Pax Arcana Quotes

TEN THINGS THAT PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T READ THE FIRST BOOK REALLY OUGHT TO KNOW.

I. One day, your father and mother were hugging, and they began to have special feelings. Warm feelings that tingled in their private places. It is likely they weren't wearing any clothes. At any rate, they began to rub against each other like two sticks trying to start a fire, and nine months later, you were born. If this is news to you, please put this book down now. There may well be big bad wolves and evil witches and fairies in the pages that follow, but I promise you, this isn't a children's story. ~ Elliott James

Scarcely is there any peace so unjust that it is better than even the fairest war. -Vix ulla tam iniqua pax, quin bello vel aequissimo sit potior ~ Desiderius Erasmus

Aristotle says in the book of secrets that communicating too many arcana of nature and art breaks a celestial seal and many evils can ensue. Which does not mean that secrets must not be revealed, but that the learned must decide when and how. ~ Umberto Eco

For it is in the arcana of dreams that existences merge and renew themselves, change and yet keep the same. ~ Bram Stoker

David Greene was kind, and he had a sense of humor. He made your mother laugh."

That was all Gran could muster up? "Did you not like him?"

"He wasn't a big believer in Tarot. Humor aside, he was a very practical man. From New England," she added, as if that explained everything. "I'd been wearing Karen down about the Arcana - until she met him. Before I knew it, your mother was pregnant. Even then, I sensed you were the Empress."

"He didn't want us to live up north?"

"David planned to move there." Her gaze went distant. "To move you - the great Empress - away from her Haven." That must have gone over well. "In the end, I convinced them not to go."
......
I opened up the family albums. As I scrolled through them, her eyes appeared dazed, as if she wasn't seeing the images. Yet then she stared at a large picture of my father.

I said, "I wish I could remember him."

"David used to carry you around the farm on his shoulders," she said. "He read to you every night and took you to the river to skip stones. He drove you around to pet every baby animal born in a ten-mile radius. Lambs, kittens, puppies." She drew a labored breath. "He brought you to the crops and the gardens. Even then, you would pet the bark of an oak and kiss a rose bloom. If the cane was sighing that day, you'd fall asleep in his arms."

I imagined it all: the sugarcane, the farm, the majestic oaks, the lazy river that always had ~ Kresley Cole

I doubt she'll welcome you if I tell her you undressed me."
"Maybe she'll only partially welcome me."
Smart-ass. ~ Kresley Cole

I love you, too, Pax. I hope you know that. ~ Courtney Cole

- I've missed your company these long days. -
What are you even doing here? You stayed away so long, I thought you weren't coming.
- You missed me, and now are piqued. Know that I was obtaining something that guarantees my success with you. -
More coercion?
- A gift for you. That's why I've allowed the mortal leeway and refrained from a slaying. Because you're about to be mine. -
His confidence unsettled me. Good to know you were worried about your wife alone out on the road. You let me make the journey by myself. And face the twins! Though you knew how much they would hate me.
- I felt confident that you and six other Arcana, one of the largest alliances yet, could take out a pair of insignificant carnates. To guard you on your way, I bade Lark to dispatch the wolf. - ~ Kresley Cole

Jackson asked, "Where'd the water come from in your house?"
"A pipe." Then he explained to Jackson, "Water travels in pipes. ~ Kresley Cole

Victra stands to the side listening to enemy chatter. "Response teams inbound. More than two thousand mixed units." She's also patched to the strategic command on Orion's ship, so she can gather battle data from the huge sensor arrays on the flagship. Looks like Roque launched more than fifteen thousand men at us in his leechCraft. Most will be in the Pax by now. Burrowed through to find me. Silly bastards. Roque gambled big, bet wrong. And I've just brought three thousand crazed Obsidian berserkers to a mostly empty warship. The Poet is going to be pissed. ~ Pierce Brown

Goody Two-shoes Evie Greene got herself pickled, for true. If I'd known you were such a juvenile delinquent, I might've asked for a new history podna."
"Juvenile delinquent? Hmm. Aren't your initials J.D.? If the shoe fits ... ~ Kresley Cole

Let war be so carried on that no other object may seem to be sought but the acquisition of peace.
[Lat., Bellum autem ita suscipiatur, ut nihil aliud, nisi pax, quaesita videatur.] ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Has Joules calmed down yet?" I asked her. "Did he find the culprit?"

