are negative!" Kerr wrote.

There is an important catch, however. Black holes are examples of "nontransversable wormholes"; that is, passing through the event horizon is a one-way trip. Once you pass through the event horizon and the Kerr ring, you cannot go backward through the ring and out through the event horizon. ~ Michio Kaku

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes. ~ Tom Robbins

To get what we want we must be subtle as snakes; more deadly, more cunning, more patient, more mean. Think of the serpent, how it slithers through the garden. It's such a beautiful creature, slow and delicate, rarely seen but effective, low, and not loved, but gloriously efficient! The serpent is now our model; we must pattern our work after him. So go to your old friends and stand by their sides. Pretend you want to help them while whispering deceits in their ears. Only lie when you have to. Speak the truth when you can; for the truth, once it's twisted, is the most effective tool we have. Coat your lies with enough truth, and they will swallow it down.

Now listen to me, people, for this is the key - evil can be twisted into virtue if you phrase it just right. Any vice is acceptable if you cloak it as an issue of freedom. Any immorality is worth fighting for it you tell them they are fighting for choice, if you wrap it in the mantle of privacy and freedom. So take their moral agency and turn it on them. But be patient. . . be patient. . . it takes time to turn the truth upside down. ~ Chris Stewart

Don't just do it once. Remember that every day is a "No Excuses" day. It is not enough to have the "No Excuses" mindset every once in awhile. ~ Farshad Asl

We are not told, or not told early enough so that it sinks in, that mathematics is a language, and that we can learn it like any other, including our own. We have to learn our own language twice, first when we learn to speak it, second when we learn to read it. Fortunately, mathematics has to be learned only once, since it is almost wholly a written language. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The Black is roasted, browned, burned. But he deserves to die twice instead of once. He is therefore hanged, or more exactly, what is left of the corpse is hanged. And all those who were not able to help with the cooking applaud now.

Hurrah!

When everybody has had enough, the corpse is brought down. The rope is cut into small pieces which will be sold for three or five dollars each, souvenirs and lucky charms to be quarreled over by the ladies.

"Popular justice," as they say over there, has been done. Calmed down, the crowd congratulate the "organizers," then stream away slowly and cheerfully, as if after a feast…

While on the ground, stinking of fat and smoke, a black head, mutilated, roasted, deformed, grins horribly and seems to ask the setting sun, "Is this civilization? ~ Ho Chi Minh

I believe you can have whatever you really want in this life, in one form or another, sooner or later. All you have to do is take care of your health and be lucky enough to live for a while. But you can't have it all at once and you can't have it forever. No life has the room for everything in it, not on the same day. ~ Barbara Sher

And naturally I was reading in the library a few days later from a book about the Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna, and I stumbled upon a story about a seeker who once came to see the great master and admitted to him that she feared she was not a good enough devotee, feared that she did not love God enough. And the saint said, "Is there nothing you love?" The woman admitted that she adored her young nephew more than anything else on earth. The saint said, "There, then. He is your Krishna, your beloved. In your service to your nephew, you are serving God. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I am beginning to see the fallacy in the Western world's take on dying. Too often we are taught that this one life is all there is and when it ends, that's it. Or, instead of once again returning to a loving God who welcomes us back Home with open arms, we are told that when we die we must stand in front of a stern and unforgiving deity who sits on a throne and looks at every mistake we have ever made, deciding if we are good enough to enter heaven. And, if we do make it past that stringent test, we certainly aren't able to visit our friends and family still living. No wonder so many of us are afraid of death. I also find it fascinating that most religions believe in angels or wise ascended souls who brought messages to certain people on earth (Moses and Noah, for example) thousands of years ago, but deny that such an occurrence can happen now. What, did God just decide not to talk to us anymore? ~ Donna Visocky

Once you start deliberately offering thought, then you can never offer enough action to keep up with the thought. Once you access the Energy that creates worlds, a huge vortex comes into place, and there's just not enough action for you to keep up with that. And so, what you have to do is visualize every step of the way, envision you happy in the process. Envision things in place, envision people catching on. Just envision it working. Skip over the how and the where and the when and the who - and just stay focused upon the what and the why. Abraham ~ Esther Hicks

