“
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
“
Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief
”
”
Marcus Tullius Cicero
“
The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing...' twenty minutes after admitting he'd lost the argument.
”
”
Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
“
Charles Baudelaire: Get Drunk
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters; that's our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time's horrible burden that breaks your shoulders and bows you down, you must get drunk without ceasing.
But what with? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.
And if, at some time, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you are waking up when drunkenness has already abated, ask the wind, the wave, a star, the clock, all that which flees, all that which groans, all that which rolls, all that which sings, all that which speaks, ask them what time it is; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock will reply: 'It is time to get drunk! So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk, and never pause for rest! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose!'
-- Charles Baudelaire, tr. Michael Hamburger
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Twenty Prose Poems)
“
Come to me once more, and abate my torment;
Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me
All I long for; Lady, in all my battles
Fight as my comrade.
”
”
Sappho
“
I wake up wating you. I fall asleep wanting you. I watch a magnificent sunrise and can think only of sharing it with you. I glimpse a piece of amver and see your eyes. Jillian, I've caught a disease, and the fever abates only when I'm near you.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (To Tame a Highland Warrior (Highlander, #2))
“
His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a bloodless way.
”
”
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
“
Whatever we did—or, more crucially, did not do—it seemed that so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity.
”
”
M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
“
In the dead of night I stirred. Wakefulness flowed back into me. I was a cup full of sorrow, but that sorrow was stilled, like a pain that abates as long as one does not move.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Fool's Quest (The Fitz and The Fool, #2))
“
When you find a chillness upon your souls, and that your former heat begins to abate, ply yourselves with warm clothes, get those good books that may acquaint you with such truths as may warm and affect your hearts.
”
”
Thomas Watson
“
Life can be hard and beautiful and messy, but hopefully, it will be long. If it is, you will see that it's unpredictable, and that the dark periods comes, but they abate -- sometimes with a lot of support -- and the tunnel widens, allowing the sun back in. If you're in the dark, it might feel like you will always be there. Fumbling. Alone. But you won't -- and you're not.
”
”
Gayle Forman (I Was Here)
“
Every man's death is standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love the man who stands for us.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3))
“
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
“
How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end.
”
”
Allegra Goodman (The Cookbook Collector)
“
Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others...
He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds - or on persons devoted to them - have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a 'dirty little atheist' he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with 'The Rights of Man' he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But 'The Age of Reason' cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen - a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.
I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty.
Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad.
The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty - who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause - can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.
{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}
”
”
Thomas A. Edison (Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison)
“
Sense memories of you persist and do not seem to abate as the day progresses. It’s disconcerting, Camilla. I don’t like it when my mind plays tricks on me. I would much rather simply have you here in the flesh, to feel and taste and smell with my actual senses. Instead my mind keeps conjuring this false perception of your presence. I think it means I miss you.
”
”
Delphine Dryden (The Theory of Attraction (Science of Temptation, #1))
“
You will find there are times you must grasp your life with both hands and forcefully steer it in a new direction and then strain to hold your course until the storms of fear, weakness, and doubt abate.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
“
The challenge of abating one with a genuine ego problem is to not try to put him down. Any and all antagonization, in his mind, is merely compensated for by his own descriptions: his feelings of persecution by the envious and his ideals of worth. Arguably, the genuine ego is more of a circumstantial defense mechanism rather than a steady arrogance in need of starvation.
”
”
Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
“
As the years pass, Valentine observed, racial violence only becomes more vicious in its expression. It will not abate or disappear, not anytime soon, and not in the south.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.
”
”
Steve Allen
“
Every man’s death is a standing in for every other. And since death comes to all there is no way to abate the fear of it except to love that man who stands for us. We are not waiting for his history to be written. He passed here long ago. That man who is all men and who stands in the dock for us until our own time come and we must stand for him. Do you love him, that man? Will you honor the path he has taken? Will you listen to his tale?
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Cities of the Plain (The Border Trilogy, #3))
“
When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
I know love is begun by time,
And that I see, in passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.
And nothing is at a like goodness still.
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,
We should do when we would, for this “would” changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.
And then this “should” is like a spendthrift sigh
That hurts by easing.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words.
”
”
Paul Fussell (The Great War and Modern Memory)
“
There are two kinds of discontented in this world, the discontented that works and the discontented that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants and the second loses what it has. There is no cure for the first but success and there is no cure at all for the second. The very worst of my vices and bad habits will abate of themselves if they are brought to an accounting every day.
”
”
Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World)
“
By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it.
