Age Of Empires 3 Quotes

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young.

Breeze chuckled. "He was completely insane, you know. The worse things got, the more he'd joke. I remember how chipper he was the very day after one of our worst defeats, when we lost most of our skaa army to that fool Yeden. Kell walked in, a spring in his step, making one of his inane jokes." "Sounds insensitive," Allrianne said. Ham shook his head. "No. He was just determined. He always said that laughter was something the Lord Ruler couldn't take from him. He planned and executed the overthrow of a thousand-year empire—and he did it as a kind of . . . penance for letting his wife die thinking that he hated her. But, he did it all with a smirk on his lips. Like every joke was his way of slapping fate in the face." "We need what he had," Elend said.

Somehow, she had grown into a woman in between the fall of kings and collapse of worlds. Once she had been terrified of change. Then she had been terrified of losing Elend. Now her fears were more nebulous - worries of what would come after she was gone, worries of what would happen to the people of the empire if she failed.

She remembered Kelsier, standing boldly before a small group of thieves, proclaiming that they would overthrow the Lord Ruler and free the empire. We're thieves, he'd said. And we're extraordinarily good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces. That day, when he'd written up the team's goals and plans on a small board, Vin had been amazed by how possible he had made an impossible task seem. That day, a little bit of her had begun to believe that Kelsier could overthrow the Final Empire.

She no longer fought out of fear for the man she loved. Instead, she fought with an understanding. She was a knife—Elend’s knife, the Final Empire’s knife.

At first I thought it was a dragon, savage and fierce. I wish that had been true. Dragons only kill you; Gilarabrywns break your heart.

We rode in silence for a while and I wondered if men were the world's leaves. If as we aged the world filled us with its poisons so as old men, filled to the brim with the bitterest gall, we could fall into hell and take it all with us. Perhaps without death the world would choke on its own evils.

from arrogance came apathy, from apathy came ignorance, from ignorance came hatred, and from hatred, well…nothing good ever came from hatred.

Wouldn't matter," Suri said. "Regardless where you're born, the world has a way of finding you and ruining everything.

Heroes are those who refuse to create or become victims. I failed to see it then, but I lived among many heroes. I think maybe everyone does." --THE BOOK OF BRIN

You sacrificed yourself to save us; good for you, but you only had to do it once.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that people will astound you. But the moment they do, or shortly after, you will realize you should not have been surprised. Ultimately, the problem was you, not them.

Getting older, Mawyndulë, is like climbing a mountain. The higher you go, the greater the view. From time to time, you look back. At such heights, you can see paths behind you: the trails you took and the ones you foolishly disregarded; the blind alleys you fortunately missed, purely out of chance rather than by some greater wisdom on your part. You also spot others following you, people making the same stupid decisions. From your elevated position, you witness their bad choices, the ones they can’t see because they aren’t standing where you are. You could shout down, attempt to warn them, but they rarely listen. They are too blinded by the indisputable fact that the path you followed got you where you are, to the place they want to be.

Rivers age as they go downstream,” Suri told Raithe while they looked at the disagreeable gorge. “That’s what Tura once told me. They start out as tiny trickles, then in their youth and adolescence are like this, boundless energy throwing themselves heedless against unmovable rocks. Then they usually fall. Sometimes it’s a series of tumbles and sometimes one great plummet, but hitting bottom usually takes the fight out of most rivers. After that, they mellow and learn to meander around the rocks they encounter, taking life slower, easier. They spread out and grow quiet until, at last, they flow into the sea, becoming one with something greater.

Accept that you‘re going to get hurt, that you‘re going to die; embrace it, and you‘ll find the freedom to live.

when age speaks to youth it goes unheard

So often I have heard that war is a noble and necessary thing, the answer to many problems. But I have found that when war becomes a reality, peace becomes the noble and necessary thing because there is no problem greater than war.

This was nothing like Tokyo, where the past, all that remained of it, was nurtured with a nervous care. History there had become a quantity, a rare thing, parceled out by government and preserved by law and corporate funding. Here it seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now-all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.

