Atlas God Quotes

We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones.

John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.

I remain thankful to God for all his mercies.

We all have our own curses. Our own blessings.” Callum’s smile faltered. “We are the gods of our own universes, aren’t we? Destructive ones.

Olympus was empty. The gods were already here.

I built them what they wanted and I made a profit off of it. Now they call me a god...What fools these mortals be.

Power. What do we mean? 'The ability to determine another man's luck.' ...how is it that some men attain mastery over others while the vast majority live and die as minions, as livestock? The answer is a holy trinity. First: God-given gifts of charisma. Second: the discipline to nurture these gifts to maturity, for though humanity's topsoil is fertile with talent, only one seed in ten thousand will ever flower -- for want of discipline. Third: the will to power.

No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books - books that would have been written if the author hadn't been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotter's guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen...

Grief, oh god, the weight of it. Depression was hollow, sadness was vacant. Neither was anything like this.

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself. Love, though it is no prophylactic against depression, is what cushions the mind and protects it from itself. Medications and psychotherapy can renew that protection, making it easier to love and be loved, and that is why they work. In good spirits, some love themselves and some love others and some love work and some love God: any of these passions can furnish that vital sense of purpose that is the opposite of depression. Love forsakes us from time to time, and we forsake love. In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident. The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance.

I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at once both books and night Of this city of books He pronounced rulers These lightless eyes, who can only Peruse in libraries of dreams The insensible paragraphs that yield With every new dawn. Vainly does the day Lavish on them its infinite books, Arduous as the arduous manuscripts Which at Alexandria did perish. Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us) Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens; I aimlessly weary at the confines Of this tall and deep blind library. Encyclopedias, atlases, the East And the West, centuries, dynasties Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies Do walls proffer, but pointlessly. Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade Explore with my indecisive cane; To think I had imagined Paradise In the form of such a library. Something, certainly not termed Fate, rules on such things; Another had received in blurry Afternoons both books and shadow. Wandering through these slow corridors I often feel with a vague and sacred dread That I am another, the dead one, who must Have trodden the same steps at the same time. Which of the two is now writing this poem Of a plural I and of a single shadow? How important is the word that names me If the anathema is one and indivisible? Groussac or Borges, I see this darling World deform and extinguish To a pale, uncertain ash Resembling sleep and oblivion

God demanded blood in almost every culture. Was magic any different?

Promises are meant to be broken, that’s what people always say, but what if I want to keep mine? To this day, I’d sooner break my bones than go back on any of the words I said so dearly to you. We’re so young, God, we’re so young. Only sixteen with a pocketful of big dreams. The world is in our hands, that’s what people always say, but what if I’m afraid to carry it? What if I don’t want to be Atlas? You, my dear, are unshakeable. You hold your cards close to your chest. Courage finds a home in the space between your ribs. I’m too young to understand, that’s what people always say, but I am old enough to see. There’s a forest fire in your eyes that sets me alight. A bravery in your heart that beats in tune to mine. My darling, you’re something out of a story. Poetry doesn’t begin to do your soul justice. Change is inevitable, that’s what people always say, but what if that change is good? There’s a lightness to my steps there wasn’t before. There’s a brightness in my heart there wasn’t before. If you held me up to a candle, my silhouette would be covered in your name. Before you, I used to care what people always say your lovely heart led me astray in unexpected ways. Sometimes I think I’m going to burst into flames. From the spark you struck inside my chest. I wonder, how do you keep from setting yourself afire? But then comes the startling yet undeniable understanding. You are fireproof, lionheart and now I am, too.

God’s love for us often looks like suffering. It often looks like the silhouette of the cross, when in fact it is the sun beyond that silhouette, rising on the third day.

We are medians because we will never have enough," Callum said hoarsely. "We aren't normal; we are gods born with pain built in. We are incendiary beings and we are flawed, except the weaknesses we pretend to have are not our true weaknesses at all. We are not soft, we do not suffer impairment or frailty—we imitate it. We tell ourselves we have it. But our only real weakness is that we know we are bigger, stronger, as close to omnipotence as we can be, and we are hungry, we are aching for it. Other people can see their limits, Tristan, but we have none. We want to find our impossible edges, to close our fingers around constraints that don't exist, and that," Callum exhaled. "That is what will drive us to madness.

what they did yesterday afternoon they set my aunts house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note. i called the boy who used to love me trying to 'okay' my voice i said hello he said warsan, what's wrong, what's happened? i've been praying, and these are what my prayers look like; dear god i come from two countries one is thirsty the other is on fire both need water. later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.