But God does not neglect his lost creature. He plans to re-create his image in man, to recover his first delight in his handiwork. He is seeking in it his own image so that he may love it. But there is only one way to achieve this purpose and that is for God, out of sheer mercy, to assume the image and form of fallen man. But this restoration of the divine image concerns not just a part, but the whole image of divine nature. It is not enough for man to simply recover right ideas about God, or to obey his will in the isolated actions of his life. No, man must be re-fashioned as a living whole in the image of God. His whole form, body, soul and spirit, must once more bear that image on earth. Such is God's purpose and destiny for man. His good pleasure can rest only on his perfected image. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off. ~ C.S. Lewis

So I could touch some stranger and my wolf would decide he's 'the one'?" I shuddered at the thought. "What if I hate him?"

Luke laughed. Deep and warm.

He looked my way. "You won't hate him. I've seen enough of my packmates find the other half of their soul. It's not always a smooth process, but fate hasn't messed up even once." He sobered, his eyes searching mine. "Whoever he is, he's lucky, and he doesn't even know it yet. ~ Lisa Kessler

And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, you surely have rivers of your own to attend to? ~ Diane Setterfield

It is once your ideas have been transformed into enough money, and if all failed, you would still live your lifestyle, and you understand that just because you have made more money than most, you are not better than the common person. We are all going to die broke. ~ Tim Blixseth

Intelligence is being intelligent enough to know you're not so intelligent as you intelligently once thought. ~ Carroll Bryant

For what it's worth, I know how you feel," Conner told him. "I used to doubt myself a lot. When people told me I wasn't good enough, I believed them. It's hard not to when you're young."
"Tell me about it," Bold said. "Does it get better when you're older?"
"It did for me," Conner said.
"How?" Bolt asked.
"Someone else believed in me," Conner said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong."
"You were?" Bolt asked.
"Totally," Conner said. "I didn't need someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on your own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero."
Out of everything Conner said, he could tell this resonated with the boy the most. If he wanted to help people, maybe he had to start with himself.
"But what if I fail?" Bolt asked. "What if the Snake Lord wins and I don't save anyone? Then I'll never be a superhero."
"A very wise man once told me that 'courage is what makes a superhero super,'" Conner said. "He never sad anything about succeeding. ~ Chris Colfer

If Hard proves to be not hard enough for you, you can go "Hardcore," which means that if you die, you stay dead. That is very hardcore indeed, as Heidegger once observed. ~ Charlie Huenemann

He leaned her back against the tub, setting her head on the edge, then washed her shoulders.
"I know I left you once."
She opened her mouth, wanting to say it didn't matter, it was forgotten. But it wasn't.
"I know I hurt you."
Again, she wanted to argue. But she couldn't.
"I know I said I won't leave you again, but I also know that's not enough, and that the only way you're going to trust that I won't leave is if I don't".
He slid the cloth over her arms.
"If this ends, Hope, it won't be me that ends it. I think you know that. ~ Kelley Armstrong

- it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out it reaches out - One hundred and thirteen times a second, nothing answers and it reaches out. It is not conscious, though parts of it are. There are structures within it that were once separate organisms; aboriginal, evolved, and complex. It is designed to improvise, to use what is there and then move on. Good enough is good enough, and so the artifacts are ignored or adapted. The conscious parts try to make sense of the reaching out. Try to interpret it. ~ James S.A. Corey

There have been more thoughtful and more destructively thoughtful times than ours: times like those in which Buddha appeared, for instance, in which the people themselves, after centuries of sectarian quarrels, had sunk so deeply into the abyss of philosophical dogmas, as, from time to time, European people have done in regard to the fine points of religious dogma.