The problem is that this fluidity is not a choice we are free to make. Despite the unifying patriotic rhetoric that permeates the United States, on some level Americans are not really fooled: at bottom, each person knows he or she must continually “reinvent themselves,” which is to say, go it alone. America is the ultimate anticommunity.3

I have a better idea. How about the two of you just leave. Go back to your fancy stone fortress, your one-eyed newts, cauldrons, and bat wings, and leave us in peace. Will you do that, please?" "I've never known any newts with only one eye," Suri said. "And I know quite a few." "Sure, sure. I'll bet you're on a first name basis with them, aren't you?" Suri nodded. "Of course. Newts are ridiculously friendly.

Rivers age as they go downstream,” Suri told Raithe while they looked at the disagreeable gorge. “That’s what Tura once told me. They start out as tiny trickles, then in their youth and adolescence are like this, boundless energy throwing themselves heedless against unmovable rocks. Then they usually fall. Sometimes it’s a series of tumbles and sometimes one great plummet, but hitting bottom usually takes the fight out of most rivers.

It is certainly not impossible that my father would attempt to frighten me,” he said. “He did so many times in my youth. But he takes too great a risk here. I am his only heir. There is little point in winning an empire if one cannot launch a dynasty. With both his age and his past . . . performance, he is not foolish enough to believe he can father more sons. That is why I can get away with some degree of disrespect. Yet there is a limit, as I’ve learned. My sons could be his heirs as well as I could. He has threatened me with that when I am overtly impudent.” “Threatened you with what? Forcing you to father children? I’m hardly an expert in the matter, but my rudimentary knowledge of the process suggests that would be difficult.” She swore Gavril flushed. Impossible to tell with his skin tone, of course, but his expression said if he was a Northerner, he’d be as red as a summer plum.

The Allied governments, for example, with the British as executors, maintained in place the food blockade of Germany that had been in effect since 1917. A British authority would note that “in the last two years of the war, nearly 800,000 noncombatants died in Germany from starvation or diseases attributed to undernourishment. The biggest mortality was among children between the ages of 5 and 1 5, where the death rate increased by 55 percent. . . a whole generation [the one which had been born and lived during Hitler’s rise to power] grew up in an epoch of undernourishment and misery such as we [British] have never in this country experienced.”3 A distinguished American authority on United States foreign policy in the first half of the twentieth century, Stanford University professor Thomas A. Bailey, noted that “the Allied slow starvation of Germany’s civilian population was quiet, unspectacular, and censored.”4 The Englishman Gilbert Murray, writing in 1933, noted that future historians would probably regard the establishment and continuation of the blockade as one of those many acts of almost incredible inhumanity which made World War I conspicuous in history. -- Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 122

Moreover, since (as chapters 3 and 5 will argue) tolerance requires that the tolerated refrain from demands or incursions on public or political life that issue from their “difference,” the subject of tolerance is tolerated only so long as it does not make a political claim, that is, so long as it lives and practices its “difference” in a depoliticized or private fashion. In addition to being at odds with the epistemological and political stance to which many politicized identities aspire, this requirement also results in the discursive suppression of the social powers that constitute “difference” as well as in the strengthening of the hegemony of unmarked cultures, ethnicities, races, or sexualities;

Age Of Wonders Vista [60985] Copy And Visit The Link Here -> freehackstools.frogcp.com Hacks Hotmail Account Hacksforums, Dungeon Rampage Cheats Engine Hacks, Avast Antivirus Product Keygen, Dragon City Cheats Without Cheats Engine, Goodgame Empire Hacks Download - Adder V1.3, Marvel Avengers Alliance Cheats Engine October 2012, Need For Speed World Boost Hacks May 2012, Criminal Case Cheats Level, Paypal Generator.rar, Csr Racing Cheats Codes For Android, Angry Birds Star Wars 2 Hacks No Root, Pou Cheatss To Get Coins, Criminal Case Hacks And Cheatss, Wifi Hacks Download Mac, Jailbreak Ios 7 Download Free, Amazon Gift Card Generator October 2012, Facebook Credits Generator November 2012, Maplestory Nx Cash Code Generator 2012, Pop Songs About Cheatsing Boyfriends, Cityville Cheatss Pier, Jailbreak Ios 7 Status, Song Pop Cheats Droid, Combat Arms Hacks Buy, 8 Ball Pool Cheats Pro V3.1 Password, Itunes Gift Card Generator 5.1, Plants Vs Zombies Hacks Wiki, Playstation Vita Blue Emulator 0.3 Bios, Empires And Allies Hacks For Empire Points, Minecraft Premium Account Generator Unlimited 2011, Gta 5 Money Cheats 12000, Modern War 2.0 Hacks, Realm Of The Mad God Hacks V.2.6, Medal Of Honor Cheats Codes Xbox, Guild Wars 2 Keygen 2013, Microsoft Office 2010 Keygen Works In All Computers, Crossfire Hacks Aimbot, Ask.fm Beğeni Hacks, Cheats Engine In Dragon City, Xbox Live Code Generator July, Farmville 2 Hacks Enjoy! :)

