“
I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau
“
People don't read any more. It's a sad state of affairs. Reading's the only thing that allows you to use your imagination. When you watch films it's someone else's vision, isn't it?"
[Interview in The Independent, 15 October 2005]
”
”
Lemmy Kilmister
“
When God Created Mothers"
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."
The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way."
It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded.
One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."
God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...."
I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."
The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.
But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."
Can it think?"
Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.
There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model."
It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear."
What's it for?"
It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."
You are a genius, " said the angel.
Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.
”
”
Erma Bombeck (When God Created Mothers)
“
If love makes you sad, you acquire a little depth, a little compassion. If it makes you happy, you learn how to be joyous. Every relationship should color your soul to a certain degree, don't you think? Every friendship, every love affair - each one should build up the chambers of your heart the way a sea creature builds the chamber of his shell.
”
”
Sharon Shinn (Jovah's Angel (Samaria, #2))
“
She had assumed they would see each other every day but she hadn’t really thought about the implications of having an affair with a married man. It wasn’t going to be a normal relationship.
”
”
Kassandra Cross (Carrie's First Time (Carrie #1))
“
I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. We dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical buzz, just endorphins or hormones, but accept those 3 A.M. bouts of despair as unsentimental insights into the truth about our lives.
”
”
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
“
we were in her big oak
bed
facing south
so much of the rest of the
time
that I memorized
each wrinkle in the
drapes
and especially
all the cracks in the
ceiling.
I used to play games with
her with that ceiling.
"see those cracks up
there?"
"where?"
"look where I'm pointing..."
"o.k."
"now, see those cracks, see the
pattern? it forms and image. do you see
what it is?"
"umm, umm ..."
"go on, what is it?"
"I know! It's a man on top of a woman!"
"wrong. it's a flamingo standing
by a stream."
. . .
we finally got free of
one another.
it's sad but it's
standard operating procedure
(I am constantly confused by
the lack of durability in human
affairs).
I suppose the parting was
unhappy
maybe even ugly.
it's been 3 or 4
years now
and I wonder if she
ever thinks of
me, of what I am doing?
”
”
Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
“
No amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself, for the outcome of all affairs is determined by God's decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee.
”
”
Umar ibn Al-Khattab
“
Universe, not again. You can't cause another tragedy in my life.
”
”
Sharon Carter (Love Auction: Too Risky to Love Again)
“
Ahh, love, why is it so easy to let you in, but so difficult to let you out? Why couldn’t you subsist only two-sided?
”
”
Pawan Mishra (Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy)
“
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.
”
”
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
“
It’s a sad state of affairs when I’m the one bringing sanity to the equation
”
”
M.A. George (Relativity (Proximity, #2))
“
A nation forgetting its own laughter is in a sad state of affairs
”
”
Sherry Marie Gallagher (Boulder Blues: A Tale of the Colorado Counterculture)
“
Authors go on writing books, and so we go on reading them. It is a sad state of affairs.
”
”
Elizabeth Aston (Mr. Darcy's Daughters (Darcy #1))
“
You know, it's a sad and unfortunate state of affairs that you have to live in a world where eight-year-olds refuse to believe in anything that they cannot touch or measure, and anyone who happens to see a thing that is invisible to most people is immediately branded a lunatic.
”
”
Caitlín R. Kiernan (Daughter of Hounds)
“
Bored women join clubs and volunteer. Sad women have affairs.
”
”
Jill Alexander Essbaum (Hausfrau)
“
The end of all things--a book, a life, a summer, a marriage, the last bite of cake, the last of innocence lost, a love affair--is always sad, at least a little bit sad, because it is the end, the end of that.
”
”
Binnie Kirshenbaum (The Scenic Route)
“
You see," he said sadly, "you have no instincts."
"It was intelligence you were requiring just now," I pointed out.
"The two often go together," said Poirot enigmatically.
”
”
Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, #1))
“
Don't fucking move," Jacob said, pressing the gun into Nick's back.
”
”
Sharon Carter (Love Auction: Too Risky to Love Again)
“
In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. (I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-- jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (Imperial Bedrooms)
“
In a love affair, most seek an eternal homeland. Others, but very few, eternal voyaging. These latter are melancholics, for whom contact with mother earth is to be shunned. They seek the person who will keep far from them the homeland’s sadness. To that person, they remain faithful.
”
”
Walter Benjamin (One Way Street And Other Writings)
“
Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didn’t mean
anything.”
“Yes, it meant something.” Then he said, “Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of
people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Adam.
“It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.”
“And memory.”
“Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us.
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
You have an affair because you are not getting what you want from your loved one. You want more: more love, more sex, more attention, more fun. You want someone to look at you with lust - after years of laundry - transforming you into something radiant. You want it, you need it, you owe it yourself to get it. To live any other way is to be muffled and gray and marching meaninglessly toward death. You want what she gave you at the start (but what you had hoped would expand and intensify instead of shrinking until you find yourself so sad, so resentful, you can barely stand to be you).
You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.
”
”
Ariel Levy (The Rules Do Not Apply)
“
Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned, that thing I saw (that horror of a snake emptiness) when I took the deep iodine deathbreath on the Big Sur beach is now justified and hosannah'd and raised up like a sacred urn to Heaven in the mere fact of the taking off of clothes and clashing wits and bodies in the inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love- don't let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even ever dares to write the true story of lovem it's awful, we're stuck with a 50% incomplete literature and drama- lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow- the secret underground truth of mad desire hiding under fenders under buried junkyards throughout the world, never mentioned in newspapers, written about haltingly and like corn by authors and painted tongue in cheek by artists, agh, just listen to Tristan und Isolde by Wagner and think of him in a Bavarian field with his beloved naked beauty under fall leaves.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Big Sur)
“
we finally got free of
one another.
it's sad but it's
standard operating procedure
(I am constantly confused by
the lack of durability in human
affairs).
”
”
Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
“
It's a sad state of affairs when we make fun of people for reading instead of making reading fun for people.
”
”
Jen Selinsky
“
Is the burden of independent thought wearing you down? Do you dread the indecision that awaits every time you open your wardrobe? Are you embarrassed by your reticence when you hear other people discuss current affairs, music, relationships, etcetera? Don't worry, you're not alone. Help is just a pair of clippers away! We've helped thousands of sad losers avoid confronting their loneliness and inadequacy, and we can do the same for you. We'll tell you what to wear. We'll tell you what to think. We'll tell you what music to listen to. and most importantly, we'll bring you together with lots of people exactly the same as yourself — it's just like having friends!
”
”
Christopher Brookmyre (A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away)
“
She could hardly tell him it was because the child had been born a girl, destined from birth to be bound and gagged, to never be free. And she seemed to have sensed it far sooner than most. Sadly, the poor fool seemed to believe that she could actually do something about it.
”
”
Sonali Dev (A Bollywood Affair (Bollywood, #1))
“
There are some people who say they’re able to ‘compartmentalize’ things, as though it is possible to put negative or distressing thoughts into neat mental drawers to be taken out only at a psychologically convenient time. It’s a beguiling idea, but I’ve never bought it. In my experience, sadness and regret seek into one’s consciousness willy-nilly, or they suddenly leap out at you with a snarl. The only real remedy is time…
”
”
Isabel Wolff (A Vintage Affair)
“
As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days—four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov
“
when the kingdom of God is manifested, it’s obvious. It looks like Jesus. But America as a nation has clearly never looked remotely like Jesus. There was nothing distinctively Christlike about the way America was “discovered,” conquered, or governed in the early years. To the contrary, the way this nation was “discovered,” conquered, and governed was a rather typical, barbaric, violent, kingdom-of-the-world affair. The immoral barbarism displayed in the early (and subsequent) years of this country was, sadly, pretty typical by kingdom-of-the-world standards. The fact that it was largely done under the banner of Christ doesn’t make it more Christian, any more than any other bloody conquest done in Jesus’ name throughout history (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) qualifies them as Christlike.
”
”
Gregory A. Boyd (The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church)
“
the child had been born a girl, destined from birth to be bound and gagged, to never be free. And she seemed to have sensed it far sooner than most. Sadly, the poor fool seemed to believe that she could actually do something about it.
”
”
Sonali Dev (A Bollywood Affair (Bollywood, #1))
“
Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
Loneliness is such a sad affair.
”
”
Karen Carpenter
“
It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair.
”
”
Robert Harris (Archangel)
“
He gained height, grew thin, the hair on his temples had begun to grey, but, now as then, he had none of that useful sense of proportion, nor could he ever develop anything of the sort, which might have helped him distinguish between the continuous flux of the universe of which he constituted a part (though a necessarily fleeting part) and the passage of time, the perception of which might have led to an intuitive and wise acceptance of fate. Despite vain efforts to understand and experience what precisely his 'dear friends' wanted from each other, he confronted the slow tide of human affairs with a sad incomprehension, dispassionately and without any sense of personal involvement, for the greater part of his consciousness, the part entirely given over to wonder, had left no room for more mundane matters, and (to his mother's inordinate shame and the extreme amusement of the locals) had ever since then trapped him in a bubble of time, in one eternal, impenetrable and transparent moment. He walked, he trudged, he flitted - as his great friend once said, not entirely without point - 'blindly and tirelessly... with the incurable beauty of his personal cosmos' in his soul [...]
”
”
László Krasznahorkai (The Melancholy of Resistance)
“
It is a sad state of affairs that I do
not know of any astronomer who fully understands the energy in their own daily environment. Until
that changes, Dark Energy will always be a mystery to the astronomical community.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
The picture would remind Oliver of the morning when I first spoke out. Or of the day when we rode by the berm pretending not to notice it. Or of that day we'd decided to picnic there and had vowed not to touch each other, the better to enjoy lying in bed together the same afternoon. I wanted him to have the picture before his eyes for all time, his whole life, in front of his desk, of his bed, everywhere. Nail it everywhere you go, I thought.
”
”
André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
“
She must be fooled by the bad boy persona. Maybe she has a sad homelife, restricted from doing things that make her happy, so she’s trying to find life and a thrill in someone dangerous. If only it means she feels a little less dead inside.
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Satan's Affair (Cat and Mouse, #0.5))
“
No amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself, for the outcome of all affairs is determined by God's decree. If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from you it cannot flee.
”
”
Umar Ibn Al-Khattaab
“
Shod Omnivorism; it pretty much sums up the current state of the world. I find the word 'shod' deeply descriptive; it conjures such an archaic barbaric feeling, of being shackled and tamed, captive and downtrodden. Omnivorism is the concept that every living and non-living thing on this planet is a potential meal, and God forbid that anyone should question another’s right to eat whatever, whoever and however they desire. Shod and Omnivorism together truly emphasise the sad disequilibrium of the dominant prevailing human mindset.
”
”
Mango Wodzak (Destination Eden - Eden Fruitarianism Explained)
“
When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs.
”
”
Tim Kreider (We Learn Nothing)
“
It’s that time of the month again…
As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer.
Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time; and a $2,000 set of golf clubs…which he had been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months.
Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence-and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat-I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him.
I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s over-wrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t do Taxes.
And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of the photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography.
And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not Much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring Oompa Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies.
I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery.
I hope you have enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar.
And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting Mike off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court. Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, useless, dickless wonder he is.
”
”
Molly Harper (And One Last Thing ...)
“
I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find his path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair - a long, sad affair - one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.
”
”
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion)
“
Don't ya'll have anything better to do than to mess with Myles?" she asked. "Sadly, Mom, they don't," Myles said. It's the only respite they have from their monotonous, inconsequential tedium of an existence." Amir's eyes widened. "Duck, Pop! He's gonna big word us to death." Amir lifted his forearm. "Thesaurus-shields up!
”
”
Marcus Major (A Family Affair)
“
What makes today’s popular atheism so depressing is neither its conceptual boorishness nor its self-righteousness but simply its cultural inevitability. It is the final, predictable, and unsurprisingly vulgar expression of an ideological tradition that has, after many centuries, become so pervasive and habitual that most of us have no idea how to doubt its premises or how to avert its consequences. This is a fairly sad state of affairs, because those consequences have at times proved quite terrible.