God’s asleep in the next bed, Tristan. She’s wearing an eye mask and ear plugs because apparently I snore.

ideologically beneficial progressivism," she corrected. "God complex," Callum repeated.

Temple of the Rat King. Ark of the Soot God. Sphincter of Hades. Yes, King's Cross Station, where, according to Knuckle Sandwich, a blow job costs only five quid - any of the furthest-left three cubicles in the men's lavvy downstairs, twenty-four hours a day.

After all, the right stuff was not bravery in the simple sense of being willing to risk your life (by riding on top of a Redstone or Atlas rocket). Any fool could do that (and many fools would no doubt volunteer, given the opportunity), just as any fool could throw his life away in the process. No, the idea (as all pilots understood) was that a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back at the last yawning moment—but how in the name of God could you either hang it out or haul it back if you were a lab animal sealed in a pod? Every

Begging God, then, today, to show me how to make wobbly steps in this walk of the Spirit. To know when to move and when to stand still.

In retrospect I am beginning to think of him as an Atlas who lacked muscle tone but who God damn well decided he was going to hold up the world anyway.

Let’s be gods,” Atlas says aloud, and it’s important to remember that he’s on drugs, that he misses his mother, that he hates himself.

We have one collective hope: the Earth And yet, uncounted people remain hopeless, famine and calamity abound Sufferers hurl themselves into the arms of war; people kill and get killed in the name of someone else’s concept of God Do we admit that our thoughts & behaviors spring from a belief that the world revolves around us? Each fabricated conflict, self-murdering bomb, vanished airplane, every fictionalized dictator, biased or partisan, and wayward son, are part of the curtains of society’s racial, ethnic, religious, national, and cultural conflicts, and you find the human ego turning the knobs and pulling the levers When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets, and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, I see beyond the plight of humans I see a universe ever-expanding, with its galaxies embedded within the ever-stretching four-dimensional fabric of space and time However big our world is, our hearts, our minds, our outsize atlases, the universe is even bigger There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the world’s beaches, more stars in the universe than seconds of time that have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words & sounds ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived The day we cease the exploration of the cosmos is the day we threaten the continuing of our species In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people & nations would be prone to act on their low-contracted prejudices, and would have seen the last gasp of human enlightenment Until the rise of a visionary new culture that once again embraces the cosmic perspective; a perspective in which we are one, fitting neither above nor below, but within

I can answer it,” he said. “I can tell you who is John Galt.” “Really? Everybody seems to know him, but they never tell the same story twice.” “They’re all true, though—all the stories you’ve heard about him.” “Well, what’s yours? Who is he?” “John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains—and he withdrew his fire—until the day when men withdraw their vultures.

I know God is here in the nature and the people, but more than that, he is within me. The kingdom of heaven is where I belong. It is where all of my journeys have been taking me. And no place on earth can match the welcome that is found in God’s arms.

...people who've been hit with the gospel respond naturally with radically changed lives and hearts. The church and the ministries of the church are gospel centered when they flow from hearts that are afire with wonder at the glory and grace of God, revealed in the person of Jesus.

Do not fret if you have yet to find it, this lucid and dreamlike love they speak of, this fervent and inspiring tenderness. Do not fret if you have yet to find it, rather, open your heart to an atlas and stretch your fingertips towards the sky – for the world is also capable of holding your hand, and my god, is it ever beautiful, the kind of love you find tucked away within yourself when the Earth opens your eyes.

How did he do that?” Alex stumbled to her feet with Aiden’s aid, swaying to one side. Both looked okay. “How did he do that?” I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know how Seth had tapped into all of us without even touching us. My gaze finally fell on Solos. “Oh gods,” I whispered, quickly averting my gaze. What Atlas had whispered in my dream the night before had also been right. Dig a grave. He was . . . I closed my eyes, biting down on my lower lip until I tasted blood. Pain opened in my chest, overshadowing the physical aches that bit and chewed at me. Solos was gone. Him falling had tipped Seth over an edge, a very precarious edge I hadn’t even realized he’d been teetering on this . . . this entire time. I was numb, sitting between where Seth had fallen and where Solos lay. This scent of death was different than what followed the shades. This . . . this was heavier, more real.