"The Tower's latest farfetched theory? Nanoseconds before his lightning hit, the Priestess somehow swooped in and 'insta-drowned' the twins, shoving water into their lungs. He's furious and plans to go 'spearfishing' for her. ~ Kresley Cole

My army cries in protest. They don't understand. Golds don't do this. Golds don't sacrifice for one another. Leaders take; they do not give. My army cries out again. I ask them, how is this worse than the rape they were all so comfortable with? Is not Nyla now one of us? Is she not part of the body?

Like Reds are. Like Obsidians are. Like all the Colors are.

Pax tries to go light. But it's Pax, so when he's done, my back looks like chewed goatmeat. I stand up. Do everything I can to prevent myself from wobbling. I'm seeing stars. I want to wail. Want to cry. Instead, I tell them that anyone who does anything vile - they know what I mean - will have to whip me like this in front of the entire army. I see how they look at Tactus now, how they look at Pax, how they look at my back.

"You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do."

I motion Tactus to come toward me. He wavers, pale, confused as a newborn lamb. Fear marks his face. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the pain I willingly bore. Fear when he realizes how different he is from me.

"Don't be afraid," I tell him. I pull him forward into a hug. "We are blood brothers, you little shit. Blood brothers."

I'm learning. ~ Pierce Brown

As an Auyana man living in New Guinea under the Pax Australiana put it, "Life was better since the government came" because "a man could now eat without looking over his shoulder and could leave his house in the morning to urinate without fear of being shot. ~ Steven Pinker

He feared what getting involved with her might mean, but he wanted this deal involving chocolate and would risk lying with something not entirely female to get it. ~ M. Pax

The adult members of society adverted to the Bible unreasonably often. What arcana! Why did they spread this scandalous document before our eyes? If they had read it, I thought, they would have hid it. They didn't recognize the vivid danger that we would, through repeated exposure, catch a case of its wild opposition to their world. ~ Annie Dillard

I'm counting on that," Mila murmurs as she steps away. "I just need some time Pax; time for you to show that you are serious about this, about putting the work in. That's all I need. ~ Courtney Cole

Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

The strength of our economy allows us to maintain the mightiest military in the world, effectively enforcing a Pax Americana. ~ Ted Cruz

I don't want to start over again," she says slowly. "I like what we had. I don't want to re-do it. I love you, Pax. But I don't know if I can handle it if you leave me like that again. You shut me out and i couldn't help you. That's not what people do when they love someone. You ripped my heart out and stomped on it. ~ Courtney Cole

According to Q-Jo, the whole tarot deck, or at least the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana, may be read as the Fool's journey. "On one important level," she explained, "the major cards are chapters in the story of a quest. I'm talking the universal human quest for understanding and divine reunion. And it doesn't matter whether the quest starts with the Fool or ends with him, because it's a loop anyhow, a cycle endlessly repeated. When the naive young Fool finally tumbles over the precipice, he falls into the world of experience. Now his journey has really begun. Along the way, he'll meet all the teachers and tempters - the tempters are teachers, too - and challenging situations that a person is likely to meet in the task of his or her growing. The Fool is potentially everybody, but not everybody has the wisdom or the guts to play the fool. A lot of folks don't know what's in that bag they're carrying. And they're all too willing to trade it for cash. Inside the bag, the have every tool they need to facilitate their life's journey, but they won't even open it up and glance inside. Subconsciously, the goal of all of us out-of-control primates is essentially the same, but let me assure you of this: the only ones who'll ever reach that goal are the ones who have the courage to make fools of themselves along the way. ~ Tom Robbins