”
”
David Bentley Hart (The Experience of God : Being, Consciousness, Bliss)
“
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought
Save where you are, how happy you make those.
”
”
Allison Pearson (I Don't Know How She Does It (Kate Reddy, #1))
“
A man in trouble laments that he did not listen to his teachers, and thus he finds himself in a sad state, utter ruin. A candid admission of a blunder is refreshing and not often heard in human affairs. It is the saint alone who is large-minded enough to think and speak in this way. This is part of his authenticity.
The person who is swift to hear and slow to respond is a stranger to an all-knowing illuminism. He believes that others, too, have some truth, and he is willing to be instructed by them. He is ready for the mind of God.
”
”
Thomas Dubay
“
Don’t let yourself be eaten up by ambition. Otherwise you’ll be left with a lonely heart and a bunch of sad words.
”
”
Joël Dicker (The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair)
“
He smiled sadly. “No girlfriend. No kids. Nobody.
”
”
Joël Dicker (The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair)
“
You see,” he said sadly, “you have no instincts.” “It was intelligence you were requiring just now,” I pointed out. “The two often go together,” said Poirot enigmatically.
”
”
Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot, #1))
“
For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied.
”
”
A.W. Tozer
“
For a happy life,it's best we should ignore &overlook things,people,incidents,affairs & matters.It is not necessary that we show a reaction to everything. Step back & ask yourself if the matter is really worth responding to.
”
”
Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
“
Dearest . . . I am writing you once more now, night . . . brings a silence that helps me talk to you, and I wonder . . . could you be remembering too, sad dreams . . . of this strange love affair. My dear . . . although life may never let us meet again, and we—because of fate—must always live apart . . . I swear, this heart of mine will be always yours . . . my thoughts, my whole life, forever yours . . . just as this pain . . . belongs . . . to you . . .
”
”
Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman: The Queer Classic Everyone Should Read)
“
Long handwritten note deep in our pockets
Words, how little they mean when we're a little too late
I stood right by the tracks, your face in my head
Good girls, hopeful they'll be and long they will wait
In dreams I meet you in warm conversation
We both wake in lonely beds, different cities
And time is taking its sweet time erasing you
And you've got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me
Distance, timing, breakdown, fighting
Silence, the train runs off its tracks
Kiss me, try to fix it, could you just try to listen?
Hang up, give up and for the life of us we can't get back
A beautiful magic love there
What a sad beautiful tragic, beautiful tragic, beautiful love affair
”
”
EJR
“
And as we walk back down the street, me gingerly clutching what at this point constitutes my entire collection, my father says, ‘One day, when you’re all grown up and I’m not here any more, you’ll remember the sunny day we went to the market together and bought a boat.’ My throat feels tight because, as soon as he says it, I am already there. Standing on another street, without my father, trying to get back. And yet I’m here, with him. So I try to soak up every aspect of the moment, to help me get back when I need to. I feel the weight of the chunky parcel under my arm, and the warmth of the sun, and my father’s hand in mine. I smell the flowers with their sharp undertang of cheap hot dog, and taste the slick of toffee on my teeth, and hear the chattering hagglers. I feel the joy of an adventurous Saturday with my father and no school, and I feel the sadness of looking back when it is all gone. When he is gone.
”
”
Victoria Coren (For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker)
“
I had checked my phone every hour, waiting for his call, worried he had forgotten because I knew how upset he would be, but also hoping he wouldn't call so I could indulge in my sadness, give shape to my anger, feel that dark twinge of satisfaction.
”
”
Sanaë Lemoine (The Margot Affair)
“
These days, my preferred method of sexual satisfaction is masturbation. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I’m amazing at tooting my own horn. Without a doubt, I’m the most satisfying sexual partner I’ve ever had, which is a sad state of affairs.
”
”
Leisa Rayven (Professor Feelgood (Masters of Love, #2))
“
I loved men and was going mad with suppressed desire. It pushed me into a series of affairs with dubious jazz musicians. Sex was not what I imagined. It was tension, scent and prosaic misalliance. It was sweet and sad revelation, and all expectation dashed.
”
”
James Ellroy (Perfidia)
“
Are you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear for your own; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day after to-morrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course of public affairs.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
Baudelaire"
When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Dear Mother, is any time left to us
In which to be happy? My debts are immense.
My bank account is subject to the court’s judgment.
I know nothing. I cannot know anything.
I have lost the ability to make an effort.
But now as before my love for you increases.
You are always armed to stone me, always:
It is true. It dates from childhood.
For the first time in my long life
I am almost happy. The book, almost finished,
Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument
To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust.
Debts and inquietude persist and weaken me.
Satan glides before me, saying sweetly:
“Rest for a day! You can rest and play today.
Tonight you will work.” When night comes,
My mind, terrified by the arrears,
Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence,
Promises: “Tomorrow: I will tomorrow.”
Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself
With the same resolution, the same weakness.
I am sick of this life of furnished rooms.
I am sick of having colds and headaches:
You know my strange life. Every day brings
Its quota of wrath. You little know
A poet’s life, dear Mother: I must write poems,
The most fatiguing of occupations.
I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me.
I write from a café near the post office,
Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes,
The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write
“A History of Caricature.” I have been asked to write
“A History of Sculpture.” Shall I write a history
Of the caricatures of the sculptures of you in my heart?
Although it costs you countless agony,
Although you cannot believe it necessary,
And doubt that the sum is accurate,
Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.
”
”
Delmore Schwartz
“
Civilization is a series of techniques in which the hunter-gatherer brain teaches itself to rewire itself. And the sad proof that civilization is a composite of the higher and lower brain functions is seen when civilization breaks down in civil wars, and brutal instincts emerge full force, an theft, rape, destruction, and murder become commonplace. Because the plastic brain can always allow brain functions that it has brought together to separate, a regression to barbarism is always possible, and civilization will always be a tenuous affair that must be taught in each generation and is always, at most, one generation deep.
”
”
Norman Doidge (The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science)
“
Women Ain't Hood Ornament (The Sonnet)
Why should women have to give up,
Their name when they get married,
As if they are not real people,
But hood ornament to their husband!
Why should a child be identified only,
By their father's name, not mother's,
Who by the way is the root of creation,
Who is the actual almighty creator!
It is a sad state of affairs when,
Morons peddle moronity as tradition.
Shame on us for sustaining such savagery,
As we do not put our backbone to action!
Each couple must determine the parameters
of their relationship, not some ragged tradition.
Only norm that matters is love, for in love lies emancipation.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission)
“
My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever.
”
”
Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion)
“
I give in,” she gasped. “What has turned your evening into such a dreadful affair?”
“What or whom?”
“‘ Whom’?” she echoed, tilting her head as she looked at him. “This grows even more interesting.”
“I can think of any number of adjectives to describe all of the ‘whoms’ I have had the pleasure of meeting this evening, but ‘interesting’ is not one of them.”
“Now, now,” she chided, “don’t be rude. I did see you chatting with my brothers, after all.”
He nodded gallantly, tightening his hand slightly at her waist as they swung around in a graceful arc. “My apologies. The Bridgertons are, of course, excluded from my insults.”
“We are all relieved, I’m sure.”
Simon cracked a smile at her deadpan wit. “I live to make Bridgertons happy.”
“Now that is a statement that may come back to haunt you,” she chided. “But in all seriousness, what has you in such a dither? If your evening has gone that far downhill since our interlude with Nigel, you’re in sad straits, indeed.”
“How shall I put this,” he mused, “so that I do not completely offend you?”
“Oh, go right ahead,” she said blithely. “I promise not to be offended.”
Simon grinned wickedly. “A statement that may come back to haunt you.”
She blushed slightly. The color was barely noticeable in the shadowy candlelight, but Simon had been watching her closely.
She didn’t say anything, however, so he added, “Very well, if you must know, I have been introduced to every single unmarried lady in the ballroom.”
A strange snorting sound came from the vicinity of her mouth.
Simon had the sneaking suspicion that she was laughing at him.
“I have also,” he continued, “been introduced to all of their mothers.”
She gurgled. She actually gurgled.
“Bad show,” he scolded. “Laughing at your dance partner.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, her lips tight from trying not to smile.
“No, you’re not.”
“All right,” she admitted, “I’m not. But only because I have had to suffer the same torture for two years. It’s difficult to summon too much pity for a mere evening’s worth.
”
”
Julia Quinn (The Duke and I (Bridgertons, #1))
“
It is unfortunate that very few people have ever tried to know meditation, because meditation is the way to joy and happiness.
Meditation means to participate in the celebration of existence. Without it life remains a misery, a sadness and a frustration.
Meditation is the only way to be the blessed one and to participate in the mystery of ife. Meditation is the door to God.
”
”
Swami Dhyan Giten (Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine)
“
Like the North Star, you’ve been the constant in my life. You’ve been my companion in good and bad, my support in happy and sad, while distance fulfilled its role with utmost dexterity… the role of strengthening our foundation for seven years of a long-distance affair! I could always see your face, deep in the cove by the clamouring sea of distance… every time I closed my eyes.
”
”
Debalina Haldar
“
At last, he began to discourse of fortune and human affairs. "Is it meet," said he, "for him that knows he is but man, in his greatest prosperity to pride himself, and be exalted at the conquest of a city, nation, or kingdom, and not rather well to weigh this change of fortune, in which all warriors may see an example of their common frailty, and learn a lesson that there is nothing durable or constant? For what time can men select to think themselves secure, when that of victory itself forces us more than any to dread our own fortune? and a very little consideration on the law of things, and how all are hurried round, and each man's station changed, will introduce sadness in the midst of the greatest joy. Or can you, when you see before your eyes the succession of Alexander himself, who arrived at the height of power and ruled the greatest empire, in the short space of an hour trodden underfoot- when you behold a king, that was but even now surrounded with so numerous an army, receiving nourishment to support his life from the hands of his conquerors- can you, I say, believe there is any certainty in what we now possess whilst there is such a thing as chance? No, young men, cast off that vain pride and empty boast of victory; sit down with humility, looking always for what is yet to come, and the possible future reverses which the divine displeasure may eventually make the end of our present happiness.
”
”
Plutarch (Plutarch's Lives)
“
Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didn’t mean anything.” “Yes, it meant something.” Then he said, “Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?” “Maybe you’re right,” said Adam. “It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.
”
”
John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
“
As he tore his eyes from the books to meet hers, he was, as a matter of fact, nearly overwhelmed by sadness. It gusted over him. He felt almost unbearably lonely. He wondered if he was flawed on some deep level, whether – in spite of all the friends who seemed to think he was a good guy (and he was a pretty good friend), in spite of being a fairly decent son – there was something terribly wrong with him. Did romance reveal some truth, fundamental lack, a coldness, that made him shrink back at just the moment when reciprocity was called for?
”
”
Adelle Waldman (The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.)
“
The gentleman offered her a fond smile. "I apologize, mademoiselle, but we are closing our doors soon. What you ask is simply impossible."
"Improbably perhaps. But not impossible. I will wait outside all night if need be. It is a sad state of affairs when a girl must resort to threats in order to be given the attention she is due."
She folded her ungloved hands in her lap. "If I'm outside all night, I hope it weighs on your conscience."
"Rather uncompromising of you, mademoiselle," he said.
"Hmmmm. Rather like looking in the mirror, I'd wager.