”
”
Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island)
“
If greed were not the master of modern man--ably assisted by envy--how could it be that the frenzy of economism does not abate as higher "standards of living" are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness? How could we explain the almost universal refusal on the part of the rulers of the rich societies--where organized along private enterprise or collective enterprise lines--to work towards the humanisation of work? It is only necessary to assert that something would reduce the "standard of living" and every debate is instantly closed. That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done--these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence--because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.
”
”
Ernst F. Schumacher (Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered)
“
I would have things as they were in all the days of my life . . . and in the days of my longfathers before me: to be the Lord of this City in peace, and leave my chair to a son after me, who would be his own master and no wizard’s pupil. But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3))
“
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues,
”
”
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
“
Even when ministry is hard, it's more fun than any other job I can imagine. Where else can you preach, teach, meet with a lead abatement specialist, and get arrested for civil disobedience all in the same week?
”
”
Lillian Daniel (This Odd and Wondrous Calling: The Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers)
“
Later on, absence taught me far more bitter lessons: that you get accustomed to absence, that the greatest abatement of the self, the most humiliating torment is to feel that you are no longer tormented by absence.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Pleasures and Days)
“
When men are ruled by fear, they strive to prevent the very changes that will abate it.
”
”
Alan Paton
“
La giovane, che non era di ferro né di diamante, assai agevolmente si piegò ai piaceri dello abate.
”
”
Giovanni Boccaccio (The Decameron)
“
You want me?” I repeated, my bewilderment not abating, but growing.
“I’ve never wanted anything more.
”
”
Nicole Williams
“
The pain became a drumbeat; a rhythm I could write a song to. It was always there, stark and steady, rarely abating. I learned to drown out the sound during the day, but at night it screamed through the hole in my chest.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (A Very Large Expanse of Sea)
“
-Paint-
My girlfriend is so besotted that she can't take her eyes off me. After we've turned out the light she puts on her night-vision goggles, and watched me as I sleep. Quite often I am woken by her sighing and involuntary yelps of happiness. This has been going on for years, and is showing no sign of abating. Once I asked her to stop all this infra-red activity, but it didn't really work; I'd wake up to find her covering me in luminous paint, and softly whispering, 'Sometimes I wonder if you know how much I love you.
”
”
Dan Rhodes (Anthropology: And a Hundred Other Stories)
“
When your focus is on how you feel about things in the world then the things of the world slip from view, your little boat of learning things for what they are are swamped by the swells of how you feel about them. With hard work and with learning, the things of the world are still somehow out there, waiting for you to know about them, no matter how you feel. They survive how you feel about them and they are there before and after the storms of your feelings roar through and abate. Feelings aren't much of a compass to go by.
”
”
Stephen Jenkinson (Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul)
“
Anger will abate and become more controlled when it knows it must come before a judge each day.
”
”
Seneca (Dialogues and Essays)
“
But my feelings won’t abate. Feelings I’m not supposed to have. Feelings I can’t relinquish.
”
”
Christine Fonseca (Dies Irae (Requiem, #0.5))
“
He also sware himself by a binding oath that whatever wife he married he would abate her maidenhead at night and slay her next morning to make sure of his honour;
”
”
Anonymous (The Arabian Nights; Volume 1 - 16, Complete)
“
It may, in its natural course, exhaust itself and end in sleep; the post-migrainous sleep is long, deep, and refreshing, like a post-epileptic sleep. Secondly, it may resolve by “lysis,” a gradual abatement of the suffering accompanied by one or more secretory activities. As
”
”
Oliver Sacks (Migraine)
“
And in the late nineties, two women sued Hopkins, claiming that its researchers had knowingly exposed their children to lead, and hadn’t promptly informed them when blood tests revealed that their children had elevated lead levels—even when one developed lead poisoning. The research was part of a study examining lead abatement methods, and all families involved were black. The researchers had treated several homes to varying degrees, then encouraged landlords to rent those homes to families with children so they could then monitor the children’s lead levels.
”
”
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
“
Many supporters believe--or want to believe--that Obama will be a transformative political leader in a transformative time. They eagerly await the flowering of peace and social justice policies that will open a new chapter in the abatement of "the structural inequalities that our nation's legacy of discrimination has left behind." Whether Obama, carrying the weight of race on his shoulders in a manner no other United States president ever has, will provide leadership and initiative on these issues is yet to be seen. At every opportunity, we should remind him to try.
”
”
Clarence Lusane (The Black History of the White House)
“
Her features were dainty, her small slender wrists climbed up to become the delicate shoulders that beckoned him. Her skin was like peach-tinted cream and he need not have touched her to experience the melting softness of her body. Her perfectly oval face was austere and her manner a little haughty. Her expressions had delicacy as well as a particular strength that did not abate her femininity. It seemed that the world had stopped. Her voice sounded like a melody and she looked like a dream, an illusion, up close and personal.
