Atkinson Book Quotes

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She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
Kate Atkinson (Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1))
She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is.
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins)
Roughly five thousand African Americans would eventually serve in the Continental Army, a more integrated national force than would exist for nearly two centuries.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
The tasks were too many, the seas too vast, the sails too few.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
We have transformational conversations with people we value!  
Marilyn W. Atkinson (Step By Step Coaching (The Art & Science of Coaching Book 2))
Desire firmly, confident, and earnestly. Be not half-hearted in your demands and desires – claim and demand the WHOLE THING, and feel confident that it will work out into material objectivity and reality. Think of it, dream of it, and always LONG for it – you must learn to want it the worst way – learn to "want it hard enough. "You can attain and obtain many things by "wanting them hard enough" – the trouble is with most of us that we do not want things hard enough – we mistake vague cravings and wished for earnest, longing, demanding Desire and Want. Get to Desire and Demand the Thing just as you demand and Desire your daily meals. That is "wanting it the worst way. "This is merely a hint – surely
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
Writing felt like something she knew, although she only knew it from the other side – reading – and it took her a while to realize that writing and reading were completely different activities – polar opposites, in fact. And just because she could do joined-up handwriting, she discovered, didn’t mean that she could write books. But she persevered, perhaps for the first time in her life.
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins (Todd Family, #2))
London—the king’s men, if not the king himself—conspired to deprive them of what they and their ancestors had wrenched from this hard land. They were, a Boston writer concluded, “panting for an explosion.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
That art or talent by which the discourse is adapted to the end,’ and states that the ends of speaking, or writing are reducible to four: to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions, or to influence the will.
William Walker Atkinson (The Essential Works of William Walker Atkinson: 50+ Books in One Edition: The Power of Concentration, Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life, The Secret of Success)
...no book could ever be left in the condition you found it in because it was changed every time it was read by someone.
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins (Todd Family, #2))
CHIEF LAMBIASE IS a frequent visitor to the store, and to justify these visits, he buys books. Because Lambiase doesn’t believe in wasting money, he reads the books, too. At first, he had mainly bought mass-market paperbacks—Jeffery Deaver and James Patterson (or whoever writes for James Patterson)—and then A.J. graduates him to trade paperbacks by Jo Nesbø and Elmore Leonard. Both authors are hits with Lambiase, so A.J. promotes him again to Walter Mosley and then Cormac McCarthy. A.J.’s most recent recommendation is Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories.
Gabrielle Zevin (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry)
the hardest of war’s hard truths—that for a new nation to live, young men must die, often alone, usually in pain, and sometimes to no obvious purpose. He, more than anyone, would be responsible for ordering those men to their deaths.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Here, then, was the crux. The king and his men believed that British wealth and status derived from the colonies. The erosion of authority in America, followed by a loss of sovereignty, would encourage rebellions in Canada, Ireland, the Caribbean, India. Dominoes would topple. “Destruction must follow disunion,” the colonial secretary, Lord Dartmouth, warned.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Unlike most European wars of the eighteenth century, this one would not be fought by professional armies on flat, open terrain with reasonable roads, in daylight and good weather. And though it was fought in the age of reason, infused with Enlightenment ideals, this war, this civil war, would spiral into savagery, with sanguinary cruelty, casual killing, and atrocity.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves.… The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.… Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world, that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
For war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and duty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage, of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
as Voltaire had observed, history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. This would not be a war between regimes or dynasties, fought for territory or the usual commercial advantages. Instead, what became known as the American Revolution was an improvised struggle between two peoples of a common heritage, now sundered by divergent values and conflicting visions of a world to come.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
One of the remarkable things about Life After Life is the way that this formal experimentation is combined with a consistently involving plot. It is as if the writing of B. S. Johnson had been crossed with the better novels of Anthony Trollope. An entire world emerges but shows itself again and again in different lights. It’s an unusual book in many ways: in part a tribute to England and to the resilience of the English character revealed under the stress of wartime; in part a book about love that doesn’t contain a love story but instead celebrates the bond between siblings. It’s a book full of horror vividly described, as in the repeated image of a dress with human arms still inside it, seen in a bombed building. Yet the most memorable passages are those which describe the prewar English countryside before suburbia encroached upon “the flowers that grew in the meadow beyond the copse—flax and larkspur, buttercups, corn poppies, red campion and oxeye daisies.” Above all, it’s a book about the act of reading itself. As you read it, it asks you to think about your expectations of plot and outcome. The reader desires happiness for certain characters, and Atkinson both challenges and rewards that tendency.