”
”
Renée Ahdieh (The Damned (The Beautiful, #2))
“
Who in the world relies on me for anything? No one. I can blame myself, and I do, but I also think the failure is general. People our age used to get married and have children and conduct love affairs, and now everyone is still single at thirty and lives with housemates they never see. Traditional marriage was obviously not fit for purpose, and almost ubiquitously ended in one kind of failure or another, but at least it was an effort at something, and not just a sad sterile foreclosure on the possibility of life. Of course if we all stay alone and practise celibacy and carefully police our personal boundaries, many problems will be avoided, but it seems we will also have almost nothing left that makes life worthwhile. I guess you could say the old ways of being together were wrong—they were!—and that we didn’t want to repeat old mistakes—we didn’t. But when we tore down what confined us, what did we have in mind to replace it? I offer no defence of coercive heterosexual monogamy, except that it was at least a way of doing things, a way of seeing life through. What do we have now? Instead? Nothing. And we hate people for making mistakes so much more than we love them for doing good that the easiest way to live is to do nothing, say nothing, and love no one.
”
”
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
“
A boat beneath a sunny sky, Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July – Children three that nestle near, Eager eye and willing ear, Pleased a simple tale to hear – Long has paled that sunny sky: Echoes fade and memories die: Autumn frosts have slain July. As a child, I don’t understand exactly what it is about. I can’t read the significance of Alice reaching the final square and becoming a queen. But I feel the sadness in the poem, and, in this later now, I know why. It’s because everything is in the present tense, even though it cannot all be; either some of it has passed, or some of it hasn’t happened yet. The sky is sunny, but it has paled. The boat is lingering, but it is gone. It’s July, but it’s autumn. This is a riddle, a paradox. Lewis Carroll must be either looking back into the past, feeling the sunshine and the drifting boat as if he were still there . . . or looking forward from the present, imagining a time when the sky and the boat and the summer will have vanished. Which is it? Doesn’t matter. Wherever he stands, he feels both at once. The current, the retrospective, the projected, all are written in the present tense because they are all, always, mixed up together. Because, even as something is happening, it is gone. Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt? Where is the boat? Where is the summer? Where are the children?
”
”
Victoria Coren (For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker)
“
But there was that essence everyone forgets when a love recedes into the past - how it was, how it felt and tasted to be together through seconds, minutes and days, before everything that was taken for granted was discarded then overwritten by the tale of how it all ended, and then by the shaming inadequacies of memory. Paradise or the inferno, no one remembers anything much. Affairs and marriages ended long ago come to resemble postcards from the past. Brief note about the weather, a quick story, funny or sad, a bright picture on the other side. First to go, Roland thought as he walked towards her house, was the elusive self, precisely how you were yourself, how you appeared to others.
”
”
Ian McEwan (Lessons)
“
I wonder if all these bad things will change when I’m a high schooler…”
“At the very least, they most certainly won’t change if you intend to remain the way you are.” Way to go, Yukinoshita-san! Not going easy on the young'un just after you finished apologizing to her!
“But it’s enough if the people around you change,” I remarked. “There’s no need to force yourself to hang out with others.”
“But things are hard on Rumi-chan right now and if we don’t do something about it…” Yuigahama looked at Rumi with eyes full of concern.
In response, Rumi winced slightly. “Hard, you say… I don’t like that. It makes me sound pathetic. It makes me feel inferior for being left out.”
“Oh,” said Yuigahama.
“I don’t like it, you know. But there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Why?” Yukinoshita questioned her.
Rumi seemed to have some trouble speaking, but she still managed to form the right words. “I… got abandoned. I can’t get along with them anymore. Even if I did, I don’t know when it’ll start again. If the same thing were to happen, I guess I’m better off this way. I just” She swallowed. “don’t wanna be pathetic…”
Oh. I get it.
This girl was fed up. Of herself and of her surroundings.
If you change yourself, your world will change, they say, but that’s a load of crap.
When people already have an impression of you, it’s not easy to change your preexisting relationships by adding something to the mix. When people evaluate each other, it’s not an addition or subtraction formula. They only perceive you through their preconceived notions.
The truth is that people don’t see you as who you truly are. They only see what they want to see, the reality that they yearn for.
If some disgusting guy on the low end of the caste works his arse off on something, the higher ones just snicker and say, “What’s he trying so hard for?” and that would be the end of it. If you stand out for the wrong reasons, you would just be fodder for criticism. That wouldn’t be the case in a perfect world, but for better or worse, that’s how things work with middle schoolers.
Riajuu are sought for their actions as riajuu, loners are obligated to be loners, and otaku are forced to act like otaku. When the elites show their understanding of those beneath them, they are acknowledged for their open-mindedness and the depth of their benevolence, but the reverse is not tolerated.
Those are the fetid rules of the Kingdom of Children. It truly is a sad state of affairs.
"You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself". The hell was up with that? Adapting and conforming to a cruel and indifferent world you know you’ve already lost to – ultimately, that’s what a slave does. Wrapping it up in pretty words and deceiving even yourself is the highest form of falsehood.
”
”
Wataru Watari (やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。4)
“
[How does it happen that this man, so distressed at the death of his wife and his only son, or who has some great lawsuit which annoys him, is not at this moment sad, and that he seems so free from all painful and disquieting thoughts? We need not wonder; for a ball has been served him, and he must return it to his companion. He is occupied in catching it in its fall from the roof, to win a game. How can he think of his own affairs, pray, when he has this other matter in hand? Here is a care worthy of occupying this great soul, and taking away from him every other thought of the mind. This man, born to know the universe, to judge all causes, to govern a whole state, is altogether occupied and taken up with the business of catching a hare.
”
”
Blaise Pascal (Pascal's Pensées)
“
A socialist member from Glasgow, John McGovern, delivered the most pointed attack of the day, going so far as to criticize Churchill’s practice of visiting bombed cities. He said, “When we have got to the stage when the Prime Minister has to parade himself through every bombed area in the country, and has to sit on the back of a wagonette waving his hat on a stick like a ‘Doodles’ at the circus—well, it has come to a very sad state of affairs when representatives of the Government are not so sure of the opinions of the people of the country.” McGovern professed to have no confidence in the war or the government, adding, “And, while I have a tremendous admiration for the oratorical powers of the Prime Minister, who can almost make you believe that black is white, I have no faith in his achieving anything of lasting benefit to humanity.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
Brian Doyle about the Irish custom of “taking to the bed.”
He says “In Irish culture, taking to the bed with a gray heart is not considered especially odd. People did and do it for understandable reasons—ill health, or the black dog, or, most horrifyingly, to die during An Gorta Mor, the great hunger, when whole families took to their beds to slowly starve…And in our time: I know a woman who took to her bed for a week after September eleventh, and people who have taken to their beds for days on end to recover from shattered love affairs, the death of a child, a physical injury that heals far faster than the psychic wound gaping under it. I’ve done it myself twice, once as a youth and once as a man, to think through a troubled time in my marriage. Something about the rectangularity of the bed, perhaps, or supinity, or silence, or timelessness; for when you are in bed but not asleep there is no time, as lovers and insomniacs know.
Yet, anxious, heartsick, we take to the bed, saddled by despair and dissonance and disease, riddled by muddledness and madness, rattled by malaise and misadventure, and in the ancient culture of my forbears this was not so unusual….For from the bed we came and to it we shall return, and our nightly voyages there are nutritious and restorative, and we have taken to our beds for a thousand other reasons, loved and argued and eater and seethed there, and sang and sobbed and suckled, and burned with fevers and visions and lust, and huddled and howled and curled and prayed. As children we all, every one of us, pretended the bed was a boat; so now, when we are so patently and persistently and daily at sea, why not seek a ship? p. 119-20
Brian Doyle in The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart, p. 90-91
”
”
Brian Doyle (The Wet Engine: Exploring Mad Wild Miracle of Heart)
“
The Funeral of Sarpedon Zeus is heavy with grief. Sarpedon
is dead at Patroclus’ hands and, right now,
the son of Menoetius and his Achaeans are setting out
to steal the corpse and desecrate it. But Zeus will not allow it.
He had left his beloved child alone
and now he’s lost – for such the Law demanded.
But at least he will honour him in death.
Behold: he sends Phoebus down to the field
with orders to care for the body. Phoebus lifts the hero’s corpse with reverence
and pity, and bears him to the river.
He washes away the blood and dust
and closes the wounds, careful
not to leave a scar; he pours balm
of ambrosia over the body and clothes him
in resplendent Olympian robes.
He blanches the skin and with a comb of pearl
straightens the raven-black hair.
He lays him out, arranging the lovely limbs. The youth seems a king, a charioteer,
twenty-five or twenty-six years old –
relishing his moment of victory,
with the swiftest stallions, upon a golden chariot
in a grand competition. Phoebus, completing his assignment,
calls on his two siblings,
Sleep and Death, commanding them
to carry the body to Lycia, land of riches. So the two brothers, Sleep and Death,
set out on foot to transport the body
to Lycia, land of riches.
And at the door of the king’s palace
they hand over the glorious body
and return to their affairs. As they receive him into the palace
they begin laments and tributes, processions
and libations flowing from sacred vessels
and everything that befits such a sad funeral;
then skilled craftsmen from the city
and artists well known for their work in marble
arrive to fashion the tomb and the stele.
”
”
Constantinos P. Cavafy (Selected Poems)
“
Our political discourse has degenerated into anxieties about whether giving benefits to those people over there will take money out of the pockets of my kind of people over here, even when the changes are those from which we would all benefit."
"The church is one of the few remaining institutions in the American scene that normalizes the effects of slavery, with most Christians preserving these segregated spaces in the interests of cultural comfort. Racially separate churches violate the interdependence that should characterize authentic Christian communities. Further, this individualism blocks churches from the blessings of gifts preserved in separate traditions. For example, segregated white churches celebrate the confessions and the rich legacies of the intellectual giants of the faith, but too often preach a weak and disembodied gospel that reduces spirituality to symbolism, and that separates material concerns from moral choices and the pursuit of righteousness."
"Indeed, we have reached a sad state of affairs when we are all unwilling to be challenged when we go to church."
"We should not move too quickly to a cheap reconciliation that forgets the past rather than honoring it as a clay vessel that contains a refined treasure bearing witness to the presence of Jesus at the margins. We need to make space for the histories of ethnic pain to be shared and revered among whites and all peoples of color, and to be instructed by them. That is, we need to understand how our past impinges on the present before we can move forward together toward our future. We cannot be who we are called to be unless we can gain access to the treasures of the gospel that have been preserved in the separate traditions of now segregated ethnic churches. We will not testify to the glory of God and the manifold riches of his mercy to the nations until we do.
”
”
Love L. Sechrest
“
We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them.
Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them.
Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity.
In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them.
Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.
”
”
Kristopher Jansma (Why We Came to the City)
“
You’re like a nuclear missile, you’re dropped somewhere and cause devastation all around. You’ve always been that way. And I figured you’d come here and just fucking destroy everything that stood against me, like you do all the time. I wanted to tell you, I really did, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk you saying no, to the whole plan going out the window.” I got off Galahad, who adjusted his suit, but didn’t bother getting back to his feet. “Do you even know what Simon was here for?” “No, although we will. A few years in a dungeon will loosen his tongue a little.” “I never thought you’d be on the receiving end of my anger,” I said softly. “I always thought you’d be honest with me. That you knew how I felt after leaving Merlin, leaving behind the lies and manipulations. But I was wrong. You’re just shittier at it than he was.” “I have more important things to do than lament whatever has broken in our friendship,” he said, anger leaking from every syllable. “I think you should leave this city and this state.” “You’re having me kicked out?” Galahad shook his head. “I’ll be putting Bill Moon in charge of the investigation into what happened here. We’ll make things more palatable for the humans living here, and then we’ll be taking Simon back to Shadow Falls.” “And Rean?” “He has refused my aid and vanished with his remaining colony into the woods. Nine out of twenty-two died today, I doubt he wishes to involve himself with the affairs of anyone other than his colony.” “You lost two allies in space of a day and damaged your reputation as a ruler who takes care of his own. Congrats. You must be very proud.” “I think we’re done here,” he said and got back to his feet once more. I took a step toward him and I noticed something in his expression. Fear. But not fear of me, Galahad would never have been scared of me, but maybe the fear of what had been lost between us, and my anger evaporated, replaced with sadness. “Galahad, you should know something,” I said, gaining his attention as he walked off toward the house. He stopped at the open door and glanced back at me. “What is it?” “I’m not a nuclear bomb, I’m a scalpel. I cut away the tumors and diseased flesh that threatens to consume everything. So, you need to be very careful that during your reign, you don’t become something that requires my utmost attention.” And with that, I turned and walked away.