European Pessimism is still in its infancy - a fact which argues against it: it has not yet attained to that prodigious and yearning fixity of sight to which it attained in India once upon a time, and in which nonentity is reflected; there is still too much of the 'ready-made,' and not enough of the 'evolved' in its constitution, too much learned and poetic Pessimism; I mean that a good deal of it has been discovered, invented, and 'created,' but not caused. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To see how pretty an old woman once was, it is not enough just to look at each feature; they must be translated. ~ Marcel Proust

I walk away, feeling Brody's gaze on me. There's no doubt that as soon as we get back in the car, I'm going to get it - good.

Instead, Brody stays quiet while I assemble the paperwork. He may not be speaking, but he's saying a whole lot in the silence.

"Just say it," I mumble and finally look over.

"I'm not saying a word." He raises his hands. "Clearly, you two know each other, and it ain't from growing up here. You tell me everything, so there is no way you wouldn't have told me you know him," Brody pauses and leans back. "I'm not saying a word about who you may or may not have slept with recently. Even though, it's pretty obvious."

"You know, you not saying a word took you a long time."

"It's not like you've had a five-year drought since your divorce. Or that you slept with a singer/actor. Nope. I have nothing to say about that. Not a thing."

I groan. "Could you not say anything for real this time?"

"Sure thing, boss. I'll just be over here, watching Hell start to thaw."

This is not going to get any better. I'd almost rather hear the questions. This is Brody Webber. My partner, my friend, and the one person who I have enough dirt on to make his life hell if he repeats this.

"Okay, fine. Yes, I slept with Eli Walsh. I was crazy and dumb. I also had about six beers, which is two over my threshold, and I was trying to be in the moment for once. Fucking Nicole and her pep talks."< ~ Corinne Michaels

And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off. ~ C.S. Lewis

Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused - in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened - by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes - of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire - fill the glass and send round the song - and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it's no worse. ~ Charles Dickens

One can never really give a proof of the reality of anything; reality is not something open to proof, it is something established. It is established just because proof is not enough. It is this characteristic of language, at once indispensable and inadequate, which shows the reality of the external world. Most people hardly ever realize this, because it is rare that the very same man thinks and puts his thought into action. ~ Simone Weil

I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay's couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem.
"Look, I know he's your brother and he's my uncle, but he's not the kind of worker we need to have," I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression.
I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn't have Si sleeping on the job!
"Don't touch Si," Phil told me. "You leave him alone. He's making reeds and that's the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he's good at it. Si is fine."
Amazingly enough, in the ten years I've been running Duck Commander, we've never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn't sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn't think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn't perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si's desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than ~ Willie Robertson

Once you decide on the best poison for the termination, you must work out the correct concentration. For instance, I know that five milligrams of cetratranic acid dropped into a bell-jar with a single moth will take about three seconds to stun it. I know that seven milligrams will anaesthetize it and ten is enough to kill it, providing the moth does not weight more than 3.5 grams. I also know that to kill fifty moths you need five times the concentration or volume of killing fluid, but to kill seven thousand you'd need only two hundred times the concentration. I know that potassium chloride could never kill a larger moth and potassium sulphide would only ever be strong enough to anaesthetize it. I know that cyanide kills anything. But what I don't know right now is the precise amount I will need to kill Vivien. ~ Poppy Adams

I wish I had the courage not to fight and doubt everything ... I wish, just once, I could say, 'This. This is good enough. Just because I choose it. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

#The Vanity of all Worldly Things.

As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! Vanity, O vain all under sky;
Where is the man can say, "Lo, I have found
On brittle earth a consolation sound"?
What isn't in honor to be set on high?
No, they like beasts and sons of men shall die,
And whilst they live, how oft doth turn their fate;
He's now a captive that was king of late.
What isn't in wealth great treasures to obtain?
No, that's but labor, anxious care, and pain.
He heaps up riches, and he heaps up sorrow,
It's his today, but who's his heir tomorrow?
What then? Content in pleasures canst thou find?
More vain than all, that's but to grasp the wind.
The sensual senses for a time they pleasure,
Meanwhile the conscience rage, who shall appease?
What isn't in beauty? No that's but a snare,
They're foul enough today, that once were fair.
What is't in flow'ring youth, or manly age?
The first is prone to vice, the last to rage.
Where is it then, in wisdom, learning, arts?
Sure if on earth, it must be in those parts;
Yet these the wisest man of men did find
But vanity, vexation of the mind.
And he that know the most doth still bemoan
He knows not all that here is to be known.
What is it then? To do as stoics tell,
Nor laugh, nor weep, let things go ill or well?
Such stoics are but stocks, such teaching vain,
While man is man, he shall hav ~ Anne Bradstreet

