Acerbic Quotes

Finally, the intercom crackles and Hatmitch's acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, 'And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.

As some find picking on people a treasured entertainment, ‘recreational bullying’ has become their devious tool, to satisfy an exhibitionist urge to outdo themselves, by dredging up acerbic stories for score-settling and airing dirty laundry. ("On a doggy day")

Cameron found himself smiling as he thought about the two tough, acerbic FBI agents. "It's so cute. They're in love." "It's like watching two kittens fight with machetes," Julian muttered. "Julian." "What? Its weird!" "No its not. They're perfect for each other. Poor Zane though," Cameron murmured. "In love with Ty Grady." He couldn't imagine how frustrating that would be. Then Julian inhaled, and Cameron chuckled slightly. Yeah, he could actually.

People of Panem, we fight, we dare, we end our hunger for justice!” There‘s dead silence on the set. It goes on. And on. Finally, the intercom crackles and Haymitch‘s acerbic laugh fills the studio. He contains himself just long enough to say, “And that, my friends, is how a revolution dies.

So the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Now that I think about it, you’d have to be a glutton for punishment to keep coming near me given my acerbic personality where you’re concerned. (Tory)

Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me, and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-labourers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally, as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill humour or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Barrons knows virtually everything about me. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere he has a little file that encompasses my entire life to date, with neatly mounted, acerbically captioned photos—see Mac sunbathe, see Mac paint her nails, see Mac almost die.

He looked up as the party emerged and nickered a soft hello to his master, who was dressed in an unfamiliar green cloak and had dirt plastered on his face. Halt glanced at him, brow furrowed, and silently mouthed the words 'shut up'. Abelardshook his mane, which was as close as a horse could come to shruging, and turned away. 'My horse recognized me,' Halt said accusingly out of the side of his mouth to Horace. Horace glanced at the small shagging horse, standing beside his own massive battlehorse. 'Mine didn't,' he replied. 'So that's a fifty-fifty result.' 'I think I'd like odds better than that,' Halt replied. Horace suppressed a grin. 'Don't worry. He can probably smell you.' 'I can smell myself,' Halt replied acerbically. 'I smell of tea and soot.' Horace thought it was wiser not to reply to that.

Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.

I’m enchanted by your beauty, my lady. Welcome aboard. You make a most welcome addition to our acerbic company…a lovely-smelling one, too. (Vik)

Venom has taken Naasir's place temporarily." This time, the amusement that shaped Raphael's lips was acute. "My mother called to ask what else I have in my menagerie." Elena snorted, in no doubt of Caliane's acerbic tone. "Can you blame her? First you send her a tiger creature who eats people he doesn’t like, and then a vampire with the eyes and fangs of a viper.” She held up a finger. “Oh, and let’s not forget the mortal you keep as a pet.” “My mother does not consider you my pet, Elena. She is very kind to pets.” “Oh, ouch!

Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. “I believe it’s the devil’s job to tempt me. Not yours.” “And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?” “None that I can detect.

Where are the reporters of yesteryear?' he muttered, 'the nail biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write?

The capitan...one of those tall, arrogant, acerbically handsome niggers that most of the planet feels inferior to. Also one of those very bad men that not even postmodernism can explain away.

America hadn't really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World's Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people's military coming home in boxes for a while. The American national character wasn't suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and the Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.

Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster.

The rancid, acerbic smell of burning flesh rasped in the throats of the shocked onlookers, an odour once breathed never forgotten.

There’s a famous and often-told story about the great economist John Maynard Keynes: once, when accused of having flip-flopped on some policy issue, Keynes acerbically replied, “When the facts change, sir, I change my mind. What do you do?

Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster..

I saw you then and felt nothing. Saw you months later during the ghoul uprising and felt nothing then, too ... until I watched you tear through a group of ghouls 'til they were no more than blood in the wind. Made me so hard, I almost tripped over my cock on my way to kill the ghoul in front of me." "Romantic," I said in an acerbic tone, but a fluttering had started inside that I was having a difficult time controlling. A quick grin. "Indeed. Felt nothing when you rudely interrupted my orgy, either, except rage when I recognized you as the Guardian who'd been at Katie's supposed execution. Then we fought ... and I felt the same thing I'd felt when I watched you tear through those ghouls years before." "Something long and hard?" I supplied, adding, "I remember it hitting my foot when I was trying to hold you down." "Not that, though that, too," he said with another unrepentant grin. Then it faded as he said, "I felt that you were mine.

Grace Murphy, defender of the downtrodden! Snarking one villain at a time with her acerbic wit and pointy boobs! If there was going to be super-natural mojo involved in my life, the least I could ask for was non-sagging boobs.

acerbic

The acerbic computer helpfully attaches a legend identifying just which pieces of the wreckage are Meshner and Fabian, because she always has computing power for put-downs.

Perfect! Now we’re being chased by hoards of monkeys! Perhaps you would care to name their species as we’re attacked, just so I can appreciate the special traits of said monkey as it kills me!” He ran along beside me. “At least when the monkeys are harassing you, you don’t have time to harass me!” The monkeys were getting close. I almost tripped over one as it darted in front of my legs. Ren leapt over a fountain with his tiger power. Show-off. “Ren, you’re holding back. Just get out of here! Take the backpack and go.” He laughed acerbically as he ran ahead of me; then, he turned to look at me while jogging backward. “Ha! You wish you could get rid of me that easily!” He ran a bit farther ahead of me and switched to the tiger. Then he barreled back toward me and actually leapt over my running body into the throng of monkeys to slow them down. I shouted back at him while still running, “Hey! Careful where you jump, Mister! You almost took my head off!