”
”
Steve McHugh (With Silent Screams (Hellequin Chronicles, #3))
“
A woman paralyzed by her own selfishness and triviality, a woman who knew she should love her life more than she did but couldn’t seem to love her life beyond a few odd inconsequential incidents.
It is, in fact, time to start dating again. But Dan has no idea what that means for a gay man well into his thirties who has neither money nor abs.
- if you’re delivering a song, there are instances when the veil of the ordinary falls away and you are, fleetingly, a supernatural being, with music rampaging through you and soaring out into a crowd. You connect, you’re giving it, you’re the living sweat-slicked manifestation of music itself, the crowd feels it as piercingly as you do. Always, almost always, you “spot a girl. She doesn’t need to be pretty. She’s the love of somebody’s life (you hope she is), and for those few seconds she’s the love of yours, you’re singing to her and she’s singing back to you, by raising her arms over her head and swinging her hips, adoring you or, rather, adoring some being who is you and the song combined, able to touch her everywhere. It’s the briefest of love affairs. -
Isabel is embarrassed about her sadness. She’s embarrassed about being embarrassed about her sadness, she who has love and money. She tries looking discreetly into her bag for a Kleenex, without anything that could be called frantic rummaging. She ponders the prospect that decadent unhappiness might, in its way, be worse than genuine, legitimate despair. Which is, as she knows, a decadent question to pose at all.
- members of a biological aristocracy -
Dan is taken by a tremor of scorn twisted up with painful affection, as if they were two names for the same emotion
- but that’s my narcissism speaking ive been working on the idea that there are other people in the world -
Beyond lust there’s a purity, you know?
Does it ever get to be too late? If neither of you abuses the dog (should they finally get a dog?) or leaves the children in the car on a hot day. Does it ever become irreparable? If so, when? How do you, how does any“one, know when they cross over from working through this to it’s too late? Is there (she suspects there must be) an interlude during which you’re so bored or disappointed or ambushed by regret that it is, truly, too late? Or, more to the point, do we arrive at it’s too late over and over again, only to return to working through this before it’s too late arrives, yet again?
Do you think we ever really survive our childhoods?
Most mothers think their children are amazing and singular people. Most mothers are wrong about that.
You’re beautiful in your own skin. You brought with you into the world some kind of human amazingness, and you can depend on it, always. Please try not to ever let anybody talk you out of that.
She says, “You’re not in love with me.”
“Trust me. I’ve had a lot of experience at not being in love with people. I’ve been not in love with pretty much everybody, all my life.”
She wonders how many women think more kindly and, all right, more lustfully toward their husbands after they’ve left them. Maybe someone’s done a study.
“If you’re determined to be insulted.
”
”
Michael Cunningham (Day)
“
Thanks by Maisie Aletha Smikle
Giving thanks need no ranks
From the dinosaurs to the ants
Thanks for all
Great and small
Giving thanks is an everyday affair
Even though Thanksgiving comes but once a year
A thank you we must share
Giving thanks for what is dear
Be it far
Or be it near
Thanks for things present
Even though you may receive no presents
Thanks for the past
Oh Lord how time goes by fast
Thanks for the future
For indeed we have been given nature
Water that rains from up above
Springs that emerge from the rocks beneath
To nourish and make all things flourish
Without which all would perish
Food that grows
Trees that bloom
Flowers that calm
And herbs for balm
Giving thanks may sometimes make you sad
If you recall something bad
Give thanks for all things good
And the times you have withstood
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
To maximize pleasure and to minimize pain - in that order - were characteristic Enlightenment concerns. This generally more receptive attitude toward good feeling and pleasure would have significant long-term consequences. It is a critical difference separating Enlightenment views on happiness from those of the ancients. There is another, however, of equal importance: that of ambition and scale. Although the philosophers of the principal classical schools sought valiantly to minimize the role of chance as a determinant of human happiness, they were never in a position to abolish it entirely. Neither, for that matter, were the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who, like men and women at all times, were forced to grapple with apparently random upheavals and terrible reversals of forture. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is an awful case in point. Striking on All Saints' Day while the majority of Lisbon's inhabitants were attending mass, the earthquake was followed by a tidal wave and terrible fires that destroyed much of the city and took the lives of tens of thousands of men and women. 'Quel triste jeu de hasard que le jeu de la vie humaine,' Voltaire was moved to reflect shortly thereafter: 'What a sad game of chance is this game of human life.' He was not alone in reexamining his more sanguine assumptions of earlier in the century, doubting the natural harmony of the universe and the possibilities of 'paradise on earth'; the catastrophe provoked widespread reflection on the apparent 'fatality of evil' and the random occurrence of senseless suffering. It was shortly thereafter that Voltaire produced his dark masterpiece, Candide, which mocks the pretension that this is the best of all possible worlds.
And yet, in many ways, the incredulity expressed by educated Europeans in the earthquake's aftermath is a more interesting index of received assumptions, for it demonstrates the degree to which such random disasters were becoming, if not less common, at least less expected. Their power to shock was magnified accordingly, but only because the predictability and security of daily existence were increasing, along with the ability to control the consequences of unforeseen disaster. When the Enlightened Marquis of Pombal, the First Minister of Portugal, set about rebuilding Lisbon after the earthquake, he paid great attention to modern principles of architecture and central planning to help ensure that if such a calamity were to strike again, the effects would be less severe. To this day, the rebuilt Lisbon of Pombal stands as an embodiment of Enlightened ideas.
Thus, although eighteenth-century minds did not - and could not - succeed in mastering the random occurrences of the universe, they could - and did - conceive of exerting much greater control over nature and human affairs. Encouraged by the examples of Newtonian physics, they dreamed of understanding not only the laws of the physical universe but the moral and human laws as well, hoping one day to lay out with precision what the Italian scholar Giambattista Vico described as a 'new science' of society and man. It was in the eighteenth century, accordingly, that the human and social sciences were born, and so it is hardly surprising that observers turned their attention to studying happiness in similar terms. Whereas classical sages had aimed to cultivate a rarified ethical elite - attempting to bring happiness to a select circle of disciples, or at most to the active citizens of the polis - Enlightenment visionaries dreamed of bringing happiness to entire societies and even to humanity as a whole.
”
”
Darrin M. McMahon (Happiness: A History)
“
The decline of civility and the mounting crudeness of language in our public life could also be another reason for the disgust of people with politicians and government officials and the contempt manifested toward them. The consequences for public debate and the rational, civilized conduct of public affairs are grave. This collapse in communication is terribly sad. It is a steady tearing asunder of the few threads which bind us together in a society undergoing massive change. It is sad, too, that so many of our public personalities lack size, that tolerance and generosity that spring from self-confidence and goodwill.
”
”
Shirley Chisholm (The Good Fight)
“
She
I had always seen her with him, everywhere she went she went with him,
And today she walked the streets alone, and so lonely without him,
She did not smile any longer without him,
Because she felt disturbed by smiles without him,
She often admired the starry night with him,
But now the sky, more than the dying stars, missed her, because she was lost somewhere in the act of missing him,
She did not want to try living without him,
Because when she was tired of trying she had finally tried and loved him,
She longer waited for the summer as she used to with him,
Because when she had got bored of summer and it's everything, she had loved him,
She felt the summer rose was dull without him,
Because it felt fresh and brilliant, when to the rose he compared her, and she always kissed him,
She did not want to kiss the rose without him,
Because the rose, the summer, reminded her of him,
She did not feel anything without him,
Because her feelings failed to produce sensations without him,
She was alive but she was still searching a part of her own self that died in him,
And she feels it is a curse to live without him,
She no longer sings songs that she used to sing with him,
Because her heart no more creates musical beats that it created when she was with him,
She still seeks him, nothing else, just him, everywhere she is, she seeks him,
Because to her there appears to be nothing left to seek without him,
Birds often sing at her window but in them too she seeks him,
And the poor birds who always seek her in her eyes, fly away in sadness, because in her eyes, they only see him, just him,
She does not look at the sky anymore, because there too she wishes to see him,
And the sky always reminds her of him, and the moments spent with him,
He has died a long time ago, but she is still with him, still believing she was born for him,
So she is living, hoping that someday death will disown him,
She is hoping, but not the way she used to hope when she was with him,
Because now she only hopes about one thing, because all her desires and wishes begin and end with him,
She is there waiting in her chair, looking out of the window waiting for him,
Begging time to lead her to him,
But the time does not wish to reveal him,
For if it does, heavens shall miss him,
And in this strife between the heaven who wants to keep him and her heart that wants to reclaim him,
Time is the only force that can interfere and the only virtue that for her can recreate him,
Tonight when the moon rose in the sky, the stars shone too, she looked at the sky and thought of him,
Time watched her from its kingdom called everywhere, and from the heavens it finally stole him,
Now they live for each other, and she lives with him,
Because finally heaven too believed it is better they be together, because she indeed was born for him,
Moreover, time had started procrastinating the affairs of the universe that can neither stop for her nor for him,
So they let her have him because immortality felt better, only when she thought of him and when she was with him!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
She
I had always seen her with him, everywhere she went she went with him,
And today she walked the streets alone, and appeared so lonely without him,
She did not wish to smile without him,
Because she felt disturbed by smiles without him,
She often admired the starry nights with him,
But now the sky, more than the dying stars, missed her, because she was lost somewhere in the act of missing him,
She did not want to try living without him,
Because when she was tired of trying she had finally tried, and loved him,
She no longer waited for the summer as she used to when she was with him,
Because when she had got bored of summer and it's every beautiful thing, she had loved him,
She felt the summer rose was dull without him,
Because it felt fresh and brilliant when he compared her to the rose, and she always kissed him,
She did not want to kiss the rose without him,
Because the rose and the summer, reminded her of him,
She did not feel anything without him,
Because her feelings failed to produce sensations without him,
She was alive, but she was still searching a part of her own self that died in him,
And now she feels it is a curse to live without him,
She no longer sings songs that she used to sing with him,
Because her heart no more creates musical beats that it created when she was with him,
She still seeks him, nothing else, just him, wherever she might be, she seeks him,
Because to her there appears to be nothing left to seek without him,
Birds often sing at her window, but in them too she seeks him,
And the poor birds who always seek her in her eyes, fly away in sadness, because in her eyes, they only see him, just him,
She does not look at the sky anymore, because there too she wishes to see him,
And the sky always reminds her of him, and the moments spent with him,
He has died a long time ago, but she is still with him, still believing she was born for him,
So she is living, hoping that someday death will disown him,
She is hoping, but not the way she used to hope when she was with him,
Because now she only hopes about one thing, because all her desires and wishes begin and end with him,
She is there waiting in her chair, looking out of the window and waiting for him,
Begging time to lead her to him,
But the time does not wish to reveal him,
For if it does, heaven shall miss him,
And in this strife between the heaven that wants to keep him, and her heart that wants to reclaim him,
Time is the only force that can interfere, and grant her the wish of being with him,
Tonight when the moon rose in the sky, the stars shone too, she looked at the sky and thought of him,
Time watched her from its kingdom called everywhere, and from the heaven it finally stole him,
Now they live for each other, and she lives with him,
Because finally heaven too believed it is better they be together, because she indeed was born for him,
Moreover, time had started procrastinating the affairs of the universe that can neither stop for her nor for him,
So the heaven let her have him, because immortality felt better, only when she thought of him and when she was with him!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
That beautiful faith in human nature and in freedom which had made delicate the dry air of John Stuart Mill; that robust, romantic sense of justice which had redeemed even the injustices of Macaulay—all that seemed slowly and sadly to be drying up. Under the shock of Darwinism all that was good in the Victorian rationalism shook and dissolved like dust. All that was bad in it abode and clung like clay. The magnificent emancipation evaporated; the mean calculation remained. One could still calculate in clear statistical tables, how many men lived, how many men died. One must not ask how they lived; for that is politics. One must not ask how they died; for that is religion. And religion and politics were ruled out of all the Later Victorian debating clubs; even including the debating club at Westminster. What third thing they were discussing, which was neither religion nor politics, I do not know. I have tried the experiment of reading solidly through a vast number of their records and reviews and discussions; and still I do not know. The only third thing I can think of to balance religion and politics is art; and no one well acquainted with the debates at St. Stephen's will imagine that the art of extreme eloquence was the cause of the confusion. None will maintain that our political masters are removed from us by an infinite artistic superiority in the choice of words. The politicians know nothing of politics, which is their own affair: they know nothing of religion, which is certainly not their affair: it may legitimately be said that they have to do with nothing; they have reached that low and last level where a man knows as little about his own claim, as he does about his enemies'. In any case there can be no doubt about the effect of this particular situation on the problem of ethics and science. The duty of dragging truth out by the tail or the hind leg or any other corner one can possibly get hold of, a perfectly sound duty in itself, had somehow come into collision with the older and larger duty of knowing something about the organism and ends of a creature; or, in the everyday phrase, being able to make head or tail of it. This paradox pursued and tormented the Victorians. They could not or would not see that humanity repels or welcomes the railway-train, simply according to what people come by it. They could not see that one welcomes or smashes the telephone, according to what words one hears in it. They really seem to have felt that the train could be a substitute for its own passengers; or the telephone a substitute for its own voice.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton
“
And to close: the true and sad biography of Delphine Delamare, the doctor’s wife from the village of Ry. A banal affaire d’adultère, probably discussed in the Flaubert household, which the author’s friends Bouilhet and Du Camp suggest to him as a theme for a novel. He must be “healed” of the superfluous phantasms
”
”
Jean Améry (Charles Bovary, Country Doctor: Portrait of a Simple Man (New York Review Books Classics))
“
Her mouth offered itself to me, and that item of consolation unhinged me! I have never kissed it, but in that hour of ostensibly my lowest humiliation, I could have become someone else, another man in pomp and glory! Yes, if I had lain down at her side then - I could have become a sailor or a revolutionary, a folk hero, a flag-bearer for definite, and the cynosure of all eyes, because, since I didn't become any of these things, I feet that if I had gone to her, I would have had to have become radiant for all eternity. I didn't, and I'm gray, an uninteresting traveler carrying a suitcase whose colorful labels are merely the evidence of meaningless journeys.
