“
The easiest way to get from point A to point B is with a vehicle that runs on alphabet soup.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Great Listener Seeks Mute Women)
“
Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.
The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.
”
”
Douglas Adams
“
I’ll never find out now
What A. thought of me.
If B. ever forgave me in the end.
Why C. pretended everything was fine.
What part D. played in E.’s silence.
What F. had been expecting, if anything.
Why G. forgot when she knew perfectly well.
What H. had to hide.
What I. wanted to add.
If my being around
meant anything
to J. and K. and the rest of the alphabet.
”
”
Wisława Szymborska
“
Brother raises a hand against brother and son against father (how terrible!) and the father also against son. And moreover it is a continuity-matter, for if the father did not strike the son, they would not be alike. It is done to perpetuate similarity. Oh, Henderson, man cannot keep still under the blows.... A hit B? B hit C?--we have not enough alphabet to cover the condition. A brave man will try to make the evil stop with him. He shall keep the blow. No man shall get it from him, and that is a sublime ambition.
”
”
Saul Bellow (Henderson the Rain King)
“
Vitamin B proved to be not one vitamin but several, which is why we have B1, B2, and so on. To add to the confusion, Vitamin K has nothing to do with an alphabetical sequence. It was called K because its Danish discoverer, Henrik Dam, dubbed it "koagulations viatmin" for its role in blood clotting.
”
”
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
“
When his father asked why A wasn't apple or B wasn't bird or C wasn't cat, young Ambrose explained that things didn't always have to be the way you'd expect. Everybody does apples and birds and cats, he said, and it's boring to do what everybody else does.
”
”
C.S. Richardson (The End of the Alphabet)
“
a b c a b c a b c She doesn't know what comes after. So we begin again: a b c a b c a b c
But I can see the fourth letter: a strand of black hair - unraveled from the alphabet & written on her cheek.
”
”
Ocean Vuong (Night Sky with Exit Wounds)
“
The alphabet does not go “A B C D What? When? How?” but it does go “V W X Why? Z.
”
”
Douglas Adams
“
Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world. She was reading a book a day in alphabetical order and not skipping the dry ones. She remembered that the first author had been Abbott. She had been reading a book a day for a long time now and she was still in the B’s. Already she had read about bees and buffaloes, Bermuda vacations and Byzantine architecture. For all of her enthusiasm, she had to admit that some of the B’s had been hard going. But Francie was a reader. She read everything she could find: trash, classics, time tables and the grocer’s price list. Some
”
”
Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
“
A, B, C, D... These alphabets are everywhere in a book. But our mind reads whole words and sentences. Similarly, God and godliness is everywhere. Our mind only sees people, animals and things.
”
”
Shunya
“
The nature of a letter can also be revealed within its numeric value. All letters and numbers behave in a certain but recognizable way, from which we can deduce its nature. The number two is the only even prime. There is an inherent mathematical dilemma with, “one.” No matter how many times you multiply it, by itself, you still can’t get past “one” (1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1). So, how does “one” move beyond itself? How does the same, produce the different?
Mathematically, “one” is forced to divide itself and work from that duality. Therein, hides the divine puzzle of bet (b). To become “two,” the second must revolt from wholeness—a separation. Yet, the second could not have existed without the benefit of the original wholeness. Also, the first wanted the second to exist, but the first doesn’t know what the second will become. Again, two contains potential badness, to a Hebrew. (Ge 25:24)
”
”
Michael Ben Zehabe (The Meaning of Hebrew Letters: A Hebrew Language Program For Christians (The Jonah Project))
“
Brenna, Beth, Britt…and Blake. Did your parents stop watching Sesame Street after the letter B and didn’t realize there was more to the alphabet?” I snicker. “That’s a good one. Remind me to tell it to my ma next time I see her.
”
”
Sarina Bowen (Good Boy (WAGs, #1))
“
B is for boat, pushing off into the dark. C is the way that we find and we look. D is for diamonds, the bait on the hook.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (The Dangerous Alphabet)
“
So really there's almost no point in planning anything out at all, because life is so infinitely complex that you can almost never just take a straight road from A to B without going via the whole rest of the alphabet first, and all because a butterfly happened to flap its wings in Thailand
”
”
Andrew Blackman (On The Holloway Road)
“
B? As in the second letter of the Latin alphabet?” he asked, walking closer to the desk. “No, the Etruscan. I’m wild like that,
”
”
Elizabeth Hunter (A Hidden Fire (Elemental Mysteries, #1))
“
if plan A is not success you need to ready PLAN B but if plan B dozen work then try other bcz alphabet is more and more...