There was is Arthur Nicholls much to recommend him to Charlotte Bronte, not least of which was the disparity between surface and soul, and it might be argued that Mr. Nicholls was the hidden gem of the two. Behind a veneer of quiet, ladylike demeanor, Charlotte concealed an acerbic mind and ruthlessly harsh opions on the weaknesses of the human species. Arthur, on the other hand, was the blustery, bigoted sort who could barely open his mouth without offending someone. Yet when the gloves came off, he had a great and tender heart, and was capable of love that would bear all wrongs, endure all tempests - in short, the very stuff that Charlotte took great pains to fabricate in her stories and that she was convinced she would never find.

The sheer delight of peering through a magnifying glass at a mouse bite, a moth hole or the zigzag channel carved by a woodworm, while breathing in the acerbic fragrance of the mould. It has here he came alive; here in the past.

Bless her poison tongue. "You could stay, Zoya. Entertain me with lively tales of your childhood. I find your spite very soothing." "Why don't I ask Tolya to soothe you by reciting some poetry." "There it is. So sharp, so acerbic. Better than any lullaby.

There is nothing loving about encouraging fear. Nothing. Fear leads to darkness, depression, anger, irrationality, anxiety, consternation, unrest, and ultimately, destruction. Fear, as Yoda reminds us all, is the path to the Dark Side. Fear is a weapon, not a productive tool. Fear is a means of control. Fear should never be the basis for why anyone does anything regarding the health of the mind, body, and spirit.

It struck me as particularly suspicious that Yahweh was described as being remarkably human. I mean, seriously; this God is, at times, almost too human.

A life based on [religious] faith is a life based on pure speculation, and speculation is, by its very definition, unsound.

Once a scumbag always a scumbag I say.’ Short Fran said acerbically. ‘I give it a couple of months at the most before he’s up to his old tricks again.

Her cup size didn’t suit either her personality or profession but she was descended from a long line of short, acerbic, busty women, and so this was her lot.

acerbic.

A roll in the sheets with me at present would likely snap you in half," he added. Lenora blinked. "are you so rough then, that I need to be more robust?" she asked with some acerbity.

Reason is neutral. It has no biases. It has no agendas. There are no personal interests at stake. Reason simply says, “Here is the data, be responsible with it.” As such, reason is impartial.

If human pleasure did not have both a lid and a time limit, we would not bestir ourselves to do things that were not pleasurable, such as toiling for our subsistence. And then we would not survive. By the same token, should our mass mind ever become discontented with the restricted pleasures doled out by nature, as well as disgruntled over the lack of restrictions on pain, we would omit the mandates of survival from our lives out of a stratospherically acerbic indignation. And then we would not reproduce. As a species, we do not shout into the sky, “The pleasures of this world are not enough for us.” In fact, they are just enough to drive us on like oxen pulling a cart full of our calves, which in their turn will put on the yoke. As inordinately evolved beings, though, we can postulate that it will not always be this way. “A time will come,” we say to ourselves, “when we will unmake this world in which we are battered between long burden and brief delight, and will live in pleasure for all our days.” The belief in the possibility of long-lasting, high-flown pleasures is a deceptive but adaptive flimflam. It seems that nature did not make us to feel too good for too long, which would be no good for the survival of the species, but only to feel good enough for long enough to keep us from complaining that we do not feel good all the time.

What are they doing, examining last month's costs with a microscope when they should be surveying the horizon with a telescope? [Acerbic comment about directors of Brunner Mond, where he worked.]

As a gentleman- assuming you still have some pretensions in that direction- of honor- again, perhaps presumptuous, but still supposing your passing acquaintance with the concept- it is your duty- I won't even trouble to speculate here, but remain naively hopeful- to protect those under your care.

It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.

The moment a mind closes is the moment it can no longer evolve. Intellectual inertia soon follows. I suppose that in many ways this is one of my main objections to theism; it assumes that all questions are already firmly answered. There is no room for curiosity. A closed question does not lead to other questions. Thus, there is no progression, no evolution, no molting. This is no good for me. I want to evolve. I want to progress. I want to molt. And I want to keep learning about the real mysteries of this Universe.

Mostly, however, we've got it smooth and efficient now. We don't have to think. She says, 'What are you doing?', I peer at her with irritation and expel air, we go on about our business. This morning, though, she came upstairs to the attic here while I was sitting in front of the computer doing some work on the net. 'What are you doing?' she asks. Trying to concentrate on something, distracted and harassed, I reply with some degree of acerbic aggravation. 'What does it look like I'm doing?' There's a beat, during which we hold each others eyes, unblinking. It's immediately after this beat has passed that I realize I'm wearing no trousers.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot apply a definitive conclusion to the favorable outcomes of random chance without also applying a definitive conclusion to the unfavorable outcomes of random chance. If you are not fair in both instances, it means you have just committed a variation of what is known as special pleading.

If Amy had one ounce of romance in her soul, she would be sighing with gratification. Instead, she said acerbically, “All that’s missing is the love poem.” Jermyn deposited her in a chair by the table. “I’ll order a pen and ink for you.

In three weeks, the women's team had done more for soccer in the United States than any team had ever done. Yet, the United States Soccer Federation was unprepared and unwelcoming in its acerbic response to the women's success. With petty, resentful, chauvinistic behavior, the federation would bungle what should have been its greatest moment as a national governing body. Its leaders would criticize DiCicco instead of congratulating him, they would threaten to sue the women over an indoor victory tour and they would wait an unacceptably long period before entering into contract negotiations with the team. Then, at the end of the year, the federation would offer a deal that the women found insulting. Unwilling to trust that the federation was bargaining in good faith, the women would boycott a trip to a tournament in Australia. They would become champions of the world, embraced by the president, by the largest crowd ever to watch women play and by the largest television audience for soccer in this country, embraced by everyone, it seemed, but the officials who ran the sport with the vision of a student council. Increasingly, it appeared, the only amateurs left in sports were the people running the federations that governed them.