Having lived long enough to go at least once or twice around the block, I'm noticing that the strangeness is not receding The strangeness seems to be accelerating. ~ Terence McKenna

But that alteration, catastrophic though it was, had long been absorbed into the water table; the unspeakable day still flooded the downs. He wasn't the type to convince himself that facts were not facts, but he needed to stop living intolerable spans again. Surely it was enough to have lived them once. ~ H.S. Cross

We are each of us the result of billions of years of the universe evolving toward its own splendor. And evolution builds: the very mitochondria that power our cells and give us life once existed as separate organisms that first infected our pre–pre–human ancestors and then became one with them. We each contain not only the slime mold and the worm, the fish and amphibian and reptile, but the pig and the ape and the barely human. If we look hard enough, we can discern hundreds of parts: kings and queens, warriors and troubadours, mages, bullies, and saints. And hustlers, adventurers, survivors, rebels, reactionaries, and rogues. And the part of us that wants to be more than human, or rather more fully human. I believe that we need to enlist all these separate selves into a single army of free companions who respect each other and love each other to the death. And who are willing to devote their lives to fight together in order to win a shared splendor.
I will return to this theme of integration again and again, for it is key to everything. All of my characters struggle with themselves, and face as well external obstacles such as exploding stars or dragons or icy wastelands cold enough to freeze the breath. Maram, who writes poems glorifying his second chakra (the body's sexual center), pants like a dog after every enticing woman he sees. Even as he resists his essential nobility and destiny as a hero, he insists that every man deserves at least one vice. When it is pointed ~ David Zindell

At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dyi ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Unfortunately I am afraid, as always, of going on. For to go on means going from here, means finding me, losing me, vanishing and beginning again, a stranger first, then little by little the same as always, in another place, where I shall say I have always been, of which I shall know nothing, being incapable of seeing, moving, thinking, speaking, but of which little by little, in spite of these handicaps, I shall begin to know something, just enough for it to turn out to be the same place as always, the same which seems made for me and does not want me, which I seem to want and do not want, take your choice, which spews me out or swallows me up, I'll never know, which is perhaps merely the inside of my distant skull where once I wandered, now am fixed, lost for tininess, or straining against the walls, with my head, my hands, my feet, my back, and ever murmuring my old stories, my old story, as if it were the first time. ~ Samuel Beckett

Charity is the best form of prayer. Do whatever little you can to help the not so fortunate. You may donate a small portion of your income, you may take out time to teach the underprivileged children, sponsor a meal for the hungry or just spend some time with an old lady who has no one. I am sure that you will move one level high on the spiritual plane. Like prayers, doing charity once is not enough. You have to do it continuously, as much as possible. ~ Neelam Saxena Chandra

In Sarajevo in 1992, while being shown around the starved, bombarded city by the incomparable John Burns, I experienced four near misses in all, three of them in the course of one day. I certainly thought that the Bosnian cause was worth fighting for and worth defending, but I could not take myself seriously enough to imagine that my own demise would have forwarded the cause. (I also discovered that a famous jaunty Churchillism had its limits: the old war-lover wrote in one of his more youthful reminiscences that there is nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result. In my case, the experience of a whirring, whizzing horror just missing my ear was indeed briefly exciting, but on reflection made me want above all to get to the airport. Catching the plane out with a whole skin is the best part by far.) Or suppose I had been hit by that mortar that burst with an awful shriek so near to me, and turned into a Catherine wheel of body-parts and (even worse) body-ingredients? Once again, I was moved above all not by the thought that my death would 'count,' but that it would not count in the least. ~ Christopher Hitchens