”
”
Sushil Singh
“
As her head rests on her pillow, she’ll go through the alphabet from A to Z and try to think of something to be grateful for that starts with each letter—A for her husband Andrew’s blueberry pancakes; B for bocce, her favorite game in the summer; etc.
”
”
A.J. Jacobs (Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey (TED Books))
“
For instance, the first preserved example of Greek alphabetic writing, scratched onto an Athenian wine jug of about 740 B.C., is a line of poetry announcing a dancing contest: ‘Whoever of all dancers performs most nimbly will win this vase as a prize.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel (Civilizations Rise and Fall, #1))
“
The alphabet Miss Poobner taught was represented on the wall above her head by a series of personified cartoonlike letters--Mr. A, Eating an Apple; Mrs. B, Buying a Broom; and so on--and something insipid about the parade of grinning letters defeated Dylan's will utterly.
”
”
Jonathan Lethem (The Fortress of Solitude)
“
But the line most familiar to European and American readers is the one that led via the Phoenicians to the Greeks by the early eighth century B.C., thence to the Etruscans in the same century, and in the next century to the Romans, whose alphabet with slight modifications is the one used to print this book.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
“
A is for the angelfish that amble around,
B is for the bay where the barnacles are found
C is for the clownfish in the coral reef
D is for the diver discovering the deep
”
”
Gareth Simmonds (ABC at the Sea: The Rhyming Alphabet Ocean Book)
“
THE CHRISTIAN ALPHABETS
A = AMEN
B = BAPTISM
C = CHRISTIAN
D = DISCIPLE
F = FELLOWSHIP
G = GOD
H = HOLY SPIRIT
I = INSPIRATION
J = JESUS CHRIST
K = KINGDOM
L = LOVE
M = MODERATION
N = NEW BIRTH
O = OBEDIENCE
P = PRAYER
Q = QUIET TIME
R = RIGHTEOUSNESS
S = SALVATION
T = TESTIMONY
U = UNDERSTANDING
V = VISION
W = WISDOM
X = XMAS
Y = YEA & AMEN
Z = ZION
BY : ADEWALE OSUNSAKIN
”
”
Osunsakin Adewale
“
Equity sends questions to law, law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can’t do this, equity finds it can’t do that; neither can so much as say it can’t do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the history of the apple pie.
”
”
Charles Dickens (Bleak House)
“
Writing barely differs from Talking and Reading. It appoints your hand while they engage your mouth and eyes respectively. The trio need the mind to combine sensible words from a meaningful arrangement of the ‘simple’ A B C to Z.
”
”
Olaotan Fawehinmi
“
This is an important list at the heart of phonics instruction. It alphabetically lists 99 single phonemes (speech sounds) and consonant blends (usually two phonemes), and it gives example words for each of these; often for their use in the beginning, middle, and end of words. These example words are also common English words, many taken from the list of Instant Words. This list solves the problem of coming up with a good common word to illustrate a phonics principle for lessons and worksheets.
”
”
Edward B. Fry (The Reading Teacher's Book Of Lists (J-B Ed: Book of Lists 67))
“
In the wisdom of God, the revelation of his will was given in the Hebrew tongue, with an alphabet of twenty-two letters, some of which, as inscribed on the Moabite stone, b.c. 900, are identical in form and sound with those now used in English books. This Hebrew alphabet, so simple that a child might learn it in a day, has never been lost or forgotten. The Hebrew language in which the Oracles of God were given to man, has never become a dead language. Since the day when the Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, there never has been a day or hour when the language in which it was written was not known to living men, who were able to read, write, and expound it. And the Hebrew is the only language of those ages that has lived to the present time, preserving the record of a divine revelation, and being conserved by it through the vicissitudes of conflict, conquest, captivity, and dispersion; while the surrounding idolatrous nations perished in their own corruption, and their languages and literature were buried in oblivion.