”
”
Faraaz Kazi (Truly, Madly, Deeply)
“
La tormenta abate incluso al árbol más robusto.
”
”
Benjamin Lacombe (Madame Butterfly)
“
I felt safe, suddenly. I felt calm, and at peace--as if a raging fever had abated, a delirium burned itself out. I felt the other part of me, the good part, rising with the dawn...
”
”
Alex Michaelides (The Maidens)
“
Extol not riches, then, the toil of fools,
The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare; more apt
To slacken virtue and abate her edge
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Regained)
“
The demons both Flame and I lived with had merely been abated by our union, not exorcized. Love was a powerful remedy, but it was not a cure for some scars. They ran too deep. They were incurable. We had simply learned to live with our demons harnessed.
”
”
Tillie Cole (My Maddie (Hades Hangmen, #8))
“
And between us now there is this continual underground struggle over something trivial and nebulous that won't abate and has lasted nearly as long as the two of us have known each other. "I love you.
”
”
Joseph Heller (Something Happened)
“
Governments too steady and uniform, as they are seldom free, so are they, in the judgment of some attended with another sensible inconvenience: they abate the active powers of men; depress courage, invention, and genius; and produce a universal lethary in the people.
”
”
David Hume
“
Apathy is unconditional surrender where we are driven into hiding by unrealistic fear, and firmly held there by the misinformed belief that we are helpless to do anything other than hide. Therefore, apathy survives solely on lies and can be completely abated by truth.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
A pulse. Beat-beating against her palm. Alive.
Beat by beat the bottomless whirlwind of perceptions and data and images and sensations careening through her mind—so many how can this tiny skull hold them all—began to abate in time to the rhythm of not her pulse, but his.
”
”
G.S. Jennsen (Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three (Aurora Rhapsody, #3))
“
For if we could be allowed to see the Plague as a thing in Nature merely, we did not have to trouble about some grand celestial design that had to be completed before the disease would abate. We could simply work upon it as a farmer might toil to rid his field of unwanted tare, knowing that when we found the tools and the method and the resolve, we would free ourselves, no matter if we were a village full of sinners or a host of saints.
”
”
Geraldine Brooks (Year of Wonders)
“
Grief was a kind of illness, he maintained, and ran a course as predictable as measles or the common cold. Its fever always abated, given time and management, leaving the luckier among them with scars where love had been.
”
”
Patrick Gale (Notes from an Exhibition)
“
Sometimes I lie awake and hear noises in the house, and despite myself I’m frightened. Then I hear some familiar sound—a clock strikes, or a train whistles somewhere—and my fear abates. But why should those sounds comfort me, and others frighten me? Why couldn’t a ghost make the sound of a train?
”
”
Michael Cisco (The Narrator)
“
The lesser mysteries of love
For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful form; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only--out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is one and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honorable than the beauty of the outward form.
”
”
Plato
“
Est-ce que nous voyons la cent millième partie de ce qui existe ? Tenez, voici le vent, qui est la plus grande force de la nature, qui renverse les hommes, abat les édifices, déracine les arbres, soulève la mer en montagnes d’eau, détruit les falaises, et jette aux brisants les grands navires, le vent qui tue, qui siffle, qui gémit, qui mugit, – l’avez-vous vu, et pouvez-vous le voir ? Il existe, pourtant.
”
”
Guy de Maupassant (Le Horla et autres nouvelles fantastiques)
“
Still, my fascination with Buchanan did not abate, nor was I able, as the Seventies set in, to move the novel forward through the constant pastiche and basic fakery of any fiction not fed by the springs of memory -- what Henry James calls (in a letter to Sarah Orne Jewett) the "fatal cheapness [and] mere escamotage" of the "'historic' novel.
”
”
John Updike (Memories of the Ford Administration)
“
Exist pentru a-l ajuta, nu pentru a-l abate din drumul său.
”
”
André Gide (L'école des femmes suivi de Robert et de Geneviève)
“
This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. The Moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for his goddess tonight. there are no flocks out on the mountains; and it is well, for to-night she welcomes Aeolus.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Shirley)
“
[A] life full of goals and end-points is like trying to abate one's hunger by eating merely the two precise ends of a banana. The concrete reality of the banana is, on the contrary, all that lies between the two ends, the journey as it were[.] Furthermore, when the time and space between destinations are cut out, all destinations tend to become ever more similar.