It's of some interest that the lively arts of the millenial U.S.A. treat anhedonia and internal emptiness as hip and cool. It's maybe the vestiges of the Romantic glorification of Weltschmerz, which means world-weariness or hip ennui. Maybe it's the fact that most of the arts here are produced by world-weary and sophisticated older people and then consumed by younger people who not only consume art but study it for clues on how to be cool, hip -- and keep in mind that, for kids and younger people, to be hip and cool is the same to be admired and accepted and included and so Unalone. Forget so-called peer pressure. It's more like peer-hunger. No? We enter a spiritual puberty where we snap to the fact that the great tanscendent horror is loneliness, excluded encagement in the self. Once we've hit this age, we will now give or take anything, wear any mask, to fit, be part-of, not be Alone, we young. The U.S. arts are our guide to inclusion. A how-to. We are shown how to fashion masks of ennui and jaded irony at a young age where the face is fictile enough to assume the sahpe of whatever it wears. And then it's stuck there, the weary cynicism that save us from gooey sentiment and unsophisticated naïveté. Sentiment equals naïveté on this continent (at least since the Reconfiguration). One of the things sophisticated viewers have always liked about J. O. Incandenza's The American Century as Seen Through a Brick is its unsubtle thesis that naïveté is the last true terrible sin in th ~ David Foster Wallace

You [can] become part of someone else's narrative. Every once in a while I would get people asking me questions like, "If your husband is a Muslim, then why haven't you converted to Islam?" Interestingly enough, almost every person who asked me that was a Sunni, and it was their not-so-subtle way of implying that my Shiite husband was a bad Muslim for letting his infidel wife run around unconverted. ~ Annia Ciezadlo

Does your husband dictate where you can and cannot go?"
The woman looked as though she expected to be proven right.
"My husband would never do that." Rose informed her coolly. "Although there will always be unsavory characters at any social gathering, my husband trusts me to decide the ones I wish to attend."
The woman flushed, and Rose felt a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that her barb had struck a nerve. "If that's true, he must have changed immensely since the days when we were acquainted."
Ahh. Now the claws came out. No wonder the woman had made such vile aspirations earlier. She was jealous.
"He has." Rose held the other woman's gaze, not caring a whit for how she said the word "acquainted." This woman had slept with her husband, and oddly enough she wasn't the least bit jealous. She did, however, feel sorry for the woman because Grey had been a different man back then. "My husband is very attentive and courteous to my wishes. I couldn't be more satisfied with my situation." Oh God, had she actually said that? The innuendo practically stood up on its own and waved to everyone in the room.
What was it about Grey-no, about this woman-that made her feel as though she had to defend her marriage, and brag about her sex life? It was just so pretty.
"You were once a friend of the duke's, were you not, Lady Devane?" The woman-whose name Rose could not remember-slanted a devious glance in the blonde woman's direction.
Everyone ~ Kathryn Smith

Ultimately, eventually, we let go. We do this not because we're ready. We do this not because we've mended. We do this not because we've mourned and come to terms and gotten over it and moved on. We never move on. We don't let go so much as lose our grip and fall because remembering is not enough..memory is imperfect. It is full of holes. It is more space than matter, like lace. It is at once sodden with sorrow and desiccated from lack of blood flow, the obvious result of a broken heart. It makes things up in hopeless attempts to comfort itself. It fills fissure with fantasy. It screws shut its eyes and balls up its fists and flings itself to the ground in a kicking, screaming, blind-rage temper tantrum against reality. But mostly,..memory keeps taking on more. ~ Laurie Frankel