”
”
Horace Lorenzo Hastings (Greek-English Lexicon to the New Testament (Updated))
“
But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects (’aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, and so on). These Semitic words were related “acrophonically” to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the word for the object was also the letter named for the object (’a, b, g, d, and so on). In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic letters appear in many cases to have been pictures of those same objects. All these features made the forms, names, and sequence of Semitic alphabet letters easy to remember. Many
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
“
From his beach bag the man took an old penknife with a red handle and began to etch the signs of the letters onto nice flat pebbles. At the same time, he spoke to Mondo about everything there was in the letters, about everything you could see in them when you looked and when you listened. He spoke about A, which is like a big fly with its wings pulled back; about B, which is funny, with its two tummies; or C and D, which are like the moon, a crescent moon or a half-full moon; and then there was O, which was the full moon in the black sky. H is high, a ladder to climb up trees or to reach the roofs of houses; E and F look like a rake and a shovel; and G is like a fat man sitting in an armchair. I dances on tiptoes, with a little head popping up each time it bounces, whereas J likes to swing. K is broken like an old man, R takes big strides like a soldier, and Y stands tall, its arms up in the air, and it shouts: help! L is a tree on the river's edge, M is a mountain, N is for names, and people waving their hands, P is asleep on one paw, and Q is sitting on its tail; S is always a snake, Z is always a bolt of lightning, T is beautiful, like the mast on a ship, U is like a vase, V and W are birds, birds in flight; and X is a cross to help you remember.
”
”
J.M.G. Le Clézio (Mondo et autres histoires)
“
Sir Julian, exercising his prerogatives, named the planets for boyhood heroes: Lord Kitchener, William Gladstone, Archbishop Rollo Gore, Edythe MacDevott, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Carlyle, William Kircudbright, Samuel B. Gorsham, Sir Robert Peel, and the like. But Sir Julian was to be deprived of his privilege. He telegraphed ahead the news of his return to Maudley Space Station, together with a description of the Concourse and the names he had bestowed upon the members of this magnificent group. The list passed through the hands of an obscure young clerk, one Roger Pilgham, who rejected Sir Julian’s nominations in disgust. To each of the twenty-six planets he assigned a letter of the alphabet and hurriedly supplied new names: Alphanor, Barleycorn, Chrysanthe, Diogenes, Elfland, Fiame, Goshen, Hardacres, Image, Jezebel, Krokinole, Lyonnesse, Madagascar, Nowhere, Olliphane, Pilgham, Quinine, Raratonga, Somewhere, Tantamount, Unicorn, Valisande, Walpurgis, Xion, Ys and Zacaranda — the names derived from legend, myth, romance, his own whimsy.
”
”
Jack Vance (Demon Princes (Demon Princes #1-5))
“
A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel)
“
The history of alphabetic writing goes back to the consonantal writing system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium B.C. Most or nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic proto-alphabet.
”
”
Sampson Geoffrey
“
He’s so stupid. Honestly, when he makes alphabet soup it spells out D-U-M-B.
”
”
Jack Gantos (Dead End in Norvelt: (Newbery Medal Winner) (Norvelt Series Book 1))
“
TATTOOED NUMBERS, AS BLOOM had already established, were used to identify prisoners at just one concentration camp—the Auschwitz complex in Upper Silesia—and then just from 1941 onward. Only prisoners selected for work received a serial number, Epstein explained. Those who were sent directly to the gas chambers—including the elderly, the weak, and children—were not tattooed, although in the early days of the camp those who were in the infirmary or marked for execution were also tattooed on the chest using a metal stamp made up of interchangeable centimeter-long needles that allowed the tattoo to be created using a single blow, after which ink was rubbed into the wound. The digits were generally tattooed on the outer side of the left forearm, although some prisoners from transports in 1943 received tattoos on the inner forearm. The numbering sequences used varied over time, according to intake and the nature of the prisoners involved. An AU series denoted a Soviet prisoner, a Z series a Gypsy. A and B sequences up to 20,000 were used to identify male and female prisoners arriving at the camp after 1944, although an administrative error resulted in the B series exceeding 20,000. The Nazis’ original intention was to get as far as the final letter of the alphabet if required.
”
”
John Connolly (A Song of Shadows (Charlie Parker, #13))
“
he thought that the difference between, say, a ninety-five and a ninety-six, would be so tiny, and so subjective, that it really wouldn’t mean anything at all. That’s why he grouped his ratings in fives, which he categorized by letters of the alphabet. ‘A’ at the top end, ‘F’ at the bottom. So that an ‘A’ would be like ninety-five to a hundred, ‘B’ would be ninety to ninety-five.