Kate Atkinson (Life After Life)
Thomas Paine, who had a shrewd eye for military matters, was closer to the mark in a public letter to Admiral Howe published in early 1777. “In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in, you had only armies to contend with,” Paine observed. “In this case, you have both an army and a country to combat.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Allied air forces flying from England lost twenty bombers a day in March; another three thousand Eighth Air Force bombers were damaged that month. Morale problems could be seen in the decision of nearly ninety U.S. crews in March and April to fly to neutral countries, usually Sweden or Switzerland, to be interned for the duration. The
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
law which is God, and the organism that represents
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
I’d rather call it rewiring than retiring.
Russell Atkinson (Cached Out (Book 2))
the combat career of a new German pilot now lasted, on average, less than a month.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
He looked as though he had just had a steam bath, a massage, a good breakfast and a letter from home,” wrote one journalist.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
carton of cigarettes would buy you a whole province here,” an American officer reported, “and a suit of clothes would get you the whole island.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
In one typical battalion, of forty-one officers who had landed on Sicily in July, only nine remained, and six of them had been wounded, according
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Never before in the history of warfare have so few been commanded by so many.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Walpole sniffed, “to prostitute his character and authenticate his hypocrisy.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Discipline,” Washington had written in 1757, “is the soul of an army.” Certainly
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Clinton’s version went on for eight pages in his tidy, nearly indecipherable hand, the runic words canting to the right as if into a headwind.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Franklin concurred with Samuel Johnson that ship travel was like being in jail without the comforts of jail.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
You cannot lead from the crowd.
Sam Atkinson (The Business Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained)
Voltaire had observed, history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
I myself am usually to be found lying on the bed imitating the dead Chatterton, killing time by reading book after book (the only reliable otherworlds i´ve discovered so far).
Kate Atkinson (Human Croquet)
This "want-to-hard-enough" is the great inciting power in life. Desire is the fire which rouses up the steam of Will. Without Incentive – and that means Desire – we accomplish nothing.
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
Tis worth the experiment. Audaces fortuna juvat”—fortune favors the bold—though he tempted fortune by adding, “Should we fail I don’t see any fatal consequences which are likely to attend it.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Of all the king’s officers who would die in battle during the long war against the Americans, more than one out of every eight had perished in four hours on a June afternoon above Charlestown.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
This is my Lost Property cupboard theory of the afterlife - when we die we are taken to a great lost property cupboard where all the things we have ever lost have been kept for us - every hairgrip, every button and pencil, every tooth, every earring and key, every key, every pin. All the library books, all the cats that never came back, all the coins, all the watches (which will still be keeping time for us). And perhaps, too, the other less tangible things - tempers and patience (perhaps Patricia´s virginity will be there), religion, meaning, innocence and oceans of time.
Kate Atkinson (Behind the Scenes at the Museum)
You must never let the enemy choose the ground on which you fight. … He must be made to fight the battle according to your plan. Never his plan. Never. … You must never attack until you are absolutely ready.
Rick Atkinson (The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44 (Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
The Americans, the Scottish economist Adam Smith warned, “feel in themselves at this moment a degree of importance which, perhaps, the greatest subjects in Europe scarce feel.… [They] are employed in contriving a new form of government for an extensive empire, which, they flatter themselves will become, and which indeed seems very likely to become, one of the greatest and most formidable that ever was in the world.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
She had never been without a book for as long as she could remember. An only child never is. Literature had fuelled her childhood fantasies and convinced her that one day she would be the heroine of her own narrative.