”
”
Wolfgang Koeppen (A Sad Affair)
“
It's a sad state of affairs when you get used to the sight of blood, glorifying aggression as bravehearted. It's a sad state of affairs when you feel good dressing up for gala, while children are being bombed to death.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
“
Visvavitamin (The Sonnet)
It's a sad state of affairs when
you get used to the sight of blood,
glorifying aggression as bravehearted.
It's a sad state of affairs when
you feel good dressing up for gala,
while children are being bombed to death.
Sometimes aggression may be our last resort,
but never normalize it as civilized way of life.
The beast in me knows well to crush bones,
but the reformer I am, works to preserve life.
It's a sad state of affairs when
prejudice is glorified as piety,
and curiosity is branded blasphemy,
when lies are honored as liberty,
and empathy is declared unholy.
Bandaid to the broken, backbone to the fallen.
Vital to world-light, we are Visvavitamin.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets)
“
I have never been lucky in love and now at sixty-two years old, everything is falling apart. “Where am I going to find Mr Savoir-faire? Knowing my luck, I will end up finding a man that we will end in a sad affair, instead of a man who has, Savoir-faire,
”
”
Kenan Hudaverdi (Emotional Rhapsody)
“
The women accompany their husbands on the ship as far as Taiaroa Head. When it comes time to transfer to the tug, Kathleen, unlike the other wives, chooses not to kiss her husband goodbye. She will say later that she did not wish to make him sad in front of the other men. Yet this stiff and formal parting speaks volumes about their pairing.
”
”
Lloyd Spencer Davis (A Polar Affair: Antarctica's Forgotten Hero and the Secret Love Lives of Penguins)
“
But it is a sad state of affairs for our country that we’ve been taken over by a dictator who used force against another branch of government. And he’s still sitting there. He should have been arrested. He should have been arrested on the spot. He had a coup d’état against us so he can stay in office. There should be some way to remove him. But anyway, it’s no use wasting your time on this. I appreciate that. Thank you, General. Thank you.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Peril)
“
Over and above the nagging pain, Marin had a reaction to that. It was as if he had somehow been hoping all this time, and now, suddenly, there was no hope. He felt the letdown, a kind of apathy of acceptance, a dull conviction that the worst was true, and a great sadness. He looked toward where he remembered having seen Riva that first night, her nude, tanned body half covered by the sheets of the bed. And then he visualized the same body at the instant of the titanic explosion, charred and smoldering, quickly burned to a fine ash. And in the shattered buildings all around him the members of Group 814, who had offered Wade Trask their good will, had died in a flash of dissolving fire. What was immensely disturbing was that they had died because he had discovered a secret.
As he walked stiffly over the broken floor, back to where the laboratory had been, he had another thought: Even if he could survive the sentence of death, the Brain would search ceaselessly for the individual—himself—who knew of its existence. And, accordingly, it was time to be logical. “Am I going to try to save myself?” Marin asked himself the question.
He had been waiting, he realized tensely, for something to happen that would automatically get him out of his predicament. He thought, Suppose I handled this entire affair as if it were a military campaign—who is the enemy?
The Brain?
He felt restless and indecisive. He bent down painfully and pushed a charred metal bar out of the way. And then he was able to look at the spot where—if his calculation was correct—his own body had lain. Right here, two days ago, the awareness entity that was Wade Trask inhabiting the body of David Marin had met instant death. Because of that event, the issue was now confused, but not too much. If the enemy were truly the Brain, then he could treat everyone else as if they were but puppets.
“They were . . .” He tried to think it with intense conviction. “They are!”
How could any competent authority fail to find the Brain? All those who were looking must be agents of the Brain. The entire search for such a massive structure was a farce. It was impossible to fail. He recalled Slater’s words and attitude, the secrecy of the search. Every Control officer who sought with such apparent determination was sworn to silence, and somehow they had managed to create a mental attitude whereby it became dangerous for anyone to remember that the Brain existed.
”
”
A.E. van Vogt (The Mind Cage (Masters of Science Fiction))
“
Many members who are in a church that needs restoration hope only that the church will exist throughout their lifetime. Some see no future for the church other than a nice place for their funeral to be conducted and hope to see the church remain long enough for this to happen. While this is a sad state of affairs, it is not all that uncommon for churches to face this reality.
”
”
Russel N. Small (Church Revitalization)
“
When I was a young man, I believed hard work and a strong will could make most dreams come true. After nearly a century, however, I now know that our world is unreasonable and absurd. Not many things can be achieved by hard work alone, and nothing will survive the test of time. Hence, you could say life is a sad affair.
”
”
Rhee Kun Hoo (If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life)
“
Very well," continued the old man, merrily, "this attitude of mind being common to the whole community, and all having come to regard these pieces of paper as so much money, I had but to receive them in payment of my debts and then to buy with them into the gold of others. Thus all the gold entered my possession. Eh? On my departure the outstanding notes were presented to the firm, I hear, and there was then no gold to meet them with. A sad state of affairs! Many clamoured and all sorts of trouble arose. But by that time I was far away.
”
”
Hilaire Belloc (The Mercy of Allah)
“
How can a man be still if he sees such a great wrong being instigated?'
'It's difficult, but it's necessary,' Professor While insisted. 'Science must go on unhindered, and if we bring politics into our work we will cease to be scientists.'
'Will we cease being human?' MacGregor demanded with the rudeness of justifying himself. 'Should we hand over our affairs to men we despise?'
'I suppose that is unanswerable.' Professor White was an deep into it now as MacGregor. 'But when we dabble in politics we suffer what you are suffering now, and it isn't worth it. Is it?'
'I don't know,' MacGregor said morosely.
'Then why destroy yourself?'
'I don't believe a man has much choice any more,' MacGregor said. 'There seems to be some kind of a battle going on for any existence, science and all.'
'You may be right,' the Professor said. 'We are certainly facing a situation of terrible choice. Only yesterday the physicist chaps back from America brought in a petition to sign against control and secrecy of information and research in nuclear physics. Once they start on this secrecy business there is no telling where it will end. It was bad enough when we were working at Tennessee. We cannot have those ignorant politicians telling us what we must do.'
'They are already telling us what we must do,' MacGregor argued. 'The military control so much research that the phyusicist are becoming straight-out weapon makers and nothing else.'
'It's not the physicists' fault...'
'Then why don't they stop working for the military. Now they are talking about radio-active dust clouds and the biologists are producing concentrates of bacteria for wholesale disease-making. What's the matter with them? Have the Generals got them so scared that they meekly do as they are told?'
'Weapons are a part of life,' the Professor commented sadly, 'and since the politicians refuse to be peaceful, at least they ask for weapons and give us a chance we would not otherwise have of making enormous strides in costly research.'
'Perhaps. But don't we care how the products of our research are used?'
'You are looking for logic where there isn't any,' the Professor said. 'It isn't science which shapes the world, young man.'
'No sir, but we are part of it.'
'Really a very small part of it. The ultimate decision on human affairs lies outside science. We may be part of it, but if you are looking for the deciding factor in the shape of existence then I don't know where you'll find it.
”
”
James Aldridge (The Diplomat)
“
The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now. What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claim to know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks His face I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God in earnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seek to develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedience and humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped in his leaner and weaker days.
”
”
Anonymous
“
she would have been disappointed if he had not demonstrated such idealism, for he was yet to reach twenty-one; youth without optimism, without a strong sense of the possible, would represent a very sad state of affairs.
”
”
Jacqueline Winspear (A Lesson in Secrets (Maisie Dobbs, #8))
“
Along the rough cobbled streets that had served so well in surprise attacks and buccaneer landings, weeds hung from the balconies and opened cracks in the whitewashed walls of even the best-kept mansions, and the only signs of life at two o’clock in the afternoon were languid piano exercises played in the dim light of siesta. Indoors, in the cool bedrooms saturated with incense, women protected themselves from the sun as if it were a shameful infection, and even at early Mass they hid their faces in their mantillas. Their love affairs were slow and difficult and were often disturbed by sinister omens, and life seemed interminable. At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirred the certainty of death in the depths of one’s soul. And
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (Love in the Time of Cholera)
“
After Mrs. Culpepper, Max probably knew more about her than any other person in her life. They were the only two people who knew of her dream to buy a country cottage. And he was the only one to know of her silly wish for a hound.
Which, now that she thought on it, was a sad state of affairs, indeed. She had no better claim to friendship outside of Mrs. Culpepper than a man with whom she'd spent such a nominal amount of time? And who had been read to toss her bodily from Caldwell Manor only yesterday?
Surely she had more depth of character than what could be mined in the course of an evening. She did not begin and end with her dreams of a thousand pounds, a hound, and a home. She was vastly more complex, far more interesting than that. She had to be. The alternative was too depressing to entertain. Almost as depressing as never having known a friend who'd not been paid to keep her company. But that, at least, could be changed.
”
”
Alissa Johnson (Practically Wicked)
“
Patience. Over the next five days, Hunter’s became as elusive as dandelion fuzz caught in a high wind. He was living with not one but two angry yellow-hairs, Loretta because he refused to take Amy home and had made mention of the possibility that he might marry more than one woman. Amy because he was forcing Swift Antelope’s company upon her. On all counts, Hunter felt justified and carried on with implacable determination, trying to ignore the glares to which he was treated every time he set foot inside his lodge.