”
”
Peter May (The Critic (The Enzo Files Book 2))
“
C: always had the sound of English k. The facts upon which this statement is founded are as follows: (a) The pronunciation of this letter is so described for us by Martianus Capella (III. 261) as to prove it a hard palatal. (b) C took the place of an original k in the early alphabet as previously stated; and in succeeding ages at times c reappears in inscriptions indifferently before the various vowels. Thus we have the form Caelius alternating with Kaelius, Cerus with Kerus, and decembres with dekembres,—showing that c and k were identical in sound. Quintilian (I. 7. 10) says: "As regards k, I think it should not be used in any words...This remark I have not failed to make, for the reason that there are some who think k necessary when a follows; though there is the letter C, which has the same power before all vowels." (c) In the Greek transliteration of Latin names, Latin c is always represented by k; and in Latin transliteration of Greek names, k is always represented by Latin c. And we know that Greek k was never assibilated before any vowel. Suidas calls the C on the Roman senators' shoes, "the Roman kappa." (d) Words taken into Gothic and Old High German from the Latin at an early period invariably represent Latin c by k; thus, Latin carcer gives the Gothic karkara and the German Kerker; Latin Caesar gives the German Kaiser; Latin lucerna gives the Gothic lukarn; the Latin cellarium gives the German Keller; the Latin cerasus gives the German Kirsche. Also in late Hebrew, Latin c is regularly represented in transliteration by the hard consonant kôph. [Advocates of the English system claim that Latin c had the sound of s before e or i because every modern language derived from the Latin has in some way modified c when thus used. It is true that modern languages have so modified it; but, as already noted, the modern languages are the children not of the classical Latin spoken in the days of Cicero, but of the provincial Latin spoken five or six centuries later. There is no doubt that at this late period, Latin c had become modified before e or i so as to be equivalent to s or z. Latin words received into German at this time represent c before e or i by z. But had this modification been a part of the usage of the classical language, it would have been noticed by the grammarians, who discuss each letter with great minuteness. Now no grammarian ever mentions more than one sound for Latin c. Again, if Latin c had ever had the sound of s, surely some of the Greeks, ignorant of Latin and spelling by ear, would at least occasionally have represented Latin c by σ,—a thing which none of them has ever done. It is probable that the modification of c which is noticed in the modern languages was a characteristic of the Umbrian and Oscan dialects and so prevailed to some extent in the provinces, but there is absolutely not the slightest evidence to show that it formed a part of the pronunciation of cultivated men at Rome.]
”
”
Harry Thurston Peck (Latin Pronunciation A Short Exposition of the Roman Method)
“
Suetonius, the gossip columnist of ancient Rome, says that Caesar wrote to Cicero and other friends in a cipher in which the plaintext letters were replaced by letters standing three places further down the alphabet, D for a, E for b, etc.
”
”
David Kahn (The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet)
“
The letters of the alphabet, a, b, c, etc., have no meaning whatever. They are but artificial signs, but when spelt they can express any great idea that great thinkers may form. Trees, grass, mountains, rivers, stars, moons, suns. These are the alphabets with which the Zen Scripture is written. Even a, b, c, etc., when spelt, can express any great idea.
”
”
Kaiten Nukariya (The Religion of the Samurai A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan)
“
In Western languages, reading and writing involve turning from left to right, and therefore exercise the brain’s left hemisphere. Written language, invented by the Greeks around 550 B.C.E., has helped reinforce left hemisphere dominance (at least in the West) and created what Harvard classicist Eric Havelock called “the alphabetic mind.” 7 So perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the left hemisphere has dominated the game. It’s the only side that knows how to write the rules. 2.
”
”
Daniel H. Pink (A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future)
“
The Phoenician alphabet of 1000 B.C. would become the great-grandmother of our own. About 19 of our letters can be traced back directly—in their shapes, their alphabetical sequence, and, for most, their sounds—to Phoenician counterparts. Ours is not the only descendant. As shown in the “Family Tree of the World’s Alphabets” (this page), the Phoenician alphabet has been the source for nearly every subsequent alphabet, past and present.