The morning of September 1st met the citizen of the village shining with beautiful sunny weather. A refreshing breeze, enriched by acerb fragrances of maple, oak, and poplar tree leaves that already began changing their colors for autumn, blew from the lake.

The true nature of the Christian’s bondage is this: faith commands his every move, his every thought, and his every inclination. Moreover, because faith is tenacious by nature, and because it comes with this attendant stigma that angering God is unwise, the Christian is tempted—no, compelled to err on the side of his faith even in the face of overwhelming evidence that proves the contrary.

I understood where I had come from: from a dreary tangle of sadness and pretense, of longing, absurdity, inferiority and provincial pomposity, sentimental education and anachronistic ideals, repressed traumas, resignation, and helplessness. Helplessness of the acerbic, domestic variety, where small-time liars pretended to be dangerous terrorists and heroic freedom fighters, where unhappy bookbinders invented formulas for universal salvation, where dentists whispered confidentially to all their neighbors about their protracted personal correspondence with Stalin, where piano teachers, kindergarten teachers, and housewives tossed and turned tearfully at night from stifled yearning for an emotion-laden artistic life, where compulsive writers wrote endless disgruntled letters to the editor of Davar, where elderly bakers saw Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov in their dreams, where nervy, self-righteous trade-union hacks kept an apparatchik's eye on the rest of the local residents, where cashiers at the cinema or the cooperative shop composed poems and pamphlets at night.

Nevertheless, to me the God of Calvinism at its worst (as in those notorious lines in Book III of the Institutes) is simply Domitian made omnipotent. If that were Christianity, it would be too psychologically diseased a creed to take seriously at all, and its adherents would deserve only a somewhat acerbic pity, not respect. If this is one’s religion, then one is simply a diabolist who has gotten the names in the story confused. It is a vision of the faith whose scriptural and philosophical flaws are numerous and crucial, undoubtedly; but those pale in comparison to its far more disturbing moral hideousness. This aspect of orthodox Calvinism is for me unsurpassable evidence for my earlier claim that a mind conditioned to believe that it must believe something incredible is capable of convincing itself to accept just about anything, no matter how repellant to reason (or even good taste). And yet I still insist that, judging from the way Christians actually behave, no one with the exception of a few religious sociopaths really believes any of it as deeply as he or she imagines.

Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

He took a drink of the juice and cursed. "What is this shit? Poison?" Nykyrian took his acerbic tone in stride. "You can't live on alcohol." "Wanna bet?" "Wanna die?" Nykyrian pushed the juice back toward Syn. "Drink it and quit bitching." Syn mouthed those words back mockingly and added an extremely obscene insult to it. "You know, you're a little hairy to be my mother." He pulled out a small flask and added it to the juice. Nykyrian let out a deep, fierce growl that actually scared her. Syn ignored it as he drank the alcohol-laced juice. "Much better." -Syn & Nykyrian

Say!” Benedict exclaimed. “Why don’t you save her, Hastings?” Simon took one look at Lady Bridgerton (who at that point had her hand firmly wrapped around Macclesfield’s forearm) and decided he’d rather be branded an eternal coward. “Since we haven’t been introduced, I’m sure it would be most improper,” he improvised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Anthony returned. “You’re a duke.” “So?” “So?” Anthony echoed. “Mother would forgive any impropriety if it meant gaining an audience for Daphne with a duke.” “Now look here,” Simon said hotly, “I’m not some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of your mother.” “You have spent a lot of time in Africa, haven’t you?” Colin quipped. Simon ignored him. “Besides, your sister said—” All three Bridgerton heads swung round in his direction. Simon immediately realized he’d blundered. Badly. “You’ve met Daphne?” Anthony queried, his voice just a touch too polite for Simon’s comfort. Before Simon could even reply, Benedict leaned in ever-so-slightly closer, and asked, “Why didn’t you mention this?” “Yes,” Colin said, his mouth utterly serious for the first time that evening. “Why?” Simon glanced from brother to brother and it became perfectly clear why Daphne must still be unmarried. This belligerent trio would scare off all but the most determined— or stupid— of suitors. Which would probably explain Nigel Berbrooke. “Actually,” Simon said, “I bumped into her in the hall as I was making my way into the ballroom. It was”— he glanced rather pointedly at the Bridgertons—“ rather obvious that she was a member of your family, so I introduced myself.” Anthony turned to Benedict. “Must have been when she was fleeing Berbrooke.” Benedict turned to Colin. “What did happen to Berbrooke? Do you know?” Colin shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest. Probably left to nurse his broken heart.” Or broken head, Simon thought acerbically. “Well, that explains everything, I’m sure,” Anthony said, losing his overbearing big-brother expression and looking once again like a fellow rake and best friend. “Except,” Benedict said suspiciously, “why he didn’t mention it.” “Because I didn’t have the chance,” Simon bit off, about ready to throw his arms up in exasperation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Anthony, you have a ridiculous number of siblings, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be introduced to all of them.” “There are only two of us present,” Colin pointed out. “I’m going home,” Simon announced. “The three of you are mad.” Benedict, who had seemed to be the most protective of the brothers, suddenly grinned. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” “No, thank God.

Allen C. Guelzo, a particularly acerbic critic, published several articles that denounced the 1619 Project for treating “slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated…not as a regrettable chapter in the distant past, but as a living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based.