At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working - I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I'd spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn't handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. ~ Gillian Flynn

It is always the Germans who cause the trouble, what is it about Germans that they must molest and oppress?..." "They have never been civilized," said Sosthene..."They were never conquered by Roman. They remain barbarians." Phoebe stared at him. It was a viewpoint... "One is perhaps inclined to forget that even here in Britain that were four hundred years of the Pax Romana," he said gently. "In Germany, no -- only the Vandals and the Goths. Every so often they burst out. It is in the breed. ~ Elswyth Thane

Mr. Herriton, don't – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father's a dentist."
Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana, and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die. ~ E.M. Forster

Guess who's fifteen minutes early to pick up Pax? This guy. I'm kinda proud of myself. ~ Kim Holden

What are the Hanged Man's powers?" I tried to remember more about that player.

"I don't know," Aric admitted. "I've never faced him, nor seen him mentioned in any chronicles I've read. The Star had his icon in the last game. But did the Arcane Navigator take it himself, or harvest it from another?" Aric rotated his shot glass on his desk blotter. "The Hanged Man remains a mystery. That is why he's called uncanny. In this game, all have been accounted for, but for him."

"Then he's the inactivated card?" One Arcana was dormant - until he or she killed another player. "Matthew told me to beware of that player but wouldn't reveal an identity. ~ Kresley Cole

At a time when the respectable bourgeois youngsters of my generation were college freshmen, oppressed by simian sophomores and affronted with balderdash daily and hourly by chalky pedagogues, I was at large in a wicked seaport of half a million people, with a front seat at every public show, as free of the night as of day, and getting earfuls of instruction in a hundred giddy arcana, none of them taught in schools ... [But] if I neglected the humanities, I was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant, a bartender, a shyster lawyer, or a midwife. ~ H.L. Mencken

I was on the verge of something numinous and profound and in one more second the universe was going to crack open and arcana would rain down on my head like grace and all the cosmic mysteries were going to be revealed. ~ Kate Atkinson

Hey, you've still got your endangered hymen. Which means you'll make it to closing credits - I'm s.o.l. ~ Kresley Cole

This game is a hell we've all been damned into. It's designed to madden us. The most intelligent Arcana ever to play is called the Fool. The one who least wanted to kill was named Death. And you, Empress, rule over nothing! ~ Kresley Cole

In the seeker-church movement the emphasis away from the use and explication of creedal confession is obvious, since the whole point is to focus on the 'felt-needs' of the person in the pew - especially the felt-needs of nonbelievers. The rationale is that the church and its main service are evangelistic in nature. Because nonbelievers simply cannot penetrate the arcana of historic Christianity, the felt-needs of people become the point of entry into conversation with them. ~ James Davison Hunter

Matthew held out his hands. "Pax," he said, wheedlingly. "Let it be peace between us. You can pour the rest of the port on my head."
James' mouth curved up into a smile. It was impossible to stay angry with Matthew. It was almost impossible to get angry at Matthew. ~ Cassandra Clare

Remember my titles? I don't get poisoned, I do the poisoning. I'm the Princess of it ~ Kresley Cole

Alcohol is the drug ethanol. They are one and the same. Alcohol is also called ethyl alcohol or grain alcohol. It is a chemical compound. Ethanol is often added to the gasoline we use to run our cars. ~ Chris Prentiss

She's the reason I came to your house, remember? She called me or I wouldn't have known that things were so bad. She loves you, Pax. And if there's anything that you should take away from this is that you need to live for today. Tomorrow is not promised to you. ~ Courtney Cole