”
”
David Sacks (Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z)
“
The Phoenicians were a dynamic Iron Age people, based in what is now Lebanon. Today they are remembered as the best seafarers of the ancient world. In the 700s B.C. they spanned the length of the Mediterranean with a seaborne trade network, exchanging luxury goods from the East for raw materials from the West: Babylonian textiles, Egyptian metalwork, and Phoenician carved ivory were traded for elephant tusks from North Africa and bars of silver and tin from Spain.
”
”
David Sacks (Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z)
“
The Gezer Calendar is a limestone inscription from the mid- or late 900s B.C., thought to be the earliest survival of written Hebrew. Discovered in A.D. 1908 at the site of the ancient city of Gezer in what is now southern Israel, the “calendar” briefly lists the months of the year by farming duties.
”
”
David Sacks (Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z)
“
Written language, invented by the Greeks around 550 B.C.E., has helped reinforce left hemisphere dominance (at least in the West) and created what Harvard classicist Eric Havelock called “the alphabetic mind.”7 So perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the left hemisphere has dominated the game. It’s the only side that knows how to write the rules.
”
”
Daniel H. Pink (A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future)
“
its own tongue the glory and grace of Jesus while the water which they all drink speaks loudest of all, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). So this beautiful gospel speaks to man, not only in the tenderest words of human language, the most profound discourses of human thought, but it lays under tribute every figure of Hebrew history and the natural world as an alphabet to express in the glowing language of symbol and type the abundant grace of Him who is the First and the Last, both in nature, revelation and His people's hearts and lives.
”
”
A.B. Simpson (Christ in the Bible Commentary: The Complete New Testament)
“
The host read the question off a card as it appeared on a studio monitor. “John’s father has five sons: Alan, Blan, Clan, and Dlan. What did he call his fifth son?” The pinochle champ was the first to buzz in. “Mr. Fontaine?” said the host. “Elan,” he said confidently. “The five names obviously follow a logical alphabetical progression, A, B, C, D. So E-lan would be next.” The college professor made a face. She would have given the same answer. “I’m sorry,” said the host. “That is incorrect.” Jake buzzed in. “Mr. McQuade?” “Um, the fifth son’s name was John. Because in your question you said, ‘John’s father had five sons.’ So one of the sons has to be, you know, named John.” “That is correct!
”
”
Chris Grabenstein (Genius Camp (The Smartest Kid in the Universe, #2))
“
And you'd get point A followed by points B and C, and on the one hand F, and on the other foot G, until you could see the whole alphabet stretching ahead, each letter a Sahara in itself to be crawled across
”
”
Hanif Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia)
“
Don’t dress up a business as something it’s not, in order to attract a high valuation. For example, trying to conjure a technology angle (often in the form of recurring “as a service” revenue streams that emulate richly valued SaaS businesses), then characterizing the business with the customary tech “alphabet raising label” (ie series A, B or C round). While there is arguably more capital today than ever relative to the number of businesses, few investors are naïve enough to fall for this.
”
”
kevinchin
“
Who cares if plan A, B and C didn't work, there's a whole darn alphabet!
”
”
Haleigh Kemmerly
“
In order to understand our Lord's words about, taking vengeance on the children, you must notice that four generations are mentioned. a)The first, an evil inclination or effect produced within us solely by the sensitive nature, is called the first movement first produced. b)The second generation is that in which this movement is partly contributed to by the reason as well as by the sensitive nature: this is also termed the first work or act secondarily produced. c)The third, consent, is when the reason is entirely at one with the sensitive nature in favor of the sin and is on the watch for an opportunity to commit it, or at least wishes to commit it if possible. d)The fourth generation is when the couple gloat over the misdeed of which they should repent. Therefore God declares that he will visit with the zeal of justice the iniquities of the parents (meaning the sensitive nature and the reason) unto the third and fourth generation: he does not lay such stress upon the other two, for the first is no sin and the second is venial and easily forgiven. He makes express mention of the third and fourth because they are mortal sins for which men will be asked to pay with severe torments in the infernal prison. They can never make this repayment which will be required of them forever. This is typified by the king who would take an account of his servants and commanded that one who owed him much should be sold, and his wife and children and all that he had, and he was finally put in prison and delivered to the torturers,[84] who forgive nothing, but ever ask for what can never be paid. For the soul wished to always sin, though it could not live forever, and when it was asked to pay, its goodwill could no longer avail; as the proverb says: 'He who will not when he may, when he wills, he shall have nothing ' From the two explanations of this letter, you will deduce two fundamental rules for recollection: the first is that you must always keep watch and control over the distractions of your mind; the second, that you must at once follow the warnings of your conscience and act promptly on them, at least in your heart.