Age Of Empires Iii The Asian Dynasties Wonders [61898] Copy And Visit The Link Here -> freehackstools.frogcp.com Hacks Hotmail Account Hacksforums, Dungeon Rampage Cheats Engine Hacks, Avast Antivirus Product Keygen, Dragon City Cheats Without Cheats Engine, Goodgame Empire Hacks Download - Adder V1.3, Marvel Avengers Alliance Cheats Engine October 2012, Need For Speed World Boost Hacks May 2012, Criminal Case Cheats Level, Paypal Generator.rar, Csr Racing Cheats Codes For Android, Angry Birds Star Wars 2 Hacks No Root, Pou Cheatss To Get Coins, Criminal Case Hacks And Cheatss, Wifi Hacks Download Mac, Jailbreak Ios 7 Download Free, Amazon Gift Card Generator October 2012, Facebook Credits Generator November 2012, Maplestory Nx Cash Code Generator 2012, Pop Songs About Cheatsing Boyfriends, Cityville Cheatss Pier, Jailbreak Ios 7 Status, Song Pop Cheats Droid, Combat Arms Hacks Buy, 8 Ball Pool Cheats Pro V3.1 Password, Itunes Gift Card Generator 5.1, Plants Vs Zombies Hacks Wiki, Playstation Vita Blue Emulator 0.3 Bios, Empires And Allies Hacks For Empire Points, Minecraft Premium Account Generator Unlimited 2011, Gta 5 Money Cheats 12000, Modern War 2.0 Hacks, Realm Of The Mad God Hacks V.2.6, Medal Of Honor Cheats Codes Xbox, Guild Wars 2 Keygen 2013, Microsoft Office 2010 Keygen Works In All Computers, Crossfire Hacks Aimbot, Ask.fm Beğeni Hacks, Cheats Engine In Dragon City, Xbox Live Code Generator July, Farmville 2 Hacks Enjoy! :)

Age Of Wonders Iii [76156] Copy And Visit The Link Here -> freehackstools.frogcp.com Hacks Hotmail Account Hacksforums, Dungeon Rampage Cheats Engine Hacks, Avast Antivirus Product Keygen, Dragon City Cheats Without Cheats Engine, Goodgame Empire Hacks Download - Adder V1.3, Marvel Avengers Alliance Cheats Engine October 2012, Need For Speed World Boost Hacks May 2012, Criminal Case Cheats Level, Paypal Generator.rar, Csr Racing Cheats Codes For Android, Angry Birds Star Wars 2 Hacks No Root, Pou Cheatss To Get Coins, Criminal Case Hacks And Cheatss, Wifi Hacks Download Mac, Jailbreak Ios 7 Download Free, Amazon Gift Card Generator October 2012, Facebook Credits Generator November 2012, Maplestory Nx Cash Code Generator 2012, Pop Songs About Cheatsing Boyfriends, Cityville Cheatss Pier, Jailbreak Ios 7 Status, Song Pop Cheats Droid, Combat Arms Hacks Buy, 8 Ball Pool Cheats Pro V3.1 Password, Itunes Gift Card Generator 5.1, Plants Vs Zombies Hacks Wiki, Playstation Vita Blue Emulator 0.3 Bios, Empires And Allies Hacks For Empire Points, Minecraft Premium Account Generator Unlimited 2011, Gta 5 Money Cheats 12000, Modern War 2.0 Hacks, Realm Of The Mad God Hacks V.2.6, Medal Of Honor Cheats Codes Xbox, Guild Wars 2 Keygen 2013, Microsoft Office 2010 Keygen Works In All Computers, Crossfire Hacks Aimbot, Ask.fm Beğeni Hacks, Cheats Engine In Dragon City, Xbox Live Code Generator July, Farmville 2 Hacks Enjoy! :)