By the fifth night his perseverance was rewarded with a smile from Amy after Swift Antelope escorted her home from their daily walk. With flushed cheeks, Amy regaled Loretta with the details of her time spent with Swift Antelope, about the doe and twin fawns they had spied upon, about the flowers Swift Antelope had picked for her, about the birdcalls and sign language he was teaching her, about the silly tricks he played on her. Clearly Swift Antelope was making headway with Amy; the girl was beginning to heal.
Hunter’s already low spirits plummeted. It was a sad state of affairs when an untried boy had more luck with women than a grown man. It was especially upsetting because Hunter knew he had paid dearly, not once but twice, for the right to possess Loretta, that he could exercise his rights at any time he chose, yet found himself hesitating because of the shadows in her eyes. Recalling his father’s advice, he could only scoff. The way things were going, if he was to become his woman’s friend before he became her lover, they might never move on to the second stage of their relationship.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
Hunter’s already low spirits plummeted. It was a sad state of affairs when an untried boy had more luck with women than a grown man.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
By the fifth night his perseverance was rewarded with a smile from Amy after Swift Antelope escorted her home from their daily walk. With flushed cheeks, Amy regaled Loretta with the details of her time spent with Swift Antelope, about the doe and twin fawns they had spied upon, about the flowers Swift Antelope had picked for her, about the birdcalls and sign language he was teaching her, about the silly tricks he played on her. Clearly Swift Antelope was making headway with Amy; the girl was beginning to heal.
Hunter’s already low spirits plummeted. It was a sad state of affairs when an untried boy had more luck with women than a grown man. It was especially upsetting because Hunter knew he had paid dearly, not once but twice, for the right to possess Loretta, that he could exercise his rights at any time he chose, yet found himself hesitating because of the shadows in her eyes. Recalling his father’s advice, he could only scoff. The way things were going, if he was to become his woman’s friend before he became her lover, they might never move on to the second stage of their relationship.
The more disgruntled Hunter became over the situation, the more he glowered, and the more he glowered, the more uneasy Loretta was in his presence. The worst part was, Hunter couldn’t blame her. Their bargain hung over them like a dark cloud, her promises binding her to him yet holding them apart. He knew she dreaded the moment when he would confront her, demanding that she lie with him. With each passing day, the prospect seemed to grow more frightening to her. Hunter was perceptive enough to realize that waiting patiently for her to come around wasn’t abetting him in his cause, yet he couldn’t bring himself to force her, either.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
It dawned on me, slowly, that I was not alone in my desolation or my loneliness. And that I knew all too well what had happened last time this state of affairs had become obvious to both of us. Granted, we were not drunk, but I thought he couldn’t help but remember it, as well. “Do you … wish me to … comfort you?” he said quietly. “I do know how, you know.” And, reaching down, he moved a finger very slowly, in such a place and with such exquisite delicacy that I gasped and jerked away. “I know you do.” I did have a moment’s curiosity as to how exactly he had learned, but was not about to ask. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought—I do,” I assured him, and felt my cheeks flush hotter. “It’s—it’s only—” “That you would feel unfaithful?” he guessed. He smiled a little sadly. “I understand.” There was a long silence then. And a sense of growing awareness. “You wouldn’t?” I asked. He lay quite still, as if asleep, but wasn’t. “A standing cock is quite blind, my dear,” he said at last, eyes still shut. “Surely you know that, physician that you are.” “Yes,” I said, “I do know that.” And taking him gently but firmly in hand, I dealt with him in tender silence, avoiding any thought of whom he might see in his mind’s eye.
”
”
Diana Gabaldon (The Fiery Cross / A Breath of Snow and Ashes / An Echo in the Bone / Written in My Own Heart's Blood (Outlander #5-8))
“
It is a sad state of affairs in the USA that for the sick and the poor that jail offers better benefits than the freedom of no healthcare, bills that cannot be paid and starvation.
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”
Steven Magee
“
She saw how the weight of his mistake, the affair, weighed down on him and he cried, brushing the tears on his cheeks away brusquely; his eyes rimmed with dark circles looked haunted.
”
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Soulla Christodoulou (Broken Pieces of Tomorrow: Strong women don't give up...They find a way through tears and thrills to love again...)
“
Demons and their Hell are quite different from the Dungeon Dimensions, those endless parallel wastelands outside space and time. The sad, mad Things in the Dungeon Dimensions have no understanding of the world but simply crave light and shape and try to warm themselves by the fires of reality, clustering around it with about the same effect—if they ever broke through—as an ocean trying to warm itself around a candle. Whereas demons belong to the same space-time wossname, more or less, as humans, and have a deep and abiding interest in humanity’s day-to-day affairs. Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
”
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Terry Pratchett (Eric (Discworld, #9))
“
Henry David Thoreau (who wrote, “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; … so simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real”).
”
”
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
“
Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac. Paxil. Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions more are spent purchasing them. You don’t even need a specific trauma; just “general depression” or “anxiety,” as if sadness were as treatable as the common cold. I knew depression was real, and in many cases required medical attention. I also knew we overused the word. Much of what we called “depression” was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for. I knew people whose unbearable source of misery was their weight, their baldness, their lack of advancement in a workplace, or their inability to find the perfect mate, even if they themselves did not behave like one. To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can’t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied—before working some more. I knew. I had done all that. There was a stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without eliminating sleep altogether. I piled on accomplishments. I made money. I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it, the emptier I began to feel, like pumping air faster and faster into a torn tire.
”
”
Anonymous
“
What makes today’s popular atheism so depressing is neither its conceptual boorishness nor its self-righteousness but simply its cultural inevitability. It is the final, predictable, and unsurprisingly vulgar expression of an ideological tradition that has, after many centuries, become so pervasive and habitual that most of us have no idea how to doubt its premises, or how to avert its consequences. This is a fairly sad state of affairs, moreover, because those consequences have at times proved quite terrible.
”
”
David Bentley Hart (The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss)
“
Mankind’s ideological evolution remained stagnant, but as the novelty of this realization war off, the need to pronounce the sadness of this state of affairs through culture went by the wayside.
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Kevin Craft (Grunge, Nerds, and Gastropubs: A Mass Culture Odyssey (Kindle Single))
“
Sometimes, whether I'm winning or losing, happy or sad, I feel a rush of love for everyone in the Vic... I love the winners who dance and cheer, as though that were the end of the story.
”
”
Victoria Coren (For Richer, For Poorer: A Love Affair with Poker)
“
There’s another way to understand Fukuyama’s boredom with history’s end: success breeds its own type of sadness. Once a goal is achieved or an adversary vanquished, the victor’s sense of purpose becomes less relevant. The import of future endeavors begins to lack the significance of what has already been achieved. And that’s always a depressing state of affairs.
”
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Kevin Craft (Grunge, Nerds, and Gastropubs: A Mass Culture Odyssey (Kindle Single))
“
The glory of the bushes isn’t ultimate glory. No, it’s sign glory, like every other created thing. All creation is meant to be a finger pointing us to ultimate glory, the only glory that can ever satisfy the human heart, the glory of God. My friend was a rose expert, but he had seen neither the sign nor what the sign pointed to. Expert, but unchanged. Expert, but without awe. Expert, but not driven to worship. Expert, but lacking in joy. Expert, but not very thankful. It was a sad state of affairs for a man who professed to love roses.
”
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Paul David Tripp (Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry)
“
Count on the strength of your own godly attributes, and you will grow lax in your duties for Christ. Knowing you are weak keeps you from wandering too far from Him. When you see that your own cupboard is bare and everything you need is in His, you will go often to Him for supplies. But a soul who thinks he can take care of himself will say, "I have plenty and to spare for a long time. Let the doubting soul pray; my faith is strong. Let the weak go to God for help; I can manage fine on my own." What a sad state of affairs, to suppose that we no longer need the moment-by-moment sustaining grace of God.
Not only does overestimating the strength of our own goodness make us shun God's help, but it also makes us foolhardy and venturesome. You who boast about your spirituality are likely to put yourselves in all kinds of dangerous situations, then brag that you can handle them.
”
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William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour: Daily Readings in Spiritual Warfare)
“
It’s like the Léon Damas story about the black man on the bus who felt bad because the only other black man on the same bus was ugly and sweaty and dirty and ill-kempt. It is hard to express it. So sad.
”
”
Pearl Cleage (Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons, & Love Affairs)
“
With this sad state of affairs, today we often see a world where greed, dishonesty, avarice, hate and sometimes violence exists side by side with fear, poverty and suffering. For a very long time the entire world has been in the grip of a major imbalance, an imbalance that has not only been escalating over the decades but indeed now threatens the entire immediate future of humanity and indeed the entire planet. Mankind is directly responsible for this state of affairs, bought about by the gross misuse of the very freewill granted by our Creator. Accordingly only mankind can now reverse this situation and bring about a state of harmony, peace, happiness and balance for everyone, the “kingdom of heaven on Earth
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Anonymous
“
Brynne talks funny.” “I know. I’ve been telling her that for a long time, but she doesn’t listen.” I shook my head sadly. “Still does it.
”
”
Raine Miller (The Blackstone Affair Collection: Naked, All In, and Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair, #1-3))
“
These are but two, telling examples of the sad priorities in Australian affairs. The leaders entrusted to protect the country’s place in the world are the same people who have to protect their own positions in power. High policy must compete for time and attention with low politics, as well as domestic policy. The big matters are commonly crowded out by the small. International policy is used for domestic point-scoring.
”
”
Peter Hartcher (The Adolescent Country: A Lowy Institute Paper: Penguin Special)
“
In Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata, the first of Japan’s two Nobel laureates, describes the sad and sorry love affair of a geisha from the country and an intellectual from the city. It’s
”
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Nancy Pearl (Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason)
“
The Hercule Poirot Reading List It is possible to read the Poirot stories in any order. If you want to consider them chronologically (in terms of Poirot’s lifetime), we recommend the following: ❑ The Mysterious Affair at Styles [1920] ❑ The Murder on the Links [1923] ❑ The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories (US Short Story Collection) [1939] ❑ Poirot Investigates (Short Story Collection) [1924] ❑ Poirot’s Early Cases (Short Story Collection) [1974] ❑ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd [1926] ❑ The Big Four [1927] ❑ The Mystery of the Blue Train [1928] ❑ Peril at End House [1932] ❑ Lord Edgware Dies [1933] ❑ Murder on the Orient Express [1934] ❑ Three Act Tragedy [1935] ❑ Death in the Clouds [1935] ❑ Poirot and the Regatta Mystery (Published in The Complete Short Stories: Hercule Poirot) [1936] ❑ The ABC Murders [1936] ❑ Murder in Mesopotamia [1936] ❑ Cards on the Table [1936] ❑ The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories (US Short Story Collection) [1948] ❑ Murder in the Mews (Short Story Collection) [1938] ❑ Dumb Witness [1937] ❑ Death on the Nile [1937] ❑ Appointment with Death [1937] ❑ Hercule Poirot’s Christmas [1938] ❑ Sad Cypress [1940] ❑ One, Two Buckle My Shoe [1940] ❑ Evil Under the Sun [1941] ❑ Five Little Pigs [1942] ❑ The Hollow [1946] ❑ The Labours of Hercules (Short Story Collection) [1947] ❑ Taken at the Flood [1945] ❑ Mrs. McGinty’s Dead [1952] ❑ After the Funeral [1953] ❑ Hickory Dickory Dock [1955] ❑ Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly [2014] ❑ Dead Man’s Folly [1956] ❑ Cat Among the Pigeons [1959] ❑ Double Sin and Other Stories (US Short Story Collection) [1961] ❑ The Under Dog and Other Stories (US Short Story Collection) [1951] ❑ The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories (US Short Story Collection) [1997] ❑ The Clocks [1963] ❑ Third Girl [1966] ❑ Hallowe’en Party [1969] ❑ Elephants Can Remember [1972] ❑ Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case [1975]
”
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Agatha Christie (The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race, #1))
“
Was my smart, kind mother really so, to be blunt, stupid? Maybe. My sex is so often disappointing – I remember once reading about a woman who married a man who convinced her that he was a spy. He persuaded her to sign over her life savings to him, to the tune of £130,000, saying that he was undercover and needed it to tide him over until his handlers could safely make contact. She’d never asked for proof, so desperate was she for this ridiculous charade of a love affair to be real. And to compound her humiliation, she’d willingly posed for photos in a weekly magazine and told her story, looking downtrodden and sad.