”
”
Francisco De Osuna (Third Spiritual Alphabet)
“
Peeking at him where he sat perusing the stock market on his phone while chewing on some crisp bacon, she blurted out the momentous news. “I love you.”
“I know.” Smugly said.
She blinked. “What do you mean you know?”
“Because of the letter A.”
“What does A have to do with anything other than being the first letter in your name?”
“Because it also stands for awesome.”
“And arrogant.”
“Are we back to alphabetizing my attributes? B is for brave.”
She laughed. “Don’t you dare start again. Besides, there’s only one set of four letters that interest me.”
“Oh?” he said, putting down his phone and ignoring his meal. “And what might those be?”
“M.I.N.E.” The only word she needed to have him drag her onto his lap for a scorching kiss.
A whispered, “I love you,” vibrated against her lips, his softly growled admission fueling her passion.
And after they were done, panting, glowing, and cradled together, ignoring the pounding at the door, she held still as she tried to figure out what she heard.
It should have been impossible. Arik was a lion, and yet he was— “Purring?” Indeed, he was.
And when an alpha purrs, pleasure is sure to follow.
”
”
Eve Langlais (When an Alpha Purrs (A Lion's Pride, #1))
“
THE HOLY ALPHABET !
Although things are not perfect
Because of trial or pain
Continue in thanksgiving
Do not begin to blame
Even when the times are hard
Fierce winds are bound to blow
God is forever able
Hold on to what you know
Imagine life without His love
Joy would cease to be
Keep thanking Him for all the things
Love imparts to thee
Move out of "Camp Complaining"
No weapon that is known
On earth can yield the power
Praise can do alone
Quit looking at the future
Redeem the time at hand
Start every day with worship
To "thank" is a command
Until we see Him coming
Victorious in the sky
We'll run the race with gratitude
Xalting God most high
Yes, there'll be good times and yes some will be bad, but...
Zion waits in glory...where none are ever sad!
Lyric Poems Adapted from Psalm 119
”
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Margaret B. Ingraham
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Chap. II – Les origines du spiritisme :
« On sait que c’est en Amérique que le spiritisme, comme beaucoup d’autres mouvements analogues, eut son point de départ : les premiers phénomènes se produisirent en décembre 1847 à Hydesville, dans l’État de New-York, dans une maison où venait de s’installer la famille Fox, qui était d’origine allemande, et dont le nom était primitivement Voss. Si nous mentionnons cette origine allemande, c’est que, si l’on veut un jour établir complètement les causes réelles du mouvement spirite, on ne devra pas négliger de diriger certaines recherches du côté de l’Allemagne ; nous dirons pourquoi tout à l’heure. Il semble bien, d’ailleurs, que la famille Fox n’ait joué là-dedans, au début du moins, qu’un rôle tout involontaire, et que, même par la suite, ses membres n’aient été que des instruments passifs d’une force quelconque, comme le sont tous les médiums. Quoi qu’il en soit, les phénomènes en question, qui consistaient en bruits divers et en déplacements d’objets, n’avaient en somme rien de nouveau ni d’inusité ; ils étaient semblables à ceux que l’on a observés de tout temps dans ce qu’on appelle les « maisons hantées » ; ce qu’il y eut de nouveau, c’est le parti qu’on en tira ultérieurement. Au bout de quelques mois, on eut l’idée de poser au frappeur mystérieux quelques questions auxquelles il répondit correctement ; pour commencer, on ne lui demandait que des nombres, qu’il indiquait par des séries de coups réguliers ; ce fut un Quaker nommé Isaac Post qui s’avisa de nommer les lettres de l’alphabet en invitant l’« esprit » à désigner par un coup celles qui composaient les mots qu’il voulait faire entendre, et qui inventa ainsi le moyen de communication qu’on appela spiritual telegraph. L’« esprit » déclara qu’il était un certain Charles B. Rosna, colporteur de son vivant, qui avait été assassiné dans cette maison et enterré dans le cellier, où l’on trouva effectivement quelques débris d’ossements. D’autre part, on remarqua que les phénomènes se produisaient surtout en présence des demoiselles Fox, et c’est de là que résulta la découverte de la médiumnité ; parmi les visiteurs qui accouraient de plus en plus nombreux, il y en eut qui crurent, à tort ou à raison, constater qu’ils étaient doués du même pouvoir. Dès lors, le modern spiritualism, comme on l’appela tout d’abord, était fondé ; sa première dénomination était en somme la plus exacte, mais, sans doute pour abréger, on en est arrivé, dans les pays anglo-saxons, à employer le plus souvent le mot spiritualism sans épithète ; quant au nom de « spiritisme », c’est en France qu’il fut inventé un peu plus tard.