”
”
Alan W. Watts (Nature, Man and Woman)
“
...The happy Warrior... is he... who, doomed to go in company with pain, and fear, and bloodshed, miserable train turns his necessity to glorious gain; in face of these doth exercise a power which is our human nature's highest dower: controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: by objects, which might force the soul to abate her feeling, rendered more compassionate; is placable because occasions rise so often that demand such sacrifice; more skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure, as more exposed to suffering and distress; thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
”
”
William Wordsworth (Character of the Happy Warrior)
“
Sache seulement que si,comme je le crains,le malheur s'abat sur cette ville,si les hommes y perdent le droit,unique au monde,de penser librement,c'est tout l'avenir de l'humanité qui sera menacé.
”
”
Jacques Attali (La confrérie des éveillés)
“
Mr. Lisbon knew his parental and neighborly duty entailed putting the retainer in a Ziploc bag, calling the Kriegers, and telling them their expensive orthodontal device was in safe keeping. Acts like theses -- simple, humane, conscientious, forgiving -- held life together. Only a few days earlier he would have been able to perform them. But now he took the retainer and dropped it in the toiler. He pressed the handle. The retainer, jostled int he surge, disappeared down the porcelain throat, and, when waters abated, floated triumphantly, mockingly, out, Mr. Lisbon waited for the tank to refill and flushed again, but the same thing happened. The replica of the boy's mouth clung to the white slope.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
There was great sadness in the speed at which the days were getting shorter. As if they were trying to redeem something that was irredeemable. With a sense of heartache, I thought about September, when the ferocity of summer would abate.
”
”
Gianfranco Calligarich (Last Summer in the City)
“
If any one be in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under foot.
”
”
Michel de Montaigne (The Essays of Montaigne)
“
Whether you are Calvinists, or Arminians, or anything else, dear friends, be first and chiefly Christians—Christians—following Christ, receiving him as the great Expositor to you of God, and of the great truths of revelation. You will tell me you have your “bodies of divinity;” there never was but one “body of divinity,” and that was the “body” of the man, Christ
Jesus; do you, abating all prejudices and self-formed opinions, receive our Lord as the great embodiment of truth.
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
“
Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the desarts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together; and this was still worse to me; for if I could burst out into tears, or vent my self by words, it would go off, and the grief having exhausted it self would abate.
”
”
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
“
Life can be hard and beautiful and messy, but hopefully, it will be long. If it is, you will see that it’s unpredictable, and that the dark periods come, but they abate—sometimes with a lot of support—and the tunnel widens, allowing the sun back in.
”
”
Gayle Forman (I Was Here)
“
It was the poem containing the lines:
Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated.
”
”
J.D. Salinger
“
That loathsome opiate, relief, raced through my veins again—sharp and lucid at the initial prick, before everything went numb. I heard one of the others, maybe Filippa, exhale and I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt it. The moral outrage we should have suffered was quietly put down, suppressed like an unpleasant rumor before it had a chance to be heard. Whatever we did—or more crucially, did not do—it seemed that so long as we did it together, our individual sins might be abated. There is no comfort like complicity.
”
”
M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
“
But the history of Hopkins Hospital certainly isn’t pristine when it comes to black patients. In 1969, a Hopkins researcher used blood samples from more than 7,000 neighborhood children—most of them from poor black families—to look for a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior. The researcher didn’t get consent. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit claiming the study violated the boys’ civil rights and breached confidentiality of doctor-patient relationships by releasing results to state and juvenile courts. The study was halted, then resumed a few months later using consent forms. And in the late nineties, two women sued Hopkins, claiming that its researchers had knowingly exposed their children to lead, and hadn’t promptly informed them when blood tests revealed that their children had elevated lead levels—even when one developed lead poisoning. The research was part of a study examining lead abatement methods, and all families involved were black. The researchers had treated several homes to varying degrees, then encouraged landlords to rent those homes to families with children so they could then monitor the children’s lead levels. Initially, the case was dismissed. On appeal, one judge compared the study to Southam’s HeLa injections, the Tuskegee study, and Nazi research, and the case eventually settled out of court. The Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation and concluded that the study’s consent forms “failed to provide an adequate description” of the different levels of lead abatement in the homes.
”
”
Rebecca Skloot (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks)
“
Before, as I walk'd about, either on my Hunting, or for viewing the Country; the Anguish of my soul at my Condition, would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very Heart would die within me, to think of the Woods, the Mountains, the Desarts I was in; and how I was a Prisoner, lock'd up with the Eternal Bars and Bolts of the Ocean, in an uninhabited Wilderness, without Redemption: In the midst of the greatest Composures of my Mind, this would break out upon me like a Storm , and make me wring my Hands, and weep like a Child: Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my Work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the Ground for an Hour or two together; and this was still worse to me; for if I could burst out into Tears, or vent myself by Words, it would go off, and the Grief having exhausted itself would abate.
”
”
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
“
It's like Romeo & Juliet,' I say. 'You can't separate them. Otherwise, there would be no Shakespeare.'