”
”
Bella Mackie (How to Kill Your Family)
“
Sad state of affairs that to find a moment’s peace, one had to find it in the bathroom with a bucket.
”
”
Lori Rader-Day (Death at Greenway)
“
As a historian, Titus saw a sad and bitter irony in such a twist of fortune, and he looked on the games themselves as yet another example of the futility of human affairs, the endless cycle of violence and larceny attended by empty promises, half-truths, and outright lies. The crowd, on the other hand, including his fellow senators, seemed merely to see the grand spectacle as it occurred in the moment.
”
”
Steven Saylor (Dominus: A Novel of the Roman Empire (Rome Book 3))
“
Trance of Totem (The Sonnet)
This is my decree to my soldiers of the future,
Refrain from raising my giant lifeless structures!
Use the funds to build schools and hospitals instead,
Providing free/affordable education and healthcare.
Keep me alive in your heart, not in dead statues,
each one taller and more extravagant than the other,
Just so self-absorbed snobs could take the perfect selfie,
to declare an empty alliance with humanitarian behavior.
If you must have symbollic momentos of me around,
Keep them personal, humble and utterly non-extravagant.
Always remember, I am honored with your acts of love,
not with your thousand feet statues and chants unsapient.
It's a sad state of affairs, when virtues
gather moss upon the monuments of hypocrisy.
Break your trance of totem poles,
be the freedom you are meant to be!
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo)
“
Civil Discourse (The Sonnet)
Be a friend to the just,
But a parent to the unjust.
There is no place for hate,
Restrain the hater, but do not hurt.
The paradigm of revolution needs reform,
We must make it grow out of cruelty,
For cruelty is not the cure for cruelty,
We must treat it with the light of sanity.
It is a sad state of affairs when,
Violence becomes a part of civil discourse.
How can we possibly call ourselves civilized,
If mere disagreement breaks out into violent uproars!
So I repeat, cruelty is not the answer to cruelty.
Work to destroy hate without destroying the human spirit.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Mukemmel Musalman: Kafir Biraz, Peygamber Biraz)
“
scared. Like the doorman where she lived still not admitting to anyone else he was gay. Like the aunt who was conducting a secret pen friend affair with a lifer in prison. Mum used to say Alex had been born with the face of someone who’d signed a confidentiality agreement. Secrets were often seen as dark and deceptive, but sometimes they were simply sad truths that people tried to hide. Perhaps that had been the problem with her third book – readers had worked out that, secretly, her heart wasn’t in it. Her husband’s cheating was one factor that had pushed her to become an author, to forge an independent, successful existence. During the first year or two that followed, the series of her young lovers, a binge of light-hearted romance, had translated into two huge best-sellers, leaving readers clamouring for more of her heart-breaking heroes and arousing paragraphs. Trouble was, that binge eventually left Alex so sated that by the time she came to write the third novel, simply the word ‘romance’ turned her stomach. ‘Mum had been Dad’s life for so long, the two of them were each other’s school sweetheart, so the coffee shop became his life instead,’ Tom continued. ‘My mates loved this place. We’d pile in after school for Coke floats and they’d pester their parents to visit at the weekend. Slowly, by word of mouth, its fried breakfasts gained a reputation. Benedict Cumberbatch came in once when he studied drama at the university. We even served the
”
”
Samantha Tonge (The Memory of You)
“
Free. I’ll never forget my first taste of it, and I’m very sad I won’t get to witness hers.
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Satan's Affair (Cat and Mouse, #0.5))
“
No words are sad enough to express our sense of loss,’ he said. ‘No words are strong enough to express our determination to continue the forward thrust of America that he began.’ I feel that same sense of determination to continue the work begun by David Nelson and to represent the United States and her best interests at home and abroad.
”
”
Marie Force (State of Affairs (First Family, #1))
“
They Are Always Busy At the end of the day, it is all about priorities, and as their spouse, you should be their first, no exceptions! If they have started treating you like a second option or taking you for granted, it is a sign they have lost interest in you. They Don’t Talk Much If communication has become non-existent between the two of you, it means they couldn’t care less about your feelings, emotions, or thoughts. If they cared, they would have always figured out something to talk about. They Keep Blaming You Constantly blaming you or torturing you with name-calling is a sign that they are deliberating trying to distance you from themselves. A classic sign of disinterest! They Keep Pointing Out Your Flaws If they were always praising you for little things a while ago and have now become downright nasty and determined at pointing out your flaws to you, it means they no longer find you or your personality interesting. They Have Changed You But sadly, for the worst. You no longer smile like you used to, feel agitated most of the time, are confused, and lost in your thoughts. They Don’t Include You in Anything They make decisions without you, are not bothered about sharing their plans, will disregard any of the plans you make and so on. They are trying to subtly tell you that they no longer want to have anything to do with you. They Don’t Apologize Anymore They would always leave a text about being late and try to make it up to you when they returned home but no such thing happens now. They Have Excuses for Everything Apart from empty apologies, they also make excuses for everything. They won’t come with you to the party or at a family gathering, they won’t complete their part of the chores, and they will say they are tired when you try to initiate sex… another one of their excuses! They No Longer Care About Your Welfare They are less empathetic or rarely show any concern over your mood, your state of mind or your physical exhaustion. They Forget Things Be it birthdays, a plan made a week ago, or an invitation to a wedding you have stopped bragging about all week. They tend to forget or overlook the things that matter the most to you which also shows that their ability to listen attentively has also decreased. They Treat Others Better They will have the humblest of smiles for their friends and even show interest in what a stranger has to say to them, say a man at the grocery store, but act groggy and frustrated with you all the time. They Have or Are Cheating On You Cheating is a sure-tell sign that confirms their disinterest. They have fallen in love with someone else or are having an affair, which is why you no longer appeal to them as a prospective candidate for a partner.
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Rachael Chapman (Healthy Relationships: Overcome Anxiety, Couple Conflicts, Insecurity and Depression without therapy. Stop Jealousy and Negative Thinking. Learn how to have a Happy Relationship with anyone.)
“
14 Signs My Partner Has Committed Infidelity As stated earlier, if it isn’t just a lack of interest, it could be infidelity. Sadly, it is one of those problems in marriages that take a toll on the partner cheated on. It is the biggest obstacle to move past and often considered an immediate deal-breaker. A lot of times, we are so blinded by the love for our partners that we fail to notice the signs of adultery. It is usually someone else who throws the idea our way and then that becomes the only thing on our minds. We instantly begin to recognize the changes in their behavior, in their tone, in their appearance and all. However, one can’t just confront someone on a few hunches they have. Since it is something that you can’t go back from, make sure that if you are accusing someone of having an affair, you have solid proof to show. Because the chances of the other partner accepting their fault are close to nil, you better have everything together. Look at the classic signs that cheating partners often depict without realizing and thus are caught cheating.
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Rachael Chapman (Healthy Relationships: Overcome Anxiety, Couple Conflicts, Insecurity and Depression without therapy. Stop Jealousy and Negative Thinking. Learn how to have a Happy Relationship with anyone.)
“
What a sad reflection that was on the way we ordered our affairs, that anybody should feel that they were just something. Everybody was significant; everybody was as valuable as everybody else. If we stopped thinking that, then any attempt at morality would be built on sand.
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Alexander McCall Smith (The Man with the Silver Saab (Detective Varg, #3))
“
Henry David Thoreau (who wrote, “I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day;…so simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real”).5
”
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Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
“
Sometimes, a small, sad part of Rachel wondered of perhaps he was having an affair. Arjun had had an affair, Swati had explained, with someone he had met at his tennis club. Why did people do that? Why did they have to betray each other, to make the problem between two people seem like they were really about someone else entirely? It was the coward's way, she thought, To throw someone else in the middle of your own fire.
”
”
Leah Franqui (Mother Land)
“
freedom” is neither inherently good nor inherently just, and descends into the murky gray that already embroils everything else in our lives. Each positive freedom we enforce strips away a negative freedom, and each negative freedom we guarantee eliminates a corresponding positive freedom. This sad state of affairs is often referred to as the Paradox of Positive Liberty.11
”
”
Will Larson (An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management)
“
Every film or drama, no matter based on a sad, happy, or humorous story, has its end. Similarly, life events and affairs of any kind have an ending; nothing is everlasting.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
The engagement at Sadzot was fought by squads and platoons, and so may be appropriately called a "soldiers' battle"; with equal propriety the name coined by the GI's for this confused action is used here: "The Sad Sack Affair.
”
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Hugh M. Cole (The Ardennes - Battle of the Bulge (World War II from Original Sources))
“
UNLIKE OTHER NEGATIVE EMOTIONS—ANGER, SADNESS, DISAPPOINTMENT, even grief—what is so difficult about regret is the feeling that the regrettable state of affairs could have been avoided and that it could have been avoided by you, if only you had chosen differently.
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Barry Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less)
“
Why is it that people who are absorbed by something are seen as sad? I can't explain it, but for me it reverses the true state of affairs. To be engaged is to be a part, to be absorbed and fulfilled. To be cool, to be detached from things and to have no passionate feelings is the real sadness. At the heart of depression, that quintessentially modern malaise, is a deep sense of separation from the rest of life.
”
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Mark Cocker (Crow Country)
“
One unintended consequence of this change was that the boats arriving after October 1999 carried an increased number of women and children. Presumably these women and children would not have risked the hazardous journey in the past because their husbands and fathers once recognised as refugees would have been entitled to fly them safely to Australia in the foreseeable future. Whereas only 127 children came on boats in the two years before the October 1999 changes, there were 1,844 children on boats after those changes and prior to the Tampa affair. After the Tampa incident the firebreak was further consolidated by denying the holders of temporary protection visas any prospect of permanent visas with the right to sponsor family if the applicants could have availed themselves of protection in a transit port where they had stayed more than seven days. Of the 1,609 persons held offshore since the Tampa incident, 368 of them have been children. Sadly, these aspects of the firebreak set up an attraction rather than a deterrent for women and children to join their men on leaky boats headed for Australia.
”
”
Frank Brennan (Tampering with Asylum: A Universal Humanitarian Problem)
“
And if God’s good creation—of the world, of life as we know it, of our glorious and remarkable bodies, brains, and bloodstreams—really is good, and if God wants to reaffirm that goodness in a wonderful act of new creation at the last, then to see the death of the body and the escape of the soul as salvation is not simply slightly off course, in need of a few subtle alterations and modifications. It is totally and utterly wrong. It is colluding with death. It is conniving at death’s destruction of God’s good, image-bearing human creatures while consoling ourselves with the (essentially non-Christian and non-Jewish) thought that the really important bit of ourselves is saved from this wicked, nasty body and this sad, dark world of space, time, and matter! As we have seen, the whole of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, speaks out against such nonsense. It is, however, what most Western Christians, including most Bible Christians of whatever sort, actually believe. This is a serious state of affairs, reinforced not only in popular teaching but also in liturgies, public prayers, hymns, and homilies of every kind.