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René Guénon (The Spiritist Fallacy (Collected Works of Rene Guenon))
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What surprises historians of language is that Arabic has been able to preserve a morphology already exemplified by Hammurabi's code in the nineteenth or eighteenth century B.C., and a phonetic system which perpetuates, apart from one single sound, the very rich sound range borne witness to by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered.
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Titus Burckhardt (Art of Islam: Language and Meaning (English and French Edition))
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The picture-writing of the Greeks in the pre-Homeric age was derived from a Semitic source, circa second millennium B.C., the type of alphabetic script which almost simultaneously and rather suddenly appeared in Moabite, Aramaic, Cyprian (Phoen.) and Greek, was due to a great Anatolian movement, beginning circa 1000 B.C.
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John Courtenay James (The Language of Palestine and Adjacent Regions)
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You don’t get it, do you? Fuck the A or the B, you have the whole goddamn alphabet upstairs and she’s asleep in your fucking bed right now, but the only letter that can fuck this up is U!
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K.Bromberg
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Attentional dyslexia In attentional dyslexia, a person may blend the elements of two words into one due to letter crowding or migration. Letters in word are jumbled and sometimes the symbol of the alphabets are written in reverse, for example, letter “b” can be written as “d”. Directional
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Craig Donovan (Dyslexia: For Beginners - Dyslexia Cure and Solutions - Dyslexia Advantage (Dyslexic Advantage - Dyslexia Treatment - Dyslexia Therapy Book 1))
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fact the literacy of a caste, or cult, whose sacred knowledge was often held in great esteem by the rest of society. It is unlikely that the scribes would willingly develop innovations that could simplify the new technology and so render literacy more accessible to the rest of the society, for this would surely lessen their own importance and status. …it is clear that ancient writing was in the hands of a small literate elite, the scribes, who manifested great conservatism in the practice of their craft, and, so far from being interested in its simplification, often chose to demonstrate their virtuosity by a proliferation of signs and values….11 Nevertheless, in the ancient Middle East the rebus principle was eventually generalized—probably by scribes working at a distance from the affluent and established centers of civilization—to cover all the common sounds of a given language. Thus, “syllabaries” appeared, wherein every basic sound-syllable of the language had its own conventional notation or written character (often rebuslike in origin). Such writing systems employed far fewer signs than the pictographic scripts from which they were derived, although the number of signs was still very much larger than the alphabetic script we now take for granted. The innovation which gave rise to the alphabet was itself developed by Semitic scribes around 1500 B.C.E.12 It consisted in recognizing that almost every syllable of their language was composed of one or more silent consonantal elements plus an element of sounded breath—that which we would today call a vowel. The silent consonants provided, as it were, the bodily framework or shape through which the sounded breath must flow. The original Semitic aleph-beth, then, established a character, or letter, for each of the consonants of the language. The vowels, the sounded breath that must be added to the written consonants in order to make them
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David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World)
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So you know the New York alphabet.” He was wiping down the bar, watching me. I shook my head. “Can’t say I do.” “C’mon,” he said in mock exasperation, “fuckin’ A, fuckin’ B, fuckin’ C.” I laughed. “That’s the New York alphabet, man.
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Blake Banner (The Shadow of Ukupacha (Harry Bauer Thriller #10))
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bookcase with at least one hundred books, aligned by size, then color, and quite possibly alphabetized.
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Q.B. Tyler (Unconditional)
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Computers can use combinations of bits to represent anything; the number of bits depends on the number of messages that need to be distinguished. Imagine, for example, a computer that works with the letters of the alphabet. Five-bit input signals can represent thirty-two different possibilities (25 = 32). Functions within the computer that work on letters sometimes use such a code, although they more often use an encoding with seven or eight bits, to allow representation of capitals, punctuation marks, numerals, and so on. Most modern computers use the standard representation of alphabet letters called ASCII (an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange). In ASCII, the sequence 1000001 represents the capital letter A, and 1000010 represents the capital B, and so on. The convention, of course, is arbitrary.