Dragon Age Origin Money Hacks [63543] Copy And Visit The Link Here -> freehackstools.frogcp.com Hacks Hotmail Account Hacksforums, Dungeon Rampage Cheats Engine Hacks, Avast Antivirus Product Keygen, Dragon City Cheats Without Cheats Engine, Goodgame Empire Hacks Download - Adder V1.3, Marvel Avengers Alliance Cheats Engine October 2012, Need For Speed World Boost Hacks May 2012, Criminal Case Cheats Level, Paypal Generator.rar, Csr Racing Cheats Codes For Android, Angry Birds Star Wars 2 Hacks No Root, Pou Cheatss To Get Coins, Criminal Case Hacks And Cheatss, Wifi Hacks Download Mac, Jailbreak Ios 7 Download Free, Amazon Gift Card Generator October 2012, Facebook Credits Generator November 2012, Maplestory Nx Cash Code Generator 2012, Pop Songs About Cheatsing Boyfriends, Cityville Cheatss Pier, Jailbreak Ios 7 Status, Song Pop Cheats Droid, Combat Arms Hacks Buy, 8 Ball Pool Cheats Pro V3.1 Password, Itunes Gift Card Generator 5.1, Plants Vs Zombies Hacks Wiki, Playstation Vita Blue Emulator 0.3 Bios, Empires And Allies Hacks For Empire Points, Minecraft Premium Account Generator Unlimited 2011, Gta 5 Money Cheats 12000, Modern War 2.0 Hacks, Realm Of The Mad God Hacks V.2.6, Medal Of Honor Cheats Codes Xbox, Guild Wars 2 Keygen 2013, Microsoft Office 2010 Keygen Works In All Computers, Crossfire Hacks Aimbot, Ask.fm Beğeni Hacks, Cheats Engine In Dragon City, Xbox Live Code Generator July, Farmville 2 Hacks Enjoy! :)

The world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. Everything tends in a most wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live all history in his own person. He must sit at home with might and main, and not suffer himself to be bullied by kings or empires, but know that he is greater than all the geography and all the governments of the world . . .

Now if we turn to the Book of Revelation—which we saw as a cause of offense in its apparent celebration of a God of violence—we have to say in all honesty that it is in fact a nonviolent New Testament writing, and profoundly so. ‘The Lamb’ is the general symbolic name given to Jesus in the book, mentioned 29 times, an image of nonviolence and the book’s undisputed hero. The essence of the Lamb is not to use violence. When we first hear of it is ‘standing as if it had been slaughtered’ (5:6): it does not fight, it is slaughtered, and it continues exactly ‘as if it were something slaughtered (i.e. it does not lose this identity). Furthermore its followers do not fight, they also are killed. We learn that the Lamb holds the key to human history, opening its seals to reveal its purpose and meaning, including its intense inner violence. The Lamb is able to do this because it represents a completely different human / divine way of responding, other than that of violence. At the same time, precisely because of this revelation, all hell (literally) breaks out around the Lamb. The old world system—the Beast—does not remain indifferent to the introduction of a new way and the absolute challenge it makes, but reacts with continually redoubled violence. At the end of the book there is a final battle when the Beast and the kings of the earth with their armies are all slain by a figure called the Word of God, by the sword which comes from his mouth. But directly afterwards the new earth and the city of the Lamb welcome and heal these very kings and nations which have just been slain! The only figures not to be restored are the Beast and its prophet which represent the system of violence, the imperial order with its ideological apparatus of cult and worship. No doubt there is a powerful tonality of anger running through the book, against the oppression and murder that the Christian communities were then experiencing at the hands of the Roman Empire. And there is pretty clearly a sense of emotional release offered by the images of destruction and vengeance unleashed against the forces of oppression. But the final structure of the book is redemptive and life-giving, and that has to be admitted in any honest assessment. The duality then is not between a vengeful God and a gentle Jesus, or an initially gentle Jesus and then a violent one, but between an actual world and culture of violence and a core message of forgiveness and nonviolence. The early Christians were sorely oppressed by the former and seeking desperately to hang on to the latter. If they use language and symbolism derived from the former to restore hope in the substance of the latter then the tension is literary and poetic, rather than two moods or identities of God. The book of Revelation was intended to have a cathartic effect on emotion, in order that the Christians who read or heard it could arrive, in their minds and hearts, at the transformed perspective where they welcomed and blessed their enemies. In other words it was and is intended to be therapeutic.3 In contrast the split between Jesus and a God of punishment—which came to full growth in the Middle Ages—is ontological, and can only lead to a fundamental division in the Christian soul, with eternal love on the one hand, and eternal violence on the other. In other words, a spiritual schizophrenia. This