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins)
They were a borderland people, living on the far rim of empire, where in six or seven generations the American clay had grown sturdy and tall. They were patriots—if that term implied political affiliation rather than a moral state of grace—who were disputatious and litigious, given to violence on the frontier and in the street: a gentle people they were not. Their disgruntlement now approached despair, with seething resentments and a conviction that designing, corrupt men in
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Thoughts are Things; things that have a tendency to transform into our reality. “As a man thinks so is his life” says the Bible. Like attracts like. Fear, Hate and Worry attract more fear, more hate and more worry, in all its manifestations.
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
That at least a third of the delegates who would sign the Declaration were slave owners—Jefferson alone had two hundred—was a moral catastrophe that could never be reconciled with the avowed principles of equality and “unalienable rights,” at least not in the eighteenth century. But as Edmund S. Morgan would write, “The creed of equality did not give men equality, but invited them to claim it, invited them, not to know their place and keep it, but to seek and demand a better place.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
By the early summer of 1776, the town had grown to twelve thousand residents—half white and free, half neither. Every farthing of Charleston’s affluence derived from slavery, as plain as the blue-stained palms of the indigo pickers sold on the Custom House auction block, or the ships packed with shackled Gambians and Angolans at Fitzsimmons’ Wharf, or the pillory near So Be It Lane for “negroes, mulattoes, and mestizos, who are apt to be riotous and disorderly,” according to a town ordinance.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Edward Rutledge, a prominent South Carolina politician, wrote in December that arming freed slaves tended “more effectually to work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the colonies than any other expedient which could possibly have been thought of.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
British colonial policy, quite simply, sought revenue for the greater good of the empire. But “that damned American war,” as North called it, forced the government to confront a displeasing dilemma: either accede to conciliation and forgo income from the colonies or prosecute a war that would cost more money than could ever be squeezed from America. Moreover, success in crushing the rebellion would likely be followed by an expensive, protracted occupation. Even from the lofty vantage of a throne, coherent British war aims were hard to discern.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
evening, and even then had been with him only for a short time, yet I felt that I was in the presence of one who knew me even better than I knew myself, and one in whom I might repose the utmost confidence without any fear that it would be abused. Although there was nothing of the
William Walker Atkinson (The Inner Secret, or, That Something Within: A Story of Awakening, Enlightenment and Initiation (Timeless Wisdom Collection Book 173))
Thomas Paine had failed at everything he ever attempted in Britain: shopkeeping, teaching, tax collecting (twice), and marriage (also twice). For years he made whalebone corset stays in dreary provincial towns, then worked as an exciseman, chasing Dutch gin and tobacco smugglers along the English coast before being sacked for cause. Forced into bankruptcy—“Trade I do not understand,” he admitted—in desperation he sailed for Philadelphia and immediately found work editing the Pennsylvania Magazine, printing articles on Voltaire, beavers, suicide, and revolutionary politics. A gifted writer, infused with egalitarian and utopian ideals, he attacked slavery, dueling, animal cruelty, and the oppression of women. On January 10, 1776, a thousand copies of his new pamphlet on the American rebellion had been published anonymously under a simple title suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox (“Naturally,” Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf (“Honiahaka” in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle (“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sylvie said, “talk about hubris”).