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”
N.T. Wright (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church)
“
To counter apathy, most change agents focus on presenting an inspiring vision of the future. This is an important message to convey, but it’s not the type of communication that should come first. If you want people to take risks, you need first to show what’s wrong with the present. To drive people out of their comfort zones, you have to cultivate dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger at the current state of affairs, making it a guaranteed loss. “The greatest communicators of all time,” says communication expert Nancy Duarte—who has spent her career studying the shape of superb presentations—start by establishing “what is: here’s the status quo.” Then, they “compare that to what could be,” making “that gap as big as possible.” We can see this sequence in two of the most revered speeches in American history. In his famous inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened by acknowledging the current state of affairs. Promising to “speak the whole truth, frankly and boldly,” he described the dire straits of the Great Depression, only then turning to what could be, unveiling his hope of creating new jobs and forecasting, “This great nation . . . will revive and will prosper. . . . The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” When we recall Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, epic speech, what stands out is a shining image of a brighter future. Yet in his 16-minute oration, it wasn’t until the eleventh minute that he first mentioned his dream. Before delivering hope for change, King stressed the unacceptable conditions of the status quo. In his introduction, he pronounced that, despite the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation, “one hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” Having established urgency through depicting the suffering that was, King turned to what could be: “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.” He devoted more than two thirds of the speech to these one-two punches, alternating between what was and what could be by expressing indignation at the present and hope about the future. According to sociologist Patricia Wasielewski, “King articulates the crowd’s feelings of anger at existing inequities,” strengthening their “resolve that the situation must be changed.” The audience was only prepared to be moved by his dream of tomorrow after he had exposed the nightmare of today.
”
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
“
Every film or drama, no matter based on the sad, happy or humorous story, has its end. Similarly, life events and affairs of any kind, have an ending; nothing is everlasting.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
You have an affair because you are not getting what you want from your loved one. You want more: more love, more sex, more attention, more fun. You want someone to look at you with lust—after years of laundry—transforming you into something radiant. You want it, you need it, you owe it to yourself to get it. To live any other way is to be muffled and gray and marching meaninglessly toward death. You want what she gave you at the start (but what you had hoped would expand and intensify instead of shrinking until you find yourself so sad, so resentful, you can barely stand to be you).
You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.
”
”
Jami Attenberg (All Grown Up)
“
There is no generosity, true acts of goodness, or love without clear-sightedness. I began writing searching for wisdom, questioning from whence it comes. I now repent in dust and ashes. Age-old anxiety weighed heavily on my weakened soul. Sadness and bitter awareness of the futility of living an immoral life forced rigorous self-examination, renunciation of artificial goals and idols. I sought to eradicate a ludicrous egotistic self. I am filled with inscrutable yearning to live a heighted quality of existence that the superior men in history attained by recognizing that their former life was an illusion. In the dead of night, when we speak truths that elude airing in daylight, I torched the castle that housed my solipsistic being that sought fulfillment of its selfish needs. In the second half of existence, I hope to drop attachments, the destructive desires of wanting, and begin a journey seeking intellectual fulfillment of an artistic being. I wish to live in perfect harmony by organizing all that life proffers and conducting personal affairs in a coordinated manner, which the inherent chaos of the world cannot disturb.
”
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
A family friend had what I hear was the mother of all cool funerals. He died in his seventies and was a super-fun, super-funny guy. His funeral reflected that. Family and friends told their hilarious Vince stories, salted with the bad Vince jokes he used to tell. He was part of a band (I believe it was some sort of Dixieland affair) and they played at the gathering. There were many shenanigans. There was some sadness and there were some tears, but by and large the service reflected him and his legacy. The focus was on his life, not his death. And his life was awesome -- his deeds and influence and stories still very much alive.
”
”
Johnny B. Truant (How to Live Forever)
“
It is a sad state of affairs that the Russians are far ahead of the USA in the science of the long term biological effects of electromagnetic radiation on a global population of over seven billion people.
”
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Steven Magee
“
It is a sad state of affairs that I do not know of any astronomer that fully understands the energy in their own daily environment. Until this changes, Dark Energy will always be a mystery to the astronomical community.
”
”
Steven Magee
“
Certainly, affairs should not even be thought of before you are thirty. Once you have reached this age, if you will not hurt any third person and can take all that you will have to take - take it silently, with dignity, with a little humor, and without any weeping or wailing or gnashing of teeth - perhaps the experience will be worth it to you. Or perhaps not.
The sad truth is that whatever you decide, you'll think you regret it. You'll hate the shabby end of romance, and you'll detest missing it altogether.
”
”
Marjorie Hillis (Live Alone and Like It)
“
A certain man said that there were once three men who loved labours, and they were monks. The first one chose to go about and see where there was strife, which he turned into peace ; the second chose to go about and visit the sick ; but the third departed to the desert that he might dwell in quietness. Finally the first man, who had chosen to still the contentions of men, was unable to make every man to be at peace with his neighbour, and his spirit was sad ; and he went to the man who had chosen to visit the sick, and he found him in affliction because he was not able to fulfil the law which he had laid down for himself. Then the two of them went to the monk in the desert, and seeing each other they rejoiced, and the two men related to the third the tribulations which had befallen them in the world, and entreated him to tell them how he had lived in the desert. And he was silent, but after a little he said unto them, "Come, let each of us go and fill a vessel of water"; and after they had filled the vessel, he said to them, "Pour out some of the water into a basin, and look down to the bottom through it," and they did so. And he said to them, "What do you see ?" and they said, "We see nothing." And after the water in the basin had ceased to move, he said to them a second time, "Look into the water," and they looked, and he said to them, "What do you see ?" And they said to him, "We see our own faces distinctly"; and he said to them, "Thus is it with the man who dwells with men, for by reason of the disturbance caused by this affair of the world he cannot see his sins ; but if he live in the peace and quietness of the desert he is able to see God clearly.
”
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Palladius of Galatia (The Sayings of the Holy Desert Fathers)
“
Last time we went to the Ferryboat, I looked around at the families of upmarket beachgoers, at their healthy children expertly peeling prawns and drinking organic lemonade, and I tried to tell myself that everyone has sadnesses, that some of the adults would be hideously miserable in their marriages, that people would be having affairs and drinking too much and addicted to gambling, that lives would be on the verge of falling apart, families breaking up, businesses going bankrupt.
”
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Emily Barr (The Sleeper)
“
But what none of these girls realised was that their fate had already been decided by their new guardians, the Commissioners of the Native Affairs Department. Sadly, in only a couple of weeks from then, Nora and Eva would find that instead of returning north as they hoped, they would be sent further south to work as domestics on dairy farms. This would also be their introduction to exploitation and deception; a hard step along the path of life that would have so many twists and turns. As for returning home to their loved ones, well, that would not happen for many, many years.
”
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Doris Pilkington (Rabbit-Proof Fence)
“
There were temporary and local reprieves: plagues, climate fluctuations, or warfare intermittently culled the population and freed up land, enabling survivors to improve their nutritional intake—and to bring up more children, until the ranks were replenished and the Malthusian condition reinstituted. Also, thanks to social inequality, a thin elite stratum could enjoy consistently above-subsistence income (at the expense of somewhat lowering the total size of the population that could be sustained). A sad and dissonant thought: that in this Malthusian condition, the normal state of affairs during most of our tenure on this planet, it was droughts, pestilence, massacres, and inequality—in common estimation the worst foes of human welfare—that may have been the greatest humanitarians: they alone enabling the average level of well-being to occasionally bop up slightly above that of life at the very margin of subsistence.
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Nick Bostrom (Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies)
“
You have an affair because you are not getting what you want from your loved one. You want more: more love, more sex, more attention, more fun. You want someone to look at you with lust—after years of laundry—transforming you into something radiant. You want it, you need it, you owe it to yourself to get it. To live any other way is to be muffled and gray and marching meaninglessly toward death. You want what she gave you at the start (but what you had hoped would expand and intensify instead of shrinking until you find yourself so sad, so resentful, you can barely stand to be you). You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.
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Ariel Levy (The Rules Do Not Apply)
“
In the strict command he lays on his people to give him the glory of his power. ‘Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid,’ but ‘sanctify the Lord of hosts himself,’ Isa. 8:12, 13; that is, in this sad posture of your affairs, when your enemies associate, and you seem a lost people to the eye of reason, not able to contest with [those] united powers which beset you on every side, I charge you, sanctify me in giving me the glory of my almighty power. Believe that your God is able of himself, without any other, to defend you, and destroy them.
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William Gurnall (The Christian in Complete Armour - The Ultimate Book on Spiritual Warfare)
“
Every film or drama, no matter based on the sad, happy, or humorous story, has its end. Similarly, life events and affairs of any kind, have an ending; nothing is everlasting.
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affwqfqwf
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By universal prayer I simply mean, when I step out of the house and look up at those cloudy worlds of stars, it becomes awfully easy to feel compassion that this dream can be so sad & mistaken, you know what I mean... mere thought is a prayer.
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Joyce Johnson (Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958)
“
But one could not keep stuffing sad memories into a valise, keep lugging it from pillar to post. Eventually, the bag became so heavy the seams split, and everything tumbled out.
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Adele Clee (The Devereaux Affair (Ladies of the Order, #1))
“
Superstar"
Long ago and oh so far away
I fell in love with you before the second show
Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear
But you're not really here
It's just the radio
Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do
Loneliness is such a sad affair
And I can hardly wait to be with you again
What to say to make you come again
Come back to me again
And play your sad guitar
Don't you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do
Writer(s): Leon Russell, Bonnie Sheridan. Performed by The Carpenters, Carpenters (1971)
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”
Carpenters (Group)
“
Despite the waves of sadness, one must go out there and have a love affair with life. For, to the mind that is playful, every moment becomes a moment of festival, a journey to taste the fruit of life. Were it otherwise, the dew would never fall on the grass to make us fresh, the sun would never explode to fill us with light, the dusk would never paint the sky to awaken the lover in us and the moon would never blush in the deep night to call the poet in us.
”
”
Jayita Bhattacharjee
“
It's a sad state of affairs when men of good breeding have to share the dredges of the distiller's art. This is hardly more than sludge from the bottom of a poor man still. It is, however, all I have at present. Perhaps in the next town, things will change
”
”
Frederic Bean (Santa Fe Showdown)
“
Two days afterwards they carried Matthew Cuthbert over his homestead threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching sense of “loss in all familiar things.” Anne, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so—that they could go on in the old way without Matthew. She felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them—that Diana’s visits were pleasant to her and that Diana’s merry words and ways moved her to laughter and smiles—that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
“
It wasn't that he was against Dick, he decided. It was just that he pitied him for not knowing how to enjoy life. The world was filled with such wonders, and it was a sad state of affairs when a man spent his time worrying about the wrong things.
”
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Paul Auster (Timbuktu)
“
Despite the despair and sadness, one must go out there and have a love affair with life. To the playful mind, every moment is a moment of festival, a journey to taste the fruit of life. Were it otherwise, the dew of heaven would never make us fresh, the sun would never burst to fill us with light, dusk would never paint the sky to awaken the lover in us, and the moon would never blush at night to call the poet in us.
”
”
Jayita Bhattacharjee
“
The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul. For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our
”
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A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
“
The decline of civility and the mounting crudeness of language in our public life could also be another reason for the disgust of people with politicians and government officials and the contempt manifested toward them. The consequences for public debate and the rational, civilized conduct of public affairs are grave. This collapse in communication is terribly sad.
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Shirley Chisholm (The Good Fight)
“
Are you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear for your own; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day after to-morrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course of public affairs. This without reckoning in the pains of the heart. And so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred which is wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that small class who are happy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
Time for Pestcontrol (Naskaristana 2624)
It's a sad state of affairs when the geopolitical jungle of our world makes me wish as a biologist, that politics were a genetic characteristic, then we could engineer a virus to wipe out every single politician from the face of earth - and the beauty of it is that, you won't even notice their absence, because every democratic nation has a capable body of civil servants, though partially lazy and corrupt, who would keep the wheel of democracy turning, with the guidance of scholars and scientists, like it's just another Tuesday, because these people are the real engine of democracy. Let's call it "Operation Pestcontrol".
But alas, politics is not a genetic trait, and killing the fascist doesn't end fascism, only delays it, so we'd have to take the only other, more tedious but actually lasting alternative, which is, no more compromise with fascism - either be the human citizen of planet earth and confront the authoritarian elements of your part of the world, or do not call yourself human!
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Abhijit Naskar (With Love From A Blue Rock (Art of Naskar))