That is why I can't in any way approve of those MEDDLESOME and RESTLESS characters who, without being called by BIRTH or by FORTUNE to the management of public affairs, are yet forever thinking up some new reform! If I thought this present work contained the SLIGHTEST ground for suspecting me of such FOLLY, I would SHRINK from allowing it to be published! My plan has NEVER gone beyond trying to reform my own thoughts and to build on a foundation that is ALL MY OWN. If I'm pleased enough with my work to present you with this sketch of it, it's not because I would advise anyone to imitate it. Those on whom GOD has bestowed more of his favours than he has on me will PERHAPS have higher aims; but I'm afraid that this project of mine may be too bold for many people! The mere decision to rid myself all the opinions I have hitherto accepted isn't an example that everyone ought to follow! The world is mostly made up of two types of minds for whom it is QUITE unsuitable. (1) There are those who, believing themselves cleverer than they are, can't help rushing to judgment and can't muster the patience to direct all their thoughts in an ORDERLY manner. So that if they ONCE took the liberty of doubting the principles they have accepted and leaving the common path, they would NEVER be able to stay on the straighter path that they ought to take, AND would REMAIN lost ALL their LIVES. (2) And there are those who are reasonable enough, or modest enough, to THINK that they can't distinguish tr ~ Rene Descartes

I am not so much fun
Anymore;
Couldn't carry the role of ingenue
In a bucket, you say, laughing.

And I want to punch you.
I was never innocent, but
Thanks to you I know things
I wish I did not remember.

You don't like it
When I talk to the man myself,
Specifying quantities and
Give him the money
Instead of giving it to you
And letting you take care of it.

You keep asking me,
Where's the dope?
Until I finally say,
I hid it.
The look you give me is
Pure bile.

Well, fuck you.
This isn't like Buying somebody a drink.
You don't leave your stash out
Where I might find it.

Finally I think I've made you wait
Long enough,
So I get out the little paper envelope
And hand it to you.
You are still in charge of
This part, so you relax.
Performing your junky ritual with
Your favorite razor blade, until
I ask you how to calculate my dose
So I won't O.D. when I do this
And you're not around.

Then you really flip.
You tell me it's a bad idea
For me to do this with other people.

**

Was it such a good idea
For me to do it with you?
Do you wait for me to turn up
Once every three months
So you can get high?
Is this our version of that famous
Lesbian fight about
Nonmonogamy?

Let me ~ Patrick Califia-Rice

If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them, and the god speak through them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens? if they did not know it happens, because they have felt the god within them use their tongue, their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Repentance recall men from what is according to their nature; all that it does is to make them cease from sinning. Had it been a case of a trespass only, and not of a subsequent corruption, repentance would have been well enough; but when once transgression had begun men came under the power of the corruption proper to their nature and were bereft of the grace which belonged to them as creatures in the Image of God. ~ Athanasius Of Alexandria

Our soulmate is revealed only once during our life. Maybe it's a glimpse of a stranger. Maybe it's our best friend. The timing may not always be right. But, when they're shown to us, we know it's them. Then, life happens. We grow. We age. We develop scars. And we remember that glimpse. Some are lucky enough to spend the rest of their lives with that person. Some, like me, have only memories. ~ Marni Mann

Equally disagreeable is the man who, when leaving in the middle of the night, takes care to fasten the cord of his headdress. This is quite unnecessary; he could perfectly well put it gently on his head without tying the cord. And why must he spend time adjusting his cloak or hunting costume? Does he really think that someone may see him at this time of night and criticize him for not being impeccably dressed?

A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. The lady urges him on: "Come, my friend, it's getting light. You don't want anyone to find you here." He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night has not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead, he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash.

Presently he raises the lattice, and the two lovers stand together by the side door while he tells her how he dreads the coming day, which will keep them apart; then he slips away. The lady watches him go, and this moment of parting will remain among her most charming memories.

Indeed, one's attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking. When he jumps out of bed, scurries about the room, tightly fastens his trouser-sash, rolls up the sleeves of ~ Sei Shonagon

Your challenge as #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention.I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you being to see it, you'll need sunglasses to combat the glare. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds. These words were not invented for an incremental life. "Success" and "failure" serve a world that is black-and-white. And as I said before, it's all just kinda grey. ~ Sophia Amoruso

Today there is much talk about democratic ideals in the outside world. But not in Germany! For here in Germany we had more than enough time-fifteen years-to acquaint ourselves with these democratic ideals. And we ourselves had to pick up the legacy left behind by this democracy.