Silence.
I decide to be more straightforward. I tell him, 'Nothing frightens me anymore. I am not even afraid to die.'
Bussey's eyes, already wide open, grow even wider. My death is the last thing he needs.
I have the strange feeling that there are two of me. One observes the conversation while the other does the talking. Everything is abnormal, especially this extreme calm that has taken me over. I try to explain to Bussey that if I decide to die, it will be without bitterness. I know I did everything I possibly could, so it will be respectful farewell. I will bow to life like an actor, who, having delivered his lines, bends deeply to his audience & retires. I tell Bussey that this decision has nothing to do with him, that it is entirely mine. I will choose either to live or to die, but I cannot allow myself to live in the in-between. I do not want to go through life like a ghost.
'Do you think you'll find Danny this way?' Bussey asks.
My mind sifts through all available theories on the afterlife. It is as if this metaphysical question has become as real as the air we breathe. Buddhism teaches that life is an eternal cycle without beginning or end. I recall the metaphor: "Our individual lives are like waves produced from the great ocean that is the universe. The emergence of a wave is life, and its abatement is death. This rhythm repeats eternally."
Finally I answer Bussey, 'No, I don't think so.'
Bussey seems relieved, but I'm more panicky, because I had never thought that I could wind up alone. In my mind, whatever the odds, Danny & I were & would be together forever.
”
”
Mariane Pearl (A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl)
“
How many times in your life could you have abated conflicts if you had taken the time to deliberate on your problems in quiet contemplation—for example, taking a quiet walk—to think about your capabilities and limitations, and the likely gains and losses of taking action? By removing yourself from the immediate, stressful situation, you also take out the emotion that often prompts you to make rash, thoughtless decisions. The
”
”
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
“
Until recently, though, there were still moments in the day when the busyness abated and life’s pace decelerated. You would find yourself alone, separated from friends and colleagues, and you would be thrown back on your own resources, your own thoughts. Such interludes could provoke feelings of loneliness and boredom. Yet they also provided opportunities to tap into ideas, perceptions, and emotions inaccessible to the social self.
”
”
Michael Harris (Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World)
“
Și ca și-acel ce nu mai vrea ce-a vrut,
schimbând prin noul gând pe cele-avute,
așa că lasă totul ce-a-nceput,
așa și eu sub poala coastei mute
gândind îmi mistuii întreaga vrere
ce-ntâi, spre-a-ncepe, atât mi-a fost de iute.
-De-ți prind din vorbe bine-a ta durere-
răspunse umbra cea mărinimoasă-
ți-e sufletul curpins de-acea scădere,
ce-abate-ades de ținta sa frumoasă
pe om, astfel (oprind) ca năzărirea
nălucii lui pe-o bestie fricoasă.
”
”
Dante Alighieri (Inferno)
“
Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge-from which new sorrows will be born for others-then sorrow will never cease in this world. And if you have given sorrow the space it demands, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich.
”
”
Etty Hillesum
“
Sometimes I don’t understand why my arms don’t drop from my body with fatigue, why my brain doesn’t melt away. I am leading an austere life, stripped of all external pleasure, and am sustained only by a kind of permanent frenzy, which sometimes makes me weep tears of impotence but never abates. I love my work with a love that is frantic and perverted, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt that scratches his belly. Sometimes, when I am empty, when words don’t come, when I find I haven’t written a single sentence after scribbling whole pages, I collapse on my couch and lie there dazed, bogged down in a swamp of despair, hating myself and blaming myself for this demented pride that makes me pant after a chimera. A quarter of an hour later, everything has changed; my heart is pounding with joy.
”
”
Gustave Flaubert
“
At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
We abide by their story because we think that is how we gain acceptance in America. But we cannibalize our bodies, our spirits and our minds to feed a hunger that never abates. We struggle under a weight that the world tells us does not exist. We serve a story that will never serve us, and I fear that the next generation will seek to do the same.
”
”
Prachi Gupta (They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us)
“
E, ainda assim, Ele safa-se sempre. Sempre. Quando a harmonia desce sobre o mundo, é obra Sua. Mas, quando a desgraça se abate, a culpa é nossa. É porque nos falta fé. Falta-nos esperança. Carecemos da humildade necessária para compreender os seus desígnios. Deus escreve direito por linhas tortas. É a desculpa mais esfarrapada de todos os tempos. Destes todos e dos que hão-de vir depois destes.