I wonder where everyone is," she muttered. "Sleeping, if they have any idea what's good for them," Dunford replied acerbically. "I suppose we could get started on our own," she said doubtfully. For the first time all morning he smiled broadly and meant it. "I know less than nothing about stonemasonry, so I vote we wait.

While faith may be helpful to the one possessing it, making him feel good and fulfilled and peaceful inside, one thing it is not is responsible. It cannot be. No matter how much you might value your faith, it cannot be responsible. Why not? Faith, by its very nature, is invested with your personal feelings on any given matter.

If the Bible is accurate in its assertions (a generous statement on our part), then we must also observe that anyone who ultimately comes to God does so because God made it happen. But this seems to imply that God makes it happen for some but doesn’t make it happen for others. Why? Is this fair? Is this good? Is this justice? Is this love?

Christianity voids any significance that would otherwise be attributed to a human life. It reduces all the good things you’ve done and all the bad things you’ve done to, well, nothing. All the good you’ve done won’t matter if you don’t have Jesus. All the bad you’ve done won’t matter if you do have Jesus. In either case, what you do doesn’t matter.

his far-sight serving him well once more. “Fuck,” I complain. I purposefully left those men behind, because they were all too ill to fight. It seems they’ve taken the decision from me, and I know I won’t be able to send them away, not now they’ve come so far. I expect an acerbic comment from Edmund, a counterpart to his on-going worry. His response puzzles me. “Fucking clever bastards,

I just cannot help but feel as though [Christianity] cheapens life. After all, what we must conclude at the end of the day is this disheartening and somewhat debilitating possibility: everything you think, feel, hope for, long for, experience, taste, smell, touch, learn, comprehend, discover, create, work toward, work on, and do, means absolutely nothing to the Christian God if you do not have faith in Jesus.

I thought I had not been out for long; I showed no symptoms of concussion or other ill effects from the blow, save a sore patch on the base of my skull. My captor, a man of few words, had responded to my questions, demands and acerbic remarks alike with the all-purpose Scottish noise which can best be rendered phonetically as "Mmmmphm." Had I been in any doubt as to him nationality, that sound alone would have been sufficient to remove it.

The dumbing down, oversimplification, or flattened character of public speech may make our declamations and documents more accessible, but it deprives us all of a measure of beauty and clarity that could enrich our lives together. In more and more venues where speech and writing are required, adequate is adequate. A most exhilarating denunciation of this sort of mediocrity may be found in Mark Twain's acerbic little essay, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," in which he observes: When a person has a poor ear for music, he will flat and sharp right along without knowing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word-musician. His ear was satisfied with the approximate word.

He’d never quite managed to make himself immune to her beauty, and he was glad his arms were chained to the bed or he might have been tempted to reach for her. “Keep still,” she snapped. “You’re worse than a child given too many cakes.” Bless her poison tongue. “You could stay, Zoya. Entertain me with lively tales of your childhood. I find your spite very soothing.” “Why don’t I ask Tolya to soothe you by reciting some poetry?” “There it is. So sharp, so acerbic. Better than any lullaby.

Gideon rose up to his full height, watching their progress as they faded into the night. He then turned his diamondlike eyes until they narrowed on the female Demon who had remained so still and quiet that she had gone unremembered. An interesting feat, considering the remarkable presence of the beauty. “You have grown strong, Legna,” he remarked quietly. “In only a decade? I am sure it has not made much of a difference.” “To teleport me from such a great distance took respectful skill and strength. You well know it.” “Thank you. I shall have to remember to feel weak and fluttery inside now that you complimented me.” Gideon narrowed his eyes coldly on her. “You sound like that acerbic little human. It does not become you.” “I sound like myself,” Legna countered, her irritation crackling through his thoughts as the emotion overflowed her control. “Or have you forgotten that I am far too immature for your tastes?” “I never said such a thing.” “You did. You said I was too young to even begin to understand you.” She lifted her chin, so lost in her wounded pride that she spoke before she thought. “At least I was never so immature that Jacob had to punish me for stalking a human.” Gideon’s spine went extremely straight, his eyes glittering with warning as she hit home on the still-raw wound. “Maturity had nothing to do with that, and you well know it. It is below you to be so petty, Magdelegna.” “I see, so I am groveling around in the gutter now? How childish of me. However can you bear it? I shall leave immediately.” Before Gideon could speak, Legna burst into smoke and sulfur, disappearing but for her laughter that rang through his mind. Gideon sighed, easily acknowledging her that her laughter was a taunt meant to remind him that with her departure, so too went his easy transportation home. Nevertheless, he was more perturbed to realize that he’d once against managed to say all the wrong things to her. Perhaps someday he would manage to speak with her without irritating her. However, he didn’t think that was likely to happen this millennium.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and these findings about the penetralia of sexual life gave the writer a sort of justification for a native acerbity. Afterwards, when love left him in the lurch and he became the wounded man who was such a trial to us all, he took refuge in a laughter and cynicism which were far from his real nature – a secretive one. He had at last discovered that love had no pith in it, and that the projection of one’s own feelings upon the image of a beloved was in the long run an act of self-mutilation.

If the number of religious converts who converted during a season of intense suffering is high, then does that mean that the number of religious abstainers who abstained because their life was already satisfying is correspondingly low? If so, does this argue for or against religion’s relevance in the world? If theistic religion is attractive, useful, and remedial only for those broken people in the most dismal of needful situations, then is this truly the work of a God or is it just the human psyche gravitating toward a comforting solution?