Now we are being credited with many a truly astounding war aim, especially by the English. After all, England is quite experienced in issuing proclamations of objectives in warfare as it has waged the greatest number of wars the world over.

Truly astounding are the war aims announced to us today. A new Europe will arise. This Europe will be characterized by justice. This justice will render armament obsolete. This will lead to disarmament at last. This disarmament in turn will bring about an economic blossoming. Change and trade will spring up-much trade-free trade. And with the sponsorship of this trade, culture shall once more blossom, and not only culture will benefit, but religion will also prosper.

In other words: we are heading towards a golden age! Well, we have heard of this golden age before. Many times precisely the same people attempted to illustrate its virtues to us who are now flooding us with descriptions of its benefits. The records are old ones, played once too often. We can only pity these gentlemen who cannot even come up with a new idea to trap a great people. For all this they had already promised us in 1918.

Then, too, England's objecti ~ Adolf Hitler

It is so rightly said that you only live once, but if you live it right, once is enough. Let you remind yourself that you are not only one in billions of people, but you are once in a lifetime kind of person. Let you leave no kind word unsaid, leave no good deed undone & never miss a single opportunity of celebration, occasion or possibility of feeling good or making your life & your world more beautiful. Let you stop sitting on fence waiting for your turn foolishly or just hanging on to the handrails. Let you opt for the joyful ride of your life everyday & throw as much paint as you can on the canvas of your life making it more irresistible, graceful & meaningful. Let you realize that any time spent on being unhappy, detesting or loathing is wasted. Stay Blessed & Keep Being Awesome! ~ Rajesh Goyal

We now know I can do it, but I feel like hell," I went on. "I'm so cold, my teeth would chatter if they still could. And I'm hungry enough that both of you are starting to looking really, really good."
Vlad's lips curled. "Is this the part where I'm supposed to remind you that this is just the leftover power talking and you don't really want to cheat on Hones?"
"Not that kind of hungry!" I gasped, eyes bulging that Vlad thought I'd just casually thrown out that I wanted him and Mencheres to double-team me. "I meant hungry like drinking you guys' blood. Not hungry for... you know."
Without thought, my gaze flew to the areas in question before skipping away once I realized what I was doing. Then my cheeks actually tingled with mortification as Vlad let out a long, hearty laugh. Mencheres, more courteous, pretended to suddenly find something fascinating in the door frame, but I saw his lips twitch.
"My dear Reaper," Vlad said, still laughing. "Did you just check out our--"
"No!" I interrupted at once, almost lunging toward the staircase. "I'm tired and still dazed from the Remnants and... fuck it, I'm taking a shower. I mean, not a cold shower, because I don't need that"--Oh Jesus, I was only making this worse--"because I am cold already, and I need to get hot. I mean, warmer. Oh, just shut up! ~ Jeaniene Frost

The awareness at each moment of what is intolerable in the world (tortures, oppression, unhappiness, hunger, the camps) is not tolerable: it bends, sinks, and he who exposes himself to it sinks with it. The awareness is not awareness in general. All knowledge of what everywhere is intolerable will at once lead knowledge astray. We live thus between straying and a half-sleep. To know this is already enough to stray. ~ Maurice Blanchot

Gregg Cunningham once said, "There are more people working full-time to kill babies than there are working full-time to save them. That's because killing babies is very profitable while saving them is very costly. So costly, that large numbers of Americans who say they oppose abortion are not lifting a finger to stop it. And those that do lift a finger to stop it do just enough to salve the conscience but not enough to stop the killing."8 ~ Scott Klusendorf

Once I ask [Daddy] when he worked on Sundays instead of going to Church with us. 'Cookie,' he said, 'you eat on Sundays just like any other day.' He was matter-of-fact, not sighing or sounding sorry or tired, I think because Daddy was a man lucky enough to know instinctively that work is not a burden but a boon, that it is work that builds a solid sense of self. ~ Yvonne S. Thornton