”
”
João Tordo (O Luto de Elias Gro)
“
România nu are contract de exclusivitate cu nesimtirea. Aceasta este globala, dinamica si atenta la schimbarile din jur. Ea e perceputa peste tot si regretata nicaieri. Fireste, nesimtitul român nu seamana cu cel belgian, azer sau panamez si nu poate fi confundat cu nici unul dintre ei. El are un je ne sais quoi care-l face inimitabil si greu, daca nu aproape imposibil, de clasificat. Si mai are ceva nesimtitul român: un decalog de la care nu se abate si
un set de convingeri pe care ti-e cu neputinta sa i le zdruncini. Trasatura lui definitorie pare, astazi mai mult ca oricând, ubicuitatea. Cine are tristul privilegiu al vietii în orasele mari nu se mai poate întoarce în loc fara sa dea cu nasul de un exponent al categoriei. Iar de la o vreme nici macar refugiul campestru sau izolarea prin funduri de provincie nu mai garanteaza izbavirea. Nesimtitul român este agentul unei molime careia societatea nu i-a aflat leacul. Si putem spune chiar ca, dupa cum merg lucrurile, e foarte putin probabil ca laboratoarele vietii publice sa descopere un vaccin eficace.
”
”
Radu Paraschivescu (Ghidul nesimţitului)
“
Without a word, he walked over to the sideboard and grabbed one of the decanters and a crystal glass. He returned to his seat and poured two fingers’ worth of Scotch. He drank half of it in one swallow and thumped his glass down roughly. He waited for the burning sensation in his throat to abate. He waited for the liquid courage to adhere to his insides, fortifying him. But it would take much more Scotch to dull the ache in his heart.
”
”
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1))
“
The British claim that this tea has a negligible amount of caffeine. Don't you believe it. A couple of months after moving to London, convinced I was having panic attacks, I realized it was simply overcaffeination at the hands of generous friends and colleagues. Every cup of tea I was offered, I took–it seemed rude not to–to the tune of five of seven per day. The cumulative effects were heart-pounding, hand-sweating jitters that abated as soon as I learned my limits.
”
”
Erin Moore (That's Not English: Britishisms, Americanisms, and What Our English Says About Us)
“
Some protectors do eventually dissolve in their current manifestation. Cutting or purging stops. Addition to alcohol or drugs abates. Suicide plans become ideation and finally depart, although none of this happens as linearly as I have stated it. Often, they are first replaced by less harmful protectors, and then those may be able to transform, bringing helpful gifts. Most important for us ... is to welcome these parts, listen to them and let them become our guides ... They will have a better sense of pacing than we do because they are so connected to the wounded ones inside. As the ones in distress have less hold on thoughts, feelings, behaviors and relationships, we can know that less vigilance over the inner world is needed.
”
”
Bonnie Badenoch (The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology))
“
The healthiest way I know how to move through an emotion effectively is to surrender completely to that emotion when its loop of physiology comes over me. I simply resign to the loop and let it run its course for 90 seconds. Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated. Over time, the intensity and frequency of these circuits usually abate. ...Paying attention to which array of circuits we are concurrently running provides us with tremendous insight into how our minds are fundamentally wired...
”
”
Jill Bolte Taylor (My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey)
“
We must first begin again to learn "'learning" and to know standards of measure. Cultural dissolution will not be abated by the mere introduction of newer and more convenient "textbooks." The youth must not wait until more fundamental acquaintance and actual
contemplation are demanded of them from above, for it is precisely the other way around. It is the prerogative of a true and wakeful youth to develop exhortations to knowledge from out of itself, and to cling to these exhortations for itself, in order to construct the future. Whether one occasionally "reads a book" is a measure for the petite bourgeoisie. It does not ask whether today's man, who gets his "education" from "charts" and "magazines," from radio reports and movie theaters. whether such a confused, dizzy, and purely American man still knows, or can know, what "reading" means.
”
”
Martin Heidegger (Four Seminars (Studies in Continental Thought))
“
The four sprang forward affrighted. No hand had ever been laid upon them except in love; they had been nurtured ever so tenderly; and as they grew, their confidence in man became a lesson to men beautiful to see. What should such dainty natures do under such indignity but leap as from death? Forward they sprang as with one impulse, and forward leaped the car. Past question, every experience is serviceable to us. Where got Ben-Hur the large hand and mighty grip which helped him now so well? Where but from the oar with which so long he fought the sea? And what was this spring of the floor under his feet to the dizzy eccentric lurch with which in the old time the trembling ship yielded to the beat of staggering billows, drunk with their power? So he kept his place, and gave the four free rein, and called to them in soothing voice, trying merely to guide them round the dangerous turn; and before the fever of the people began to abate, he had back the mastery.