Since one could virtually open the Bible to any page and likely find something that speaks to his particular situation, is it fair to attribute this to the voice of God? After all, the Bible is not the only relevant book in existence. There are other religions with other scriptural texts which could do the same job. In fact, the text need not even be “scriptural.” I could select Sartre’s “Existentialism and Humanism” off the shelf, randomly flip to any page, and likely find something applicable to my life. Does this mean God is speaking through the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who was by no means considered a friend to Christian thought? If the answer is yes, then who really needs to read the Bible? If this God is capable of turning anything into his “word” at any time, then you could theoretically receive a message from him in your Alpha-Bits.

You will never bore me, Nelissuna. I can see that fact straight to my soul.” “But I can clearly see you being easily capable of boring me to tears,” she countered archly, trying to free her trapped hand with a determined tug. He was even stronger than he looked, she thought. “How are you feeling?” he asked, noticing her struggle and insults about the same way he would notice a passing speck of dust. “Why can you not tell me? You are the medic, are you not?” She exhaled sharply. “Will you please let go of me?” “No.” Legna growled in frustration at him. “You are so obnoxious!” she accused. “I hate it when you do that!” “Do what? Answer a question? If it disturbs you, I will ignore your questions from now on.” “You know exactly what I mean. I hate it when you lay down the word no as if it were the last letter of the law. And do not think I do not know that you are doing it on purpose just to irritate me, because I do!” “Then you should cease giving me the opportunity to say it,” he told her, his tone so matter-of-fact that she almost screamed at him. “And you should be careful of those little growls you insist on making, Neliss. They are . . . very stimulating.” Suddenly Legna forgot all about trading barbs with him and became very aware of his warmth above and below her trapped hand, the solid strength she leaned up against so cozily, and the very clear hunger that was brewing under the humor he had been using to hide it. Now that he had her full attention rather than her acerbic defensives, he slipped his hand out from under his head and reached to touch her soft, warm cheek with fingertips as light as the ones she had explored him with. “You are so very lovely, Legna. I have always thought so. Even as a child, you were quite stunning.” “It took you long enough to tell me so,” she said, but there was no true energy to the would-be sarcastic remark.

Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making ‘laws’ beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about ‘Holy Mother the State,’ or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God.

Ergo, while the Argument from Design appears to be a nice, neat answer to account for the presence of a multifarious Universe, the truth is that it backfires on itself, shifting the need for an explanation back and back and back…and back…without end, without resolution. This is called an infinite regress, and its presence in the logic of the argument fails to prove the existence of God; if anything, it reveals that the idea of a designer is patently ridiculous, even more so than a godless Cosmos. The argument therefore answers nothing; it merely moves the mystery of origins to an even higher level, demanding that the Creator have his own Creator.

They fire lots of bullets very, very quickly. Quicker than anything else.” I looked up and around the bedroom, the mismatched furniture, the weirdly firm light. “Why? What could you hunt with those? What could they have to do with anything?” “I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s what’s so unnerving.” I rubbed a hand to my forehead, feeling an ache beginning to build behind my skull. “Armand.” His eyes went to mine. I had to say this carefully; I had no wish to add to his despair, but I couldn’t let it go. “Do you think…do you suppose it’s possible that your father might…mean to do you any harm?” But I’d actually made him smile. A real one, too, even if it came acerbic and thin. “With a pair of Vickers? Not unless he means to mount them in the hallway and spry me with bullets when I’m not paying attention. Seems like rather a spot of work for him. Surely even an unwelcome heir is better than none.” I returned his smile as I pulled away my hand. “I think we need to teach you how to Turn to smoke, just in case. It’s a handy thing to be able to vanish in a hurry.” His smile widened, but there was no humor left to it. “Handy.” He fell back against the blankets of the bed, his eyes gone shiny and hard. “If I could vanish into smoke, Eleanore, I’d leave this place and never return. That’s a promise.” “Just like Rue,” I said softly.

Vik?" The little metallic bird postured on the windowsill, eyeing him coldly. Vik's paint was iridescent and glossed-something the mecha had never liked, since he said it made him look like a girlie bird. "I'm surprised you remember my name." Vik paused before he added an acerbic, "Asshole." Syn laughed as he rolled away from Shahara. "You prickly little shit, get over here." Vik swooped in to land between the two of them on the bed. He burst apart, shifting from bird form to that of a more traditional mechbot. With his hand, he smacked Syn in the arm. "I thought you were coming back for me." "I tried. I really did, but by the time I could, I figured you'd be gone." Vik hissed then looked at Shahara. "He lie to you like that?" -Syn & Vik

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

In truth, most of the fights over the 1619 Project were never really about the facts. The Princeton historian Allen C. Guelzo, a particularly acerbic critic, published several articles that denounced the 1619 Project for treating “slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated…not as a regrettable chapter in the distant past, but as a living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based.” Guelzo then made clear that the source of his antipathy was not just what the project was saying but who was saying it: “It is the bitterest of ironies that the 1619 Project dispenses this malediction from the chair of ultimate cultural privilege in America, because in no human society has an enslaved people suddenly found itself vaulted into positions of such privilege, and with the consent—even the approbation—of those who were once the enslavers.