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins)
An officer who lost an eye or a limb would receive a year’s pay and medical expenses; the widows of officers killed in action would also get a year’s pay, plus another third for each child. Those who died of their wounds within six months were “deemed slain in battle.” No bonuses were announced for enlisted men.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Congress had denounced Catholics for “impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder, and rebellion through every part of the world.” Now it found “the Protestant and Catholic colonies to be strongly linked” by their common antipathy to British oppression. In a gesture of tolerance and perhaps to forestall charges of hypocrisy, Congress also acknowledged that Catholics deserved “liberty of conscience.” If nothing else, the Canadian gambit caused Americans to contemplate the practical merits of inclusion, moderation, and religious freedom. The Northern Army, as the invasion host was named, was to be a liberating force, not a vengeful one.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Newspapers printed stories of variable accuracy, beginning with a twenty-six-line account in the loyalist Boston News-Letter on April 20, deploring “this shocking introduction to all the miseries of a civil war.” The New-Hampshire Gazette’s headline read, “Bloody News.” In barely three weeks, the first reports of the day’s action would reach Charleston and Savannah. Lurid rumors spread quickly: of grandfathers shot in their beds, of families burned alive, of pregnant women bayoneted. Americans in thirteen colonies were alarmed, aroused, angry. “The times are very affecting,” Reverend Ezra Stiles told his diary in Rhode Island on April 23.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
The 608-day campaign to liberate Italy would cost 312,000 Allied casualties, equivalent to 40 percent of Allied losses in the decisive campaign for northwest Europe that began at Normandy. Among the three-quarters of a million American troops to serve in Italy, total battle casualties would reach 120,000, including 23,501 killed.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
The myth of violated innocence meant that the rebel stockpiling of war supplies in recent months must remain obscure, along with details about the colony’s deft, robust call to arms. A narrative congealed, and with it a brilliant propaganda stratagem: Gage was the aggressor; redcoats fired first; helpless civilians had been slaughtered.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
She seemed to have no inkling that life wasn't as orderly as her pencil case and that everything is chance and at any moment any number of remarkable things can happen that are totally beyond our control, events that rip up our maps and re-polarize our compasses - the madwoman walking towards us, the train falling off the bridge, the boy on the bicycle.
Kate Atkinson (Emotionally Weird)
It was the indispensable institution, led by the indispensable man, and the coupling of a national army with its commander marked the transformation of a rebellion into a revolution. “Confusion and discord reigned in every department,” Washington wrote in late July. “However we mend every day, and I flatter myself that in a little time we shall work up these raw materials into good stuff.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
The Knights’ Code,” which he had learned by heart from Scouting for Boys, a book he frequently turned to in times of uncertainty, even now in his self-exile from the movement, demanded that “Chivalry requireth that youth should be trained to perform the most laborious and humble offices with cheerfulness and grace.” He supposed entertaining Izzie was one of those occasions. It was certainly laborious.
Kate Atkinson (A God in Ruins)
Heroism is endurance for one moment more. "And that one moment more tells the difference between the "quitter" and the man who has "done his Best. "No one is dead until his heart has ceased beating – and no one has failed so long as there is one more bit of fight in him. And that "one moment more" often is the moment in which the tide turns – the moment when the enemy relaxes his hold and drops back beaten.
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
Thoughts are things"— every thought we think goes forth, carrying with it force which affects others to a greater or less extent, depending upon the force behind our thought, and the mental attitude of the other persons.  Like attracts like in the world of thought—we attract to ourselves thoughts in harmony with our own—people in harmony with our thoughts—,even things are influenced by thought in varying degrees.
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
Today’s Affirmations: Blessings follow me wherever I go. In all things, I am blessed and I make it a point to take notice of all the good in my life. Even if I experience challenging events, I always remember how blessed I am. I always have plenty of whatever I need. And often, I have more than enough. I am loved abundantly and I have plentiful love to give in return. Infinite resources are at my fingertips. In the realm of money, I always have enough to cover my basic needs and to meet many of my desires, too. If I experience times when I feel a lack of abundance, I remind myself that, in truth, I have all that I require. Whether I am employed or unemployed, partnered or single, with lots of kids or no kids at all, I feel blessed in a multitude of ways. Nothing I can do can destroy or wash away the many blessings that come my way. And to be fully satisfied with life, all I have to do is remember the abundance that is available to me. My universe is plentiful and my heart is abundant. Blessings come to me freely, and I cultivate gratitude for it. Today, I make time to contemplate the ways in which I am a blessed. I regularly experience gratitude for all of the wonderful things in my life. And I seek out opportunities to demonstrate this gratitude by living with a sense of abundance.