”
”
Lew Wallace (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ)
“
I looked at her without a word. She held an edge of the beach towel in each hand, pressing the edges against her cheeks. White smoke was rising from the cigarette between her fingers. With no wind to disturb it, the smoke rose straight up, like a miniature smoke signal. She was apparently having trouble deciding whether to cry or to laugh. At least she looked that way to me. She wavered atop the narrow line that divided one possibility from the other, but in the end she fell to neither side. May Kasahara pulled her expression together, put the towel on the ground, and took a drag on her cigarette. The time was nearly five o’clock, but the heat showed no sign of abating.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
“
The consequences of this affliction are physical neglect and an aversion to oiling and bathing the body and to other aspects of the daily regimen, when exactly the opposite should happen: purely mental suffering ought to be helped by physical fitness. Mental distress abates and subsides to a great extent when it is dispersed in physical calm, as waves subside in fair weather, but if as a result [B] of a bad regimen the body becomes sordid and foul and transmits to the mind nothing benign or beneficial, but only the harsh and unpleasant fumes of pain and distress, then even those who desire it find that recovery becomes hard to achieve. These are the kinds of disorders that take possession of the mind when it is treated so badly.
”
”
Plutarch (Essays)
“
I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of spirits; insomuch that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company; I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre, I know that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present. "To conclude historically with my own character, I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself); I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched or even attacked by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.
”
”
David Hume (Essays)
“
Religion even boasts a special branch of itself, devoted to the study of the end. It calls itself “eschatology,” and broods incessantly on the passing away of all earthly things. This death cult refuses to abate, even though we have every reason to think that “earthly things” are all that we have, or are ever going to have. Yet in our hands and within our view is a whole universe of discovery and clarification, which is a pleasure to study in itself, gives the average person access to insights that not even Darwin or Einstein possessed, and offers the promise of near-miraculous advances in healing, in energy, and in peaceful exchange between different cultures. Yet millions of people in all societies still prefer the myths of the cave and the tribe and the blood sacrifice.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
“
The Garden of Proserpine"
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow,
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
”
”
Algernon Charles Swinburne (Poems and Ballads & Atalanta in Calydon)
“
The other gift — a book of poems, called, "The Cowardly Morning" — Waner put on Corinne's desk at the office, with a note saying, "This man is Coleridge and Blake and Rilke all in one, and more."
She didn't pick up the book again until she was in bed, late that night.
[...]
The first poem was the title poem. This time Corinne read it through aloud. But still she didn't hear it. She read it through a third time, and heard some of it. She read it through a fourth time, and heard all of it. It was the poem containing the lines:
'Not wasteland, but a great inverted forest
with all foliage underground.'
As though it might be best to look immediately for shelter, Corinne had to put the book down. At any moment the apartment building seemed liable to lose its balance and topple across Fifth Avenue into Central Park. She waited. Gradually the deluge of truth and beauty abated.
- The Inverted Forest (1947)
”
”
J.D. Salinger (The Complete Uncollected Stories)
“
Plus tard, j'écrirai sur le manque. Sur la privation insupportable de l'autre. Sur le dénuement provoqué par cette privation ; une pauvreté qui s'abat. J'écrirai sur la tristesse qui ronge, la folie qui menace. Cela deviendra la matrice de mes livres, presque malgré moi. Je me demande quelquefois si j'ai même jamais écrit sur autre chose. Comme si je ne m'étais jamais remis de ça : l'autre devenu inaccessible. Comme si ça occupait tout l'espace mental.
La mort de beaucoup de mes amis, dans le plus jeune âge, aggravera ce travers, cette douleur. Leur disparition prématurée me plongera dans des abîmes de chagrin et de perplexité. Je devrai apprendre à leur survivre. Et l'écriture peut être un bon moyen pour survivre. Et pour ne pas oublier les disparus. Pour continuer le dialogue avec eux. Mais le manque prend probablement sa source dans cette première défection, dans une imbécile brûlure amoureuse.
”
”
Philippe Besson (" Arrête avec tes mensonges ")
“
A short lightning flash of white snow flew into the woods frightening the animals there a hare hops around the bird-cherry there a bobcat lies in wait for an underwater mouse puffed out its muzzle raised its tasseled tail mangy beast of prey to you woodpeckers and rabbits are as scrambled eggs to us only the oak stands paying no attention to anyone itself just recently fallen from the sky the pain not yet abated the branches had not drawn apart not a reproach nor an answer did I deserve oh my spurs seize me chop me and beat me right in the back right in the back oh he’s fast I thought I see before me the torah but no the lun a tic the lunatic of my words one thing I won’t repeat will not repeat my whole life through this is ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen my attentive audience that leap the leap from the heights of treesongers down on to the boards of stone the tables of stone tables of oh giant Numbers.