He lived much among people, but very little with them. They interested him, but he did not in the least care to have them be interested in him; for he felt the force that should have driven him to do his part with the others or against them slowly ebbing out of him. He could wait, he told himself, even if he had to wait till it was too late. Whoever has faith is in no hurry--that was his excuse to himself. For he believed that, when he came down to the bedrock of his own nature, he did have faith strong enough to move mountains--the trouble was that he never managed to set his shoulder to them. Once in a while, the impulse to create welled up in him, and he longed to see a part of himself freed in work that should be his very own. For days he would be excited with the happy, titanic effort of carting the clay for his Adam, but he never formed it in his own image. The will power necessary to persistent self-concentration was not in him. Weeks would pass before he could make up his mind to abandon the work, but he did abandon it, asking himself, in a fit of irritation, why he should continue. What more had he to gain? He had tasted the rapture of conception; there remained the toil of rearing, cherishing, nourishing, carrying to perfection--Why? For whom? ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen

Many in our world today want us to believe that we can except Christ simply as a Savior from sin, but not the Lord of our lives. They teach essentially that a person can perform an act of believing on Christ once, and after this, they can fall away even into total unbelief and yet still supposedly be "saved". Christ does not call men in this way. Christ does not save men in this way. The true Christian is the one continually coming, always believing in Christ. Real Christian faith is an ongoing faith, not a one-time act. If one wishes to be eternally satiated, one meal is not enough. If we wish to feast on the bread of heaven, we must do so all our lives. We will never hunger or thirst if we are always coming and always believing in Christ. He's our sufficiency. Christ the bread from heaven. We must feed on all of Christ, not just the parts we happen to like. Christ is not the Savior of anyone unless He is their Lord as well. ~ James R. White

In light of religious teachings on sex, unrestricted people often feel they are fundamentally flawed. They are sinful and rebellious against god for having strong urges that go against the church's teachings. If the religious belief is deep enough, a person will not be able to look at his behavior rationally. The result can be a destructive cycle beginning with some religiously prohibited sexual behavior followed by repentance and prayer for a few weeks. Soon biological urges surface again, and he goes back to the behavior, followed by repentance once more. The process keeps him focused on guilt, not on rational ways to enjoy and express sexuality. Every time he goes through the cycle, it makes him feel less worthwhile. At the same time, the only way he can get relief is by going back to his religion. ~ Darrel Ray

I see you are fixated on the least of my doings," he said. "Very well, my abrupt departure from the Domain is easily enough explained: I am not at your beck and call, Madam Inquisitor. You cannot simply say to me, 'May I call on you this evening, Your Highness, to discuss what you have seen?'"

The Inquisitor thinned her lips.

"Besides, if you had taken the time to inquire from my attendants, you would have learned that I had decided to go back to school at an earlier time, before the lightning came down.

"Now, the hotel suite. I am a young man and have needs that must be met. Since that slum of a school Atlantis so strenuously recommended does not allow for such activities, I keep a place outside of school. As for why I left, I cannot imagine why I should remain once the deed is done."

"And where was your accomplice in . . . the deed?"

"Left before I did. No need for her presence once she had served her purpose."

"There was no report of anyone coming or going."

Of course not, since she left with me.

This time he had to swallow the words as they rose on his tongue.

"Were you watching all the service doors? A large hotel has many."

"Where did you find her?"

In a certain house in Little-Grind-on-Woe. Very well suited to wielding lightning, that girl.

"In a certain - "

What was the matter with him? He was an accomplished liar. Truth should ~ Sherry Thomas

There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough. ~ Samuel Beckett

I wish I could put it back together again. Not as it was before- that is of course impossible. But enough to see it, truly see it, as it once was. ~ Claudia Gray

The scientists do not get enough help, enough encouragement, to change their field from time to time because the pressure is too high or is to perform something. And once you start in a new field, you are a nobody to start with, you see. ~ Heinrich Rohrer