Angela Atkinson (Take Back Your Life: 103 Highly-Effective Strategies to Snuff Out a Narcissist’s Gaslighting and Enjoy the Happy Life You Really Deserve (Detoxifying Your Life Book 3))
On the day Rome fell, that great American Army numbered eight million soldiers, a fivefold increase since Pearl Harbor. It included twelve hundred generals and nearly 500,000 lieutenants. Half the Army had yet to deploy overseas, but the U.S. military already had demonstrated that it could wage global war in several far-flung theaters simultaneously, a notion that had “seemed outlandish in 1942,” as the historian Eric Larrabee later wrote.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Ugh. I stayed up to all hours,’ she said, sliding a book across the floor. Sometimes Jackie resented a perfectly good book because it ‘forced’ her to stay up all night. I was used to this. It was usually a sign of a literary page-turner—whether spy, sea, or horror—my favorite sort of book. She’d made me read Dennis Lehane, Donna Tartt, Stephen Graham Jones, Marcie R. Rendon, Kate Atkinson. She gave me The Death of the Heart and said, ‘It’s extremely good. Keep it.
Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
Described by his biographer as an “overweight, rheumatic, vain, pompous, gluttonous inebriate,” he had run through several fortunes totaling almost £100,000 with his spendthrift ways and aristocratic pretensions, including expenditures for a heavily mortgaged, thousand-acre New Jersey estate with piazzas, a deer park, painted drawing rooms, a wardrobe holding thirty-one coats and fifty-eight vests, and carriages embossed with the coat of arms he claimed as his patrimony.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Each thought, emotion, or feeling is manifested by a certain shade or combination of colors belonging to that particular thought, emotion, or feeling, which color or colors manifest themselves in the Aura of that particular mental principle in which the thought, emotion, or feeling naturally originates, and are of course visible to the observer studying the composite Aura of the thinker. The developed psychic may read the thoughts of a person as he can the pages of an open book,
William Walker Atkinson (Fourteen Lessons in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism)
Self-identity has become problematic for the individual in ways that are historically unprecedented, and the consequence is a cycle of endless self-questioning and introspection that serves only to confound the individual even more. Ultimately, the result is that our experience of ourselves and everyday life is increasingly played out against a backdrop of ongoing anxiety, restlessness, and unease about who we are, our place in the world, and the rapidity of the changes taking place around us.
Sam Atkinson (The Sociology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained)
A later age would conflate them into a single, featureless demigod, possessed of mythical courage and fortitude, and animated by a determination to rebalance a wobbling world. Keith Douglas, a British officer who had fought in North Africa and would die at Normandy, described “a gentle obsolescent breed of heroes…. Unicorns, almost.” Yet it does them no disservice to recall their profound diversity in provenance and in character, or their feet of clay, or the mortality that would make them compelling long after their passing.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Proof! We don’t need proof! Tell the public a thing solemnly, and authoritatively, and repeat it sufficiently often, and you will never need to prove anything!” Repetition, like Pretended Authority are two old frauds masquerading as Truth. When you once take their measure, you have disarmed them so far as you are concerned. When you call for “Proof,” they take refuge in dignity and reiteration—that is their entire stock in trade. But Suggestion of Repetition has its value in imparting Truth. It is a poor rule that won’t work both ways.
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
Reasonably democratic, reasonably egalitarian, wary of privilege and outsiders, they were accustomed to tending their own affairs, choosing their own ministers, militia officers, and political leaders. Convinced that their elected assemblies were equal in stature and authority to Parliament, they believed that governance by consent was paramount. They had not consented to being taxed, to being occupied, to seeing their councils dismissed and their port sealed like a graveyard crypt. They were godly, of course, placed here by the Almighty to do His will. Sometimes political strife was also a moral contest between right and wrong, good and evil. This struggle, as the historian Gordon S. Wood later wrote, would prove their blessedness. Warren circled round to that very point: Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful, but we have many friends, determining to be free.… On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
none surpassed this document in elegance, clarity, or breathtaking vision. That at least a third of the delegates who would sign the Declaration were slave owners—Jefferson alone had two hundred—was a moral catastrophe that could never be reconciled with the avowed principles of equality and “unalienable rights,” at least not in the eighteenth century. But as Edmund S. Morgan would write, “The creed of equality did not give men equality, but invited them to claim it, invited them, not to know their place and keep it, but to seek and demand a better place.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry—“The British are coming!”—but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years; here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children—“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Two warnings had already come from the east: as many as nine mounted British officers had been seen patrolling the Middlesex roads, perhaps “upon some evil design.” At the door, a suspicious orderly sergeant challenged Revere, and Clarke blocked his path until Hancock reportedly called out, “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you.” The herald delivered his message: British regulars by the hundreds were coming out, first by boat, then on foot. There was not a moment to lose.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