”
”
Daniil Kharms (Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms: The Selected Writing of Daniil Kharms)
“
The propositions that accompany most of the chapters . . . are not as snappy as I would prefer—but there’s a reason for their caution and caveats. On certain important points, the clamor of genuine scientific dispute has abated and we don’t have to argue about them anymore. But to meet that claim requires me to state the propositions precisely. I am prepared to defend all of them as “things we don’t have to argue about anymore”—but exactly as I worded them, not as others may paraphrase them.
Here they are:
1. Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures.
2. On average, females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and the extremes of mathematical ability.
3. On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things.
4. Many sex differences in the brain are coordinate with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior.
5. Human populations are genetically distinctive in ways that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity.
6. Evolutionary selection pressure since humans left Africa has been extensive and mostly local.
7. Continental population differences in variants associated with personality, abilities, and social behavior are common.
8. The shared environment usually plays a minor role in explaining personality, abilities, and social behavior.
9. Class structure is importantly based on differences in abilities that have a substantial genetic component.
10. Outside interventions are inherently constrained in the effects they can have on personality, abilities, and social behavior.
”
”
Charles Murray (Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class)
“
Roosevelt fought hard for the United States to host the opening session [of the United Nations]; it seemed a magnanimous gesture to most of the delegates. But the real reason was to better enable the United States to eavesdrop on its guests. Coded messages between the foreign delegations and their distant capitals passed through U.S. telegraph lines in San Francisco. With wartime censorship laws still in effect, Western Union and the other commercial telegraph companies were required to pass on both coded and uncoded telegrams to U.S. Army codebreakers. Once the signals were captured, a specially designed time-delay device activated to allow recorders to be switched on. Devices were also developed to divert a single signal to several receivers. The intercepts were then forwarded to Arlington Hall, headquarters of the Army codebreakers, over forty-six special secure teletype lines. By the summer of 1945 the average number of daily messages had grown to 289,802, from only 46,865 in February 1943. The same soldiers who only a few weeks earlier had been deciphering German battle plans were now unraveling the codes and ciphers wound tightly around Argentine negotiating points.
During the San Francisco Conference, for example, American codebreakers were reading messages sent to and from the French delegation, which was using the Hagelin M-209, a complex six-wheel cipher machine broken by the Army Security Agency during the war. The decrypts revealed how desperate France had become to maintain its image as a major world power after the war. On April 29, for example, Fouques Duparc, the secretary general of the French delegation, complained in an encrypted note to General Charles de Gaulle in Paris that France was not chosen to be one of the "inviting powers" to the conference. "Our inclusion among the sponsoring powers," he wrote, "would have signified, in the eyes of all, our return to our traditional place in the world." In charge of the San Francisco eavesdropping and codebreaking operation was Lieutenant Colonel Frank B. Rowlett, the protégé of William F. Friedman. Rowlett was relieved when the conference finally ended, and he considered it a great success. "Pressure of work due to the San Francisco Conference has at last abated," he wrote, "and the 24-hour day has been shortened. The feeling in the Branch is that the success of the Conference may owe a great deal to its contribution."
The San Francisco Conference served as an important demonstration of the usefulness of peacetime signals intelligence. Impressive was not just the volume of messages intercepted but also the wide range of countries whose secrets could be read. Messages from Colombia provided details on quiet disagreements between Russia and its satellite nations as well as on "Russia's prejudice toward the Latin American countries." Spanish decrypts indicated that their diplomats in San Francisco were warned to oppose a number of Russian moves: "Red maneuver . . . must be stopped at once," said one. A Czechoslovakian message indicated that nation's opposition to the admission of Argentina to the UN.
From the very moment of its birth, the United Nations was a microcosm of East-West spying. Just as with the founding conference, the United States pushed hard to locate the organization on American soil, largely to accommodate the eavesdroppers and codebreakers of NSA and its predecessors.
”
”
James Bamford (Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency from the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century)
“
If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented as a POET capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience, we must abate much of this eulogy. In his compositions, we regret that many irregularities, and even absurdities, should so frequently disfigure the animated and passionated scenes intermixed with them; and, at the same time, we perhaps admire the more those beauties on account of their being surrounded by such deformities. A striking peculiarity of sentiment, adapted to a single character, he frequently hits, as it were, by inspiration; but a reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold. Nervous and picturesque expressions as well as descriptions abound in him; but it is in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction. His total ignorance of all theatrical art and conduct, however material a defect, yet, as it affects the spectator rather than the reader, we can more easily excuse than that want of taste which often prevails in his productions, and which gives way only by intervals to the irradiations of genius. [....] And there may even remain a suspicion that we overrate, if possible, the greatness of his genius; in the same manner as bodies often appear more gigantic on account of their being disproportioned and misshapen.
”
”
David Hume