Every religious figure in history achieved enlightenment between the ages of twenty-five and thirtyfive. That seems to be when human consciousness comes fully into its own and acquires a finer spiritual perception. Perhaps it simply takes that long to develop. In any case, it’s a well-documented phenomenon. Look it up sometime.

Arion paused at the well and nodded. "When people are happy, they can become deaf. I don't know why that is, but I've noticed it to be true. Misery helps us hear. We notice more when we're in pain. We see beauty more clearly, hear the sufferings of others more loudly. Since you pulled me back, every sunrise is so much brighter, every breeze a delight. I think people who survive tragedy aren't so much scarred as they are cleansed. The wax comes out of their ears and the clouds leave their eyes. The barriers between them and the world are reduced.

After that, they mellow and learn to meander around the rocks they encounter, taking life slower, easier. They spread out and grow quiet until, at last, they flow into the sea, becoming one with something greater.

In his recent critique of fashionable ecological philosophies, Andreas Malm pointedly remarks: 'When Latour writes that, in a warming world, 'humans are no longer submitted to the diktats of objective nature, since what comes to them is also an intensively subjective form of action,' he gets it all wrong: there is nothing intensively subjective but a lot of objectivity in ice melting. Or, as one placard at a demonstration held by scientists at the American Geophysical Union in December 2016: 'Ice has no agenda - it just melts.'' The reverse claim is that human interventions have only had such a menacing and even fatal consequences for our living conditions within the Earth system because human agency has not yet sufficiently freed itself from its dependence on natural history. This seems to be the conviction behind the 'Ecomodernist Manifesto,' for instance, which claims that 'knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, even great, Anthropocene,' and that a good Anthropocene 'demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.' In this confrontation, an age-old dualism has assumed a new guise: the attempt to establish a complicity with the forces of destiny - if necessary at the price of surrendering human subjectivity or perhaps involving other forms of self-sacrifice - is juxtaposed with the attempt to achieve human autonomy by subordinating the planet under the superior power of human ingenuity. These two positions, a modernist stance and a position critical of it, are usually considered to represent mutually exclusive alternatives. Actually, however, the two positions have more in common than first meets the eye. At the beginning of chapter 3, I referred to Greek philosophers who suggested that the best way to protect oneself against the vicissitudes of fate was to learn how to submit oneself to it willingly, sacrificing one's drives and ambitions while expecting, at the same time, that this complicity with destiny would empower one to master worldly challenges. What unites the seemingly opposite positions, more generally speaking, is a shared move away from engagement with the concrete and individual human agency (i.e., with empirical human subjects and with the unequal power distribution in human societies) toward some powerful form of abstraction, be it 'to distribute agency' or to use the 'growing social, economic, and technological powers' of humanity for a better Anthropocene. I suggest that we take a more systemic look at the role of humanity in the Earth system, taking into account both its material interventions and the knowledge that enabled them.

Traditional opinion leaders, from political parties to faith groups, lacked the persuasion machinery to compete with the Omegas’ media empire.

Where the African church failed was in not carrying Christianity beyond the Romanized inhabitants of the cities and the great estates, and not sinking roots into the world of the native peoples. Like most regions of the Western empire, such as Gaul and Spain, Africa was divided between Latin-speaking provincials and old-stock natives, who spoke their ancient languages—in this case, varieties of Berber. Unlike these other provinces, though, the African church had made next to no progress in taking the faith to the villages and the neighboring tribes, nor, critically, had they tried to evangelize in local languages. This would not have been an unrealistic expectation, in that already by the fourth century missionaries elsewhere were translating the scriptures into Gothic, and Hunnic languages followed by the sixth century. Evidence of the neglect of the countryside can be found in the letters of Saint Augustine, by far the best known of African bishops, whose vision was sharply focused on the cities of Rome and Carthage; he expressed no interest in the rural areas or peoples of his diocese.3

and other technology enabled the empires of antiquity. Globalization is merely the latest example of this multi-billion-year trend of hierarchical growth.