Max.” It was a sharp whisper to reinstate the silence and Max did not know what kind of acerbic retort waited on the other side of his stilted pause. Kevin had never snapped at him before, but there was a part of him that thought it would happen today. His brother turned to face him, his deep blue eyes lined with tears and burning with anguish. “You’re my brother,” he said, his voice low and unsteady. “You already know how I feel…and I know how you feel…so there’s no need to talk about this. And if you mention his name again, I’m gonna ask you leave.” Max nodded. That wasn’t the verbal lashing he was expecting but it made him understand his role in the situation. Kevin hadn’t played video games all day for the entertainment. He had done it for the distraction. And he hadn’t allowed Max to sit in his room for so long because he intended to open up. He had kept Max there because he wanted the silent comfort, the pillar of strength only a brother could provide. - Kevin to Max

Ode To A Lemon" Out of lemon flowers loosed on the moonlight, love's lashed and insatiable essences, sodden with fragrance, the lemon tree's yellow emerges, the lemons move down from the tree's planetarium Delicate merchandise! The harbors are big with it- bazaars for the light and the barbarous gold. We open the halves of a miracle, and a clotting of acids brims into the starry divisions: creation's original juices, irreducible, changeless, alive: so the freshness lives on in a lemon, in the sweet-smelling house of the rind, the proportions, arcane and acerb. Cutting the lemon the knife leaves a little cathedral: alcoves unguessed by the eye that open acidulous glass to the light; topazes riding the droplets, altars, aromatic facades. So, while the hand holds the cut of the lemon, half a world on a trencher, the gold of the universe wells to your touch: a cup yellow with miracles, a breast and a nipple perfuming the earth; a flashing made fruitage, the diminutive fire of a planet.

Madge, her eldest sister, looked about forty, rather than thirty two. Her black dress drained her of colour; her shoulders had adopted their perpetual hunched position, which she had adopted to compensate for her height. As a child Madge had towered over her peers, stopping only when she reached five foot eleven. Lesley knew, without seeing them, that she would be wearing the usual flat shoes, the only footwear she would allow anywhere near her size eight feet. Sitting beside Madge, Pamela, her youngest sister, blonde hair flowing over her shoulders, was thankfully dressed fairly decorously in a black coat over a black pinstripe tunic dress with a high neckline. Remembering Pamela’s usual mode of dress, Lesley could only deduce that their mother must have prevailed upon her this time, in deference to the occasion. To her left Alan, at twenty four, the baby of the family, was talking in low tones to his girlfriend Erica, his fair hair and her dark locks forming a striking contrast. From Erica’s expression however, she guessed that Alan was currently on the receiving end of her infamous (and often malicious) acerbic wit.

They entered the summer parlor, where the Ravenels chatted amiably with his sisters, Phoebe and Seraphina. Phoebe, the oldest of the Challon siblings, had inherited their mother's warm and deeply loving nature, and their father's acerbic wit. Five years ago she had married her childhood sweetheart, Henry, Lord Clare, who had suffered from a chronic illness for most of his life. The worsening symptoms had gradually reduced him to a shadow of the man he'd once been, and he'd finally succumbed while Phoebe was pregnant with their second child. Although the first year of mourning was over, Phoebe hadn't yet returned to her former self. She went outdoors so seldom that her freckles had vanished, and she looked wan and thin. The ghost of grief still lingered in her gaze. Their younger sister, Seraphina, an effervescent eighteen-year-old with strawberry-blonde hair, was talking to Cassandra. Although Seraphina was old enough to have come out in society by now, the duke and duchess had persuaded her to wait another year. A girl with her sweet nature, her beauty, and her mammoth dowry would be targeted by every eligible man in Europe and beyond. For Seraphina, the London Season would be a gauntlet, and the more prepared she was, the better.

acerbic

The song had magic in it. It made me something more than I had been. I was no longer just the acerbic guy intent on drinking himself to death. There was now a small but special thing about me. I could do something: I could play a song, transport people from their own lives for a second, and make them sad. It was music’s promise of transformation that brought me to this graveyard of dreams, New York City, in

Jobs’s taste for merciless criticism was notorious; Ive recalled that, years ago, after seeing colleagues crushed, he protested. Jobs replied, “Why would you be vague?,” arguing that ambiguity was a form of selfishness: “You don’t care about how they feel! You’re being vain, you want them to like you.” Ive was furious, but came to agree. “It’s really demeaning to think that, in this deep desire to be liked, you’ve compromised giving clear, unambiguous feedback,” he said. He lamented that there were “so many anecdotes” about Jobs’s acerbity: “His intention, and motivation, wasn’t to be hurtful.

Passionate and acerbic, Gupt would spare no one, not even his own community. On learning that the Calcutta Marwaris had opened a school that would impart education in English, Hindi and Sanskrit to their boys, Gupt, writing under the pseudonym Shiv Sambhu Sharma in Bharatmitra, the Calcutta journal he edited, hit out at the community telling them not to ‘dare come near knowledge’. Instead, he said, it would be better if they worshipped the camel that had brought them to Calcutta, and if possible bring a camel to the city zoo since it did not have one. He wrote, ‘Your wealth has been acquired through hard work and mental machinations. Whatever you have is yours and not related to knowledge. People who cannot digest your prosperity are whispering “vidya, vidya” (knowledge, knowledge) in your ears. Of what use is vidya? You cannot wear or eat it. If you have money hundreds of knowledgeable persons bow before you even if you are a fool. They praise your sad face . . . without education you have become Raja and Rai Bahadur and the future only knows what more is in store.’18

Gallagher opens his mouth, shuts it, tries again. “Could make some Molotovs?” he suggests. He nods toward the kitchen. “There’s bottles of cooking oil in there.” “I don’t believe breaking bottles would make a particularly loud noise,” Dr Caldwell says acerbically. “It