(1) Inhale a complete breath. (2) Retain the air a few seconds. (3) Pucker up the lips as if for a whistle (but do not swell out the cheeks), then exhale a little air through the opening, with considerable vigor. Then stop for a moment, retaining the air, and then exhale a little more air. Repeat until the air is completely exhaled. Remember that considerable vigor is to be used in exhaling the air through the opening in the lips. This breath will be found quite refreshing when one is tired and generally "used up." A trial will convince the student of its merits. This exercise should be practiced until it can be performed naturally and easily, as it is used to finish up a number of other exercises given in this book, and it should be thoroughly understood
William Walker Atkinson (The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath)
The Yogis possess great knowledge regarding the use and abuse of the reproductive principle in both sexes. Some hints of this esoteric knowledge have filtered out and have been used by Western writers on the subject, and much good has been accomplished in this way. In this little book we cannot do more than touch upon the subject, and omitting all except a bare mention of theory, we will give a practical breathing exercise whereby the student will be enabled to transmute the reproductive energy into vitality for the entire system, instead of dissipating and wasting it in lustful indulgences in or out of the marriage relations. The reproductive energy is creative energy, and may be taken up by the system and transmuted into strength and vitality, thus serving the purpose of regeneration instead of generation. If the young men of the Western world understood these underlying principles they would be saved much misery and unhappiness in after years, and would be stronger mentally, morally and physically.
William Walker Atkinson (The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath)
He preferred solitary pursuits, and being a member of a group seemed rather dutiful, but he could do dutiful and somebody had to or the world would fall apart.
Kate Atkinson (Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins - For Fans (Trivia-On-Books))
Many economists now openly praise monopolies as a more enlightened form of capitalism. Robert Atkinson and Michael Lind wrote a book titled Big Is Beautiful. They write, “In the abstract universe of Econ 101, monopolies and oligopolies are always bad because they distort prices… . In the real world, things are not so simple.” And to enlighten us, they continue, “Academic economics includes a well-developed literature about imperfect markets. But it is reserved for advanced students,” and these lessons are unavailable to the poor, benighted souls who don't have PhDs.15 It is ironic that the champions of monopolies are essentially aligning themselves with neo-Marxist economists who think that in capitalism the big inevitably eat the small. As the eminent Polish economist Michał Kalecki wrote, “Monopoly appears to be deeply rooted in the nature of the capitalist system: free competition, as an assumption, may be useful in the first stage of certain investigations, but as a description of the normal stage of capitalist economy it is merely a myth.”16 Kalecki would have felt at home in Omaha and Silicon Valley. Buffett and Thiel's views on competition capture the contradictions of capitalism. Thiel's idea that innovation comes only from large monopolies ignores his own personal history at PayPal. He was David creating a startup from nothing and competing against financial Goliaths.
Jonathan Tepper (The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition)
This is not a real book; not really. A real book tells a story. A real book starts at the beginning and has a middle and an end and I should know. I've read enough of them. So many that one day I woke up as a character in one. I'm there now, trapped between the pages of a book about a girl who drops out of school, reads more than is good for her and ends up in the loony bin.
Tim Atkinson (Writing Therapy)
Reduced to a formula, wealth is hierarchic, smog is democratic. Ulrich Beck
Sam Atkinson (The Sociology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained)
Reasoning is the fourth step of the SMART process after the information is analyzed. William Atkinson, in his 1909 book the Art of Logical Thinking, defined reasoning as “the act, process or art of exercising the faculty of reason; the act or faculty of employing reason in argument; argumentation, ratiocination; reasoning power; disputation, discussion.” By using  the faculties of our mind for reasoning, 
Brian Ledger (Critical Thinking: Learn to Make Decisions, Think More Logically and Use Your Intuition (High Achievers))
firmly believe if heaven had not something very great in store for America, we should ere this have been a ruined people,
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
There is nothing I dread so much,” he said, “as these brave generals.” Keenly aware of America’s size and the temper of her people, he had advocated a strategy of naval blockade rather than a land war, again to no avail.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
One method to achieve this is the “5-why” technique, invented in the 1930s by the father of Kiichiro Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, and used by Toyota during the 1970s. By asking “why?” five times, you can move from the symptoms to the root cause of a problem.