tax collector’s booth. Most people in the Roman Empire did not like tax collectors; Jewish people viewed them as traitors. For assessment purposes, tax collectors were allowed to search anything except the person of a Roman lady; any property not properly declared was subject to seizure. In Egypt, tax collectors were sometimes so brutal that they were known to beat up aged women in an attempt to learn where their tax-owing relatives were hiding. Ancient documents reveal that when harvests were bad, on occasion an entire village, hearing that a tax collector was coming, would leave town and start a village somewhere else. People sometimes paid tax collectors bribes to prevent even higher fees being extorted. Some scholars consider Levi a customs officer who would charge tariffs on goods passing through Capernaum. Such tariffs were small by themselves (often less than 3 percent) but drove up the cost of goods because they were multiplied by all the borders they passed through. Customs officers could search possessions; customs income normally went to local governments run by elites who were cooperative with Rome. Others regard Levi as collecting taxes from local residents, likely working especially for agents of Galilee’s ruler, Herod Antipas.

In a study appropriately titled “Very Happy People,” researchers sought out the characteristics of the happiest 10 percent among us.4 Do they all live in warm climates? Are they all wealthy? Are they all physically fit? Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships. My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result—social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge—most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3.

seventh floor had only had one resident,

But I won’t get to die a hero like you. Women never do. We just get old, then we’re forgotten.

She knew that from arrogance came apathy, from apathy came ignorance, from ignorance came hatred, and from hatred, well…nothing good ever came from hatred.

Tell me, Philostratus, do you subscribe to the school of philosophy that holds mankind is in a state of continual decline, beginning with the supermen of a long-ago Golden Age and descending to the present, so that each generation is a little less hardy, a little less touched with the original fire of creation than the last, so that we dwindle in vigor and lifespan from father to son? In that case, I shall be lucky to live as long as … as you.

Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships. My empirical study of well-being among 1,600 Harvard undergraduates found a similar result—social support was a far greater predictor of happiness than any other factor, more than GPA, family income, SAT scores, age, gender, or race. In fact, the correlation between social support and happiness was 0.7. This may not sound like a big number, but for researchers it’s huge—most psychology findings are considered significant when they hit 0.3. The point is, the more social support you have, the happier you are. And as we know, the happier you are, the more advantages you accrue in nearly every domain of life.

My love, I give you; Into Elan, I send you; Forgive me, I beg you; Be at peace, I ask you; May whatever good is in this universe watch over your journey.

They came with hardly a warning,” Moya said. “Hundreds pouring over the chasm, both beautiful and terrible, wearing shining gold and shimmering blue. With them came whirlwinds and giants. Nothing can stop them. They’re coming still.

This” —she indicated Gifford with both hands— “can hardly be mistaken for the face of happy coincidence. This” —she clapped him on the shoulder— “is what you get from a life of careful misjudgment and a bunch of drunk-off-their-asses gods in a bad mood.” Tressa spit, wiped her chin, and shook her head.

Unlike all other living things, people were never content to just live in a place, to be part of it; they always wanted to change things, to make places conform. Maybe that was why the gods and spirits appeared so cruel—their way of saying, Quit it.

He frowned. "Many people treat age as if its a shield to hide behind, something that protects our children. And sometimes it is. Until someone comes along who doesn't honor the shield. Then we decide if we're going to keep pretending that shield is there. The Empire doesn't care what age she is. So she must learn about this threat that faces all of us.

Long, hard, and rocky is the road we walk in old age,

At the age of fifteen, during the winter when she’d discovered smashball, romance, and her parents’ profound imperfections, Mon Mothma had decided to devote her life to studying history; decided to turn her back on her family’s political dynasty and to spend her days in a cramped study reading thousand-year-old diaries and letters and cargo manifests until her eyes burned. She would be detective, coroner, and philosopher all at once, examining means and motive and cause of death for entire civilizations. She hadn’t become a historian, of course. By the next summer, Mon’s moment of rebellion had been forgotten. Inertia and family pressures and a genuine love of governance had returned her to the road to politics. She’d gone on to become a senator (far too young, she thought now) and scrabbled for votes and smiled and kept her head above water until she’d learned how to play the game for real.