Kate’s mind was obviously not lodged as firmly in the gutter as his, since she chose to sit in the chair opposite him, even though there was plenty of room in his chair, provided they didn’t mind squeezing next to each other. Even the chair kitty-corner to his would have been better; at least then he could have yanked her up and hauled her onto his lap. If he tried that maneuver where she was seated across the table, he’d have to drag her through the middle of the tea service. Anthony narrowed his eyes as he assessed the situation, trying to guess exactly how much tea would spill on the rug, and then how much it would cost to replace the rug, and then whether he really cared about such a piddling amount of money, anyway . . . “Anthony? Are you listening to me?” He looked up. Kate was resting her arms on her knees as she leaned forward to talk with him. She looked very intent and just a little bit irritated. “Were you?” she persisted. He blinked. “Listening to me?” she ground out. “Oh.” He grinned. “No.” She rolled her eyes but didn’t bother to scold him any further than that. “I was saying that we should have Edwina and her young man over for dinner one night. To see if we think they suit. I have never before seen her so interested in a gentleman, and I do so want her to be happy.” Anthony reached for a biscuit. He was hungry, and he’d pretty much given up on the prospect of getting his wife into his lap. On the other hand, if he managed to clear off the cups and saucers, yanking her across the table might not have such messy consequences . . . He surreptitiously pushed the tray bearing the tea service to the side. “Hmmm?” he grunted, chewing on the biscuit. “Oh, yes, of course. Edwina should be happy.” Kate eyed him suspiciously. “Are you certain you don’t want some tea with that biscuit? I’m not a great aficionado of brandy, but I would imagine that tea would taste better with shortbread.” Actually, Anthony thought, the brandy did quite well with shortbread, but it certainly couldn’t hurt to empty out the teapot a bit, just in case he toppled it over. “Capital idea,” he said, grabbing a teacup and thrusting it toward her. “Tea’s just the thing. Can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it earlier.” “I can’t imagine, either,” she murmured acerbically— if one could murmur in an acerbic manner, and after hearing Kate’s low sarcasm, Anthony rather thought one could. But he just gave her a jovial smile as he reached out and took his teacup from her outstretched hand.

And so passed the next several days. I prowled around the various Court functions to mark where Shevraeth was, and if I spotted him I’d invariably sneak back to the State Wing and slip into the memoirs room to read some more--when I wasn’t writing letters. My response to the Unknown had caused a lengthy answer in kind, and for a time we exchanged letters--sometimes thrice a day. It was such a relief to be able to express myself freely and without cost. He seemed to appreciate my jokes, for his style gradually metamorphosed from the carefully neutral mentor to a very witty kind of dialogue that verged from time to time on the acerbic--just the kind of humor that appealed most to me. We exchanged views about different aspects of history, and I deeply enjoyed his trenchant observations on the follies of our ancestors. He never pronounced judgment on current events and people, despite some of my hints; and I forbore asking directly, lest I inadvertently say something about someone in his family--or worse, him. For I still had no clue to his identity. Savona continued to flirt with me at every event we met at. Deric claimed my company for every sporting event. And shy Geral always gravitated to my side at balls; when we talked--which was a lot--it was about music. Though others among the lords were friendly and pleasant, these three were the most attentive. None of them hinted at letters--nor did I. If in person the Unknown couldn’t bring himself to talk on the important subjects that increasingly took up time and space in his letters, well, I could sympathize. There was a person--soon to be king--whom I couldn’t bring myself to face. Anyway, the only mention of current events that I made in my letters was about my own experience. Late one night, when I’d drunk a little too much spiced wine, I poured out my pent-up feelings about my ignorant past, and to my intense relief he returned to me neither scorn nor pity. That did not stop me from going around for a day wary of smiles or fans hiding faces, for I’d realized that though the letters could be pleasant and encouraging, I could very well be providing someone with prime material for gossip. Never before had I felt the disadvantage of not knowing who he was, whereas he knew me by name and sight. But no one treated me any differently than usual; there were no glances of awareness, no bright, superior smiles of those who know a secret. So it appeared he was as benevolent as his letters seemed, yet perfectly content to remain unknown. And I was content to leave it that way.

The executive teams at Apple and Pixar are constantly arguing with each other. Everybody wears their thoughts on their sleeves at Pixar. Everybody’s totally straight with what they think, and the same is beginning to happen at Apple.” His inner circle understood that Steve’s acerbic criticism wasn’t personal. They’d all learned how to, as Susan Barnes said, “get through the yelling to the reason for the yelling.” Steve expected them to do that, and he expected them to push back when he was wrong. “I fought with him for sixteen years,” remembers Rubinstein. “I mean, it was almost comedic. I remember one

Never meant to be more than a B picture entertainment produced on the Universal International backlot and at the Iverson Ranch (a five-hundred-acre family property often used for location shoots), it is one of those unexpected surprises that make you want to know about everyone who had a part in creating such a diverting picture. The film has no single star, but rather an ensemble of superb actors: Vincent Price (Tracy Holland), hamming up it as a ham actor, and Eve Arden (Lily Martin) playing an aging and acerbic stage star.

However, on this day, things were already out of whack by 10 A.M., and it was all Peter Reynolds’s fault. For the first time in her life Nina had a family obligation, and she wasn’t entirely sure she liked it. Peter had texted her at nine, an hour he said was the earliest acceptable time to contact someone on a Sunday. Nina had still been asleep. Somewhat acerbically, she suggested he recalibrate and set her earliest acceptable time to eleven. “No,” said her nephew, “if I make an exception for you, I’ll need to customize my entire system, and that won’t work at all.” “You have a system?” “Of course. There is a standard weekday wake-up time, and a different weekend time. There is a time in the evening after which one cannot call anyone except good friends or lovers, and a time after which one can only call if there is an emergency.” Nina’s phone was lying on her pillow, on speaker. “I assume there’s a booty call exception to that rule.