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William Daniel Hillis (The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas that Make Computers Work)
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In his 2016 book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet — Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script, Dr. Douglas Petrovich argues that it was not the Phoenicians who invented the first alphabet but rather a group of Hebrew sojourners in Egypt (Lahun, Wadi el-Ḥôl) and Sinai (Serâbît el Khadîm, Wadi Nasb) spanning the period from Joseph to Moses (1850– 1446 B.C.). If Dr. Petrovich is correct, then the Israelites played a central role in establishing one of the great pillars of civilization: the alphabet
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Simon Turpin (Adam: First and the Last)
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you don’t get to choose your feelings, just like you don’t get to choose your family. THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF REBECCA FINLEY Larry Larry Finley was not supposed to sell the house on Montreal Street, but he couldn’t live in it either. It said so in the will: To Larry Finley I give my house on the condition that he does not (a) sell it or (b) listen to any music produced after 1952 in it or (c) paint it or (d) plant flowers anywhere in the front yard or (e) go into the attic or allow anyone else to enter the attic or (f) . . . The will went on and on like that, almost a full alphabet of strange, mostly unexplained rules. Larry thought the whole thing was stupid.
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Suzy Krause (Sorry I Missed You)
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When cornered, he claimed to read Joyce, Ford, and Conrad. Rereads of Fleming and Wodehouse were a more accurate library. His opinion of Miss Elizabeth Bennet was not favorable (though he liked Mr. B. and held a wary respect for Darcy). Wuthering Heights, according to Ambrose, was the dullest book ever written.
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C.S. Richardson (The End of the Alphabet)
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A 1 (also a) n. (pl.As or A's) 1 the first letter of the alphabet. denoting the first in a set of items, categories, sizes, etc. denoting the first of two or more hypothetical people or things: suppose A had killed B. the highest class of academic mark. (a) [CHESS] denoting the first file from the left, as viewed from white's side of the board. (usu. a) the first fixed quantity in an algebraic expression. (A) the human blood type (in the ABO system) containing the A agglutinogen and lacking the B.
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Oxford University Press (The New Oxford American Dictionary)
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Writing in Egypt began around 3000 B.C. The official system was hieroglyphics (“sacred carvings”), revered as the gift of the scribe god Toth.
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David Sacks (Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z)
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Modern experts now believe the alphabet was invented sometime around 2000 B.C. by Semites who dwelled as foreigners in pharaoh’s Egypt;
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David Sacks (Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z)
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Patience is a word we use a lot to describe great teachers at work. But what I saw was not patience, exactly. It was more like probing, strategic impatience. The master coaches I met were constantly changing their input. If A didn't work, they tried B and C; if they failed, the rest of the alphabet was holstered and ready. What seemed like patient repetition from the outside was actually, on closer examination, a series of subtle variations, each one a distinct firing, each one creating a worthwhile combination of errors and fixes that grew myelin.
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Daniel Coyle (The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else)
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I found A, and then B chased me away to this tree. That's okay, said Farmer D. I will protect you from that B
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Mark A Vogel (The Adventures of Professor Poodle & Auggie: Let's Collect the Alphabet)
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In three years of purposeful dating, I started to refer to the men I met by the generic name of 'Dick," with a letter of the alphabet assigned in the order in which they appeared in my life: A. Dick, B. Dick, C. Dick, D. Dick, E. Dick. I was so popular on the over-fifty online dating sites that I damn near ran our of alphabet letters to assign to Dicks.
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Debi Tolbert Duggar (Riding Soul-O)
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In three years of purposeful dating, I started to refer to the men I met by the generic name of 'Dick,' with a letter of the alphabet assigned in the order in which they appeared in my life: A. Dick, B. Dick, C. Dick, D. Dick, E. Dick. I was so popular on the over-fifty online dating sites that I damn near ran our of alphabet letters to assign to Dicks.
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Debi Tolbert Duggar (Riding Soul-O)
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What letters in the alphabet face the letters that follow it in a word vs its back against the letters that follow it. Like, “Because” The “B” faces the letters that follow it. But in the word, “dumb” the lowercase “d” has its back against the letters. #ThisIsWhatKeepMeUpAtNight
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Niedria Kenny