Increasingly economic historians can draw analogies between the development of the present crisis and the period between the two world wars, as well as the crisis of a century ago, which was associated with the so-called great depression of 1873-1895. The latter crisis resulted in the rise of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, but also the end of Pax Britannica, as Britain began its decline from world leadership in the face of challenges from Germany and the United States. The present world crisis seems to be spelling the beginning of the end of Pax Americana and may hold untold other major readjustments in the international division of labor and world power in store for the future. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

Might be dead and buried. V. well, there is more to E.'s & my pax ~ David Mitchell

On the job there was nothing but the job. You left the shit outside the door. You could always pick it up on your way back out. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

And all he wants is to throw a rager in your sugar mill?" Then she frowned. "Wow. That sounded raunchy. ~ Kresley Cole

It was rather a cessation of war than a beginning of peace.
[Lat., Bellum magis desierat, quam pax coeperat.] ~ Tacitus

I'm sorry you want him," Matthew began in a careful tone, as if he was trying very hard to say the exact right thing to me. "I feel your heart - it actually aches. I wish it didn't, Evie. You cannot have him."
I glared down at him. "Why would you say that?"
"You don't want to be Arcana. But you are." He gazed up at me with those soulful eyes. "Jack's not."
"So what are you, like, a card purist or something? ~ Kresley Cole

I've thrilled and shouted with patriotic pride, like everyone. Music and flags and men marching in step have bewitched me, as they do all of us. And then I've gone home and sworn to root this evil instinct out of my soul. God help us - let's love the world, love humanity - not just our own country! That's why I'm so keen about the part we're going to play at the Peace Conference. Our motto over there will be America Last! Hurrah for us, I say, for we shall be the only nation over there with absolutely no axe to grind. Nothing but a pax to grind! ~ Christopher Morley

My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I couldn't feel guilty any longer for misdeeds committed by another incarnation. I wouldn't. "I'm sorry for your past, Aric. I wish it had been different. I wish I had been. But I refuse to keep paying for what I did in past games.""Do you, then?"
"In our first meeting, you skewered me with your sword. In other words: you started it. You didn't ask me to marry you, just ordered it. I played the hand I was dealt."
"I take your point."
"Let's begin anew, Empress." (He expects her to 'forgive/forget' for him but not Jack?) "The mortal can't provide for you like I can. I offer you a home. Defensive, I said, "Jack plans to rebuild Haven House for me."
Anger flashed across Aric's face. He schooled his reactions as quickly as he did everything else, leaving his emotions to seethe beneath the surface. "If you desire something, all you have to do is tell me. It will shortly be yours. You'll see soon enough." (Bribery for her to favor him?)
What if Aric could straight-up end the game? Blow up the machine?
"Deveaux will never understand you as I do. As only another Arcana can." "Maybe not. But we have other ties." I thought of the ribbon he'd kept all this time, the one now in my pocket.
"As do we. We are wed." (after Aric ordered her to do so.) "I think of you as mine.
"When I recognized that you weren't over your infatuation with the mortal, I might have been . . . testing you." He'd tested me the other night as well! "What if I'd surrendered?" ~ Kresley Cole

Barabbas ("Son of the Father") is a kind of Messianic figure. Two interpretations of Messianic hope are juxtaposed here in the offer of the Passover amnesty. In terms of Roman law, it is a case of two criminals convicted of the same offense - two rebels against the Pax Romana. It is clear that Pilate prefers the nonviolent "fanatic" that he sees in Jesus. Yet the crowd and the Temple authorities have different categories. If the Temple aristocracy felt constrained to declare: "We have no king but Caesar" (Jn 19:15), this only appears to be a renunciation of Israel's Messianic hope: "We do not want this king" is what they mean. They would like to see a different solution to the problem. Again and again, mankind will be faced with this same choice: to say yes to the God who works only through the power of truth and love, or to build on something tangible and concrete - on violence. Jesus ~ Pope Benedict XVI

The motto was 'Pax', but the word was set in a circle of thorns. ~ Rumer Godden