She must have achieved almost exactly what she wanted: a nice Early Night, a nice Early Life. It was certainly easy, easy and empty of spirit. She personified the terrible sin of sloth at its most paltry. Not the sloth of despair in the face of God. Despair would be like staying up spiritually too late.

Cover hatred and fear with love and delight, and with innocent things. With love and delight, and with innocent things. The trouble was that people were cynical about innocent things, or too embarrassed to celebrate them. The proponents of confrontation, violence, the acerbic comment, laughed at innocent things, thought them naïve, considered them beneath them. How easy it was to destroy the civilised structures of the world; how easy to poison the wells.

the tone adopted by the Dowager Marchioness of Polbrook and the acerbic nature of her remarks was promising.

He also engaged in some youthful boasting. “I can with truth assure you, I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.” 18 Instead of being traumatized by battle, he wanted to illustrate his coolness under fire. When King George II encountered Washington’s blithe comments about the “charming” sound of bullets in a London periodical, he detected a false note of swagger. “He would not say so if he had been used to hear many,” the king said acerbically.

A series of disconcerting questions nibbles at hearts of troubled youths. These same unanswered questions, along with their acerbic toxins, reveal their pungent fumes more frequently and with greater intensity as a person rushes headfirst into life’s concrete jungle.

He took a drink of the juice and cursed. “What is this shit? Poison?” Nykyrian took his acerbic tone in stride. “You can’t live on alcohol.” “Wanna bet?” “Wanna die?” Nykyrian pushed the juice back toward Syn. “Drink it and quit bitching.” Syn mouthed those words back mockingly and added an extremely obscene insult to it. “You know, you’re a little hairy to be my mother.” He pulled out a small flask and added it to the juice. Nykyrian let out a deep, fierce growl that actually scared her. Syn ignored it as he drank the alcohol-laced juice. “Much better.

Me and Jason against you and Stacy.” Alana handed Alexis a badminton racket and grinned. “Yay,” Alexis said without even a smidgeon of enthusiasm. “Do you want to serve?” Stacy asked Alexis when Jason and Alana moved to the other side of the net. “Serve you what? There’s no staff here to take care of your every whim, princess,” Alexis said lowly so the others wouldn’t hear. Stacy recoiled at the remark, then her temper flared. “You know what I was asking,” she replied coolly. “You can serve. Here’s the birdie,” Alexis replied and handed it to her on her middle finger. “Shuttlecock,” Stacy corrected. “Butthole…cock.” Alexis shrugged when Stacy glared at her. “That’s what we used to call them.” “Uh-huh,” Stacy said as she prepared to serve. The birdie sailed over the net,and volley began. This went on for a few minutes, then Alexis heard a hard thwack behind her, and the birdie stung her on the back of the thigh. She turned and looked at Stacy with fire in her eyes. “My bad,” Stacy said nonchalantly.Alexis picked up the birdie and hit it toward Jason. He served again. Stacy returned and nailed Alexis in the back of the head. “I’m so sorry,” Stacy said with an acerbic smile. “I’m having a hard time getting my shuttlecock up for you.” ...An intense volley began, and Alana said, “Uh, hey, y’all are supposed to be hitting it to us.” Jason watched in fascination. “I think they’re trying to kill the birdie.” Alexis finally missed and snatched it off the ground. “We were just warming up.” “Yeah, I’m good and hot now,” Stacy added between clenched teeth...“My serve,” Alexis said as she whirled around, then lowered her voice as she passed Stacy. “You’re about to find out whywe call them butthole cocks.” Stacy held her racket out like a sword. “How about I just waffle your ass now?” Alexis struck a fencing pose, or at least she thought she did. “On guard, biatch.”...Alana rushed under the net and stepped between the two staring daggers at each other. “Hey, we want to be able to use these rackets again. Maybe we should take a break since y’all kind of murdered the birdie.” Alana laughed. “It’s missing two plastic feathers...

Despite his famously hearty laugh and cheerful public persona, he is capable of the same kind of acerbic outbursts as Apple’s late founder, Steve Jobs, who could terrify any employee who stepped into an elevator with him.

« Et toujours seul ? » lui demande-t-elle d’un ton acerbe. Un voile passe sur le visage de Roger. Aussi rapidement qu’un après-midi d’été, quand le ciel s’assombrit, que le froid remplace si vite la brûlure du soleil sur la peau. Un petit nuage poussé par un souffle de vent, un mot qui suspend son vol et qui donne envie de plier sa serviette et de rentrer bien au chaud… (p.97)

We offhandedly devised many imaginary scenarios during the course of any given day, a habit that began as acerbic banter between two hypersharp intelligences, whose function seemed to be to absorb the venom of normal mundane tensions, anxieties, jealousies, resentments, and nano-betrayals, but gradually transformed into a daily hedge against death, an acknowledgement of our painful ephemerality, and a bid to take the kitchen utensils of mortality out of the hands of happenstance and put them back into our own drawer.

He was quiet and thoughtful, letting her do all the talking until she would reach one of her acerbic pitches and he would murmur, "You don't really mean that." But he had never seemed put off.

What you say is partly true: our contentions do bring on us some scandal. The outer world, though it constantly reviles us for our human infirmities and throws in our teeth the fact that being clergymen we are still no more than men, demands of us that we should do our work with godlike perfection. There is nothing god-like about us: we differ from each other with the acerbity common to man; we triumph over each other with human frailty; we allow differences on subjects of divine origin to produce among us antipathies and enmities which are anything but divine. This is all true. But what would you have in place of it? There is no infallible head for a church on earth.

Mencken, the acerbic social critic of the 1920s, put it: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.