Sam Atkinson (The Business Book (DK Big Ideas))
Bruce Tuckman, a US professor of educational psychology, described these stages as forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.
Sam Atkinson (The Business Book (DK Big Ideas))
Being an effective leader involves recognizing that it is impossible to be right all of the time.
Sam Atkinson (The Business Book (DK Big Ideas))
But, as Voltaire had observed, history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.
Rick Atkinson (The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1))
A calculated risk is a known risk for the sake of a real gain. A risk for the sake of a risk is a fool’s choice.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
optimism is the elixir of life for the weak.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Three hundred DUKWs and other vessels swarmed between island and mainland “like so many gnats on a pond,” a witness reported, and this first invasion of continental Europe—an all-British operation code-named BAYTOWN—had proved so placid that Tommies soon called it the Messina Strait Regatta.
Rick Atkinson (The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44 (Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
That morning seemed to open up something in him. She broke rules she didn’t know existed—too much coal on the fire, too much toilet paper used, a light accidentally left on. Receipts and bills were all scrutinized by him, every penny had to be accounted for and she never had any spare money. He proved himself capable of the most enormous rants over the pettiest of things, once started he seemed unable to stop. He was angry all the time. She made him angry all the time. Every evening now he demanded an exacting account of her day. How many books did she change in the library, what did the butcher say to her, did anyone call at the house? She gave up tennis. It was easier. He didn’t hit her again but violence seemed to simmer constantly beneath his surface, a dormant volcano that Ursula had unwontedly brought back to life. She was wrong-footed by him
Kate Atkinson (Life After Life)
Shows over folks!” she yells and it sounds so strange coming from sweet Summer. “Store’s closing early today.” She takes a few steps towards the ladies currently studying the books inside my tree. “Time to go!” She claps again, making one of the women jump.
Jen Atkinson (Paper Hearts)
In India, in the past, the sacred books were committed to memory, and handed down from teacher to student, for ages. And even to-day it is no uncommon thing for the student to be able to repeat, word for word, some voluminous religious work equal in extent to the New Testament.
William Walker Atkinson (Memory How to Develop, Train, and Use It)
This is Martin Canning, Neil. He’s written a wonderful book.” “Fantastic,” Neil Winters said, shaking Martin’s hand. His hand was damp and soft and made Martin think of something dead you might pick up on the beach. “The first of many, I
Kate Atkinson (One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie, #2))
Are you
William Walker Atkinson (WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON PREMIUM 7 BOOK COLLECTION: SUCCESS, CONCENTRATION, AUTOSUGGESTION & MENTAL INFLUENCE (Timeless Wisdom Collection 160))
(It was said that Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, spoke only four words of English: “Yes,” “No,” and “Second front.”) Moscow
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
In Field Order No. 1, Patton had advised his commanders, “Attack both by day and night to the limit of human endurance and then continue to attack.” For
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
That Allied victory had cost them 44,000 casualties since DIADEM began on May 11: 18,000 Americans—among them more than 3,000 killed in action—along with 12,000 British, 9,600 French, and nearly 4,000 Poles. German casualties were estimated at 52,000, including 5,800 dead. Americans
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
The Arab soldier is interested in just three things: women, horses, and guns,” a French officer told an American colonel, who replied, “The American soldier is the same, except that he doesn’t care anything about horses and guns.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
Morale problems could be seen in the decision of nearly ninety U.S. crews in March and April to fly to neutral countries, usually Sweden or Switzerland, to be interned for the duration. The
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
A German pilot came out of his plane, drew his legs into a ball, his head down. Papers flew out of his pockets. He did a triple somesault through our formation. No chute.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
I must pursue the shadows to some middle ground,” wrote the pilot John Muirhead, “for I am strangely bound to all that happened to them.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))
One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.
Rick Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (The Liberation Trilogy Book 2))