For the doctrine of justification by faith is like Atlas: it bears a world on its shoulders, the entire evangelical knowledge of saving grace. The doctrines of election, of effectual calling, regeneration, and repentance, of adoption, of prayer, of the church, the ministry, and the sacraments, have all to be interpreted and understood in the light of justification by faith. …when justification falls, all true knowledge of the grace of God in human life fall with it, and then, as Luther said, the church itself falls… When Atlas falls, everything that rested on his shoulders comes crashing down too.

Atlas grips the edge of the door as he gets in and Kenzo’s eyes zero in on the red smear, making my stomach cramp. This cannot be happening. “You got a little something on your hand, boss,” he remarks. “Hmm…I know. It was dessert.” “Was it good?” Oh my god. Stop talking. Please stop talking. “Oh yeah but then I always did have a thing for cherries.

Those there English gerrrrunts are trampling o’er ma God-gi’en rrraights! Theeve used me an’ ma pals morst direly an’ we’re inneed of a wee assistance

We aren’t normal; we are gods born with pain built in.

Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?” “Good God, no!” “Only that kind of man spends his life running after women.

Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw. God

It’s an honor—not a chore—to serve someone who reflects the very face of God.

Just because you make me happy doesn’t mean you don’t drive me absolutely insane.” Aptly, Nico only heard one thing. “Are you, Sandman? Happy.” “Oh my god,” said Gideon.

but I’m not a god, Tristan, I’m just very very sad and stupid!

We all have our own curses. Our own blessings. We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones. -Callum

We all have our own curses. Our own blessings. We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones.

One bright dusk, four, five, no, my God, six summers ago, I strolled along a Greenwich avenue of mature chestnuts and mock oranges in a state of grace. Those Regency residences number amount London's Costliest properties, but should you ever inherit one, dear Reader, sell it, don't live in it. Houses like these secrete some dark sorcery that transforms their owners into fruitcakes. One such victim, an ex-chief of Rhodesian polices, had, on the evening in question, written me a check as rotund as himself to edit and print his autobiography. My state of grace was thanks in part to this check, and in part to a 1983 Chablis from the Duruzoi vineyard, a magic potion that dissolves our myriad tragedies into mere misunderstandings.

List’n, savages an’ Civ’lizeds ain’t divvied by tribes or b’liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev’ry human is both, yay. Old Uns’d got the Smart o’ gods but the savagery o’ jackals an’ that’s what tripped the Fall.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knows us before we are. Before knitting us in our mother’s womb, and it’s this knowing that keeps us from getting lost. It’s this being known that is the compass that guides us home.

To be born again; to become like infants in God’s womb, entirely dependent, utterly quiet, never alone. Wordless communication, unspeakable love, cushioned against the world’s blows. Grace within the belly of our Maker.

Grinning, Atlas followed her inside. He liked this softer side of her. She stood in the center, twirling, clearly trying to take everything in at once. He’d spread furs on the floor and had even carted a small round table here and piled it high with her favorite foods. There was a porcelain tub already filled with steaming water, rose petals floating on the surface. Never let it be said that the Titan god of Strength did not know how to romance a woman. Nike’s

The pagan mind is impressed with material display, you see. He thinks:—How spick & span are Christians’ houses! How dirty our hovels! How generous the White God is! How mean is ours!’ In this way, one more convert is brought to the Lord.

So, I asked ’gain, is it better to be savage’n to be Civ’lized? List’n, savages an’ Civ’lizeds ain’t divvied by tribes or b’liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev’ry human is both, yay. Old Uns’d got the Smart o’ gods but the savagery o’jackals an’ that’s what tripped the Fall. Some savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ’lized heart beatin’ in their ribs. Maybe some Kona. Not ’nuff to say so their hole tribe, but who knows one day. One day. “One day” was only a flea o’hope for us. Yay, I mem’ry Meronym sayin’, but fleas ain’t easy to rid.

Prometheus, the father of Deucalion and the brother of Atlas. He taught humankind various arts and was even said to have shaped the first man out of clay, endowing him with the spark of life against the wishes of the gods. He challenged the gods again when he stole fire from Olympus and gave it to men to improve the quality of human existence. Rebellion

But Dr. Stadler, this book was not intended to be read by scientists. It was written for that drunken lout." "What do you mean?" "For the general public." "But, good God! The feeblest imbecile should be able to see the glaring contradictions in every one of your statements." "Let us put it this way, Dr. Stadler. The man who doesn't see that, deserves to believe all my statements.

As Tim Keller once put it: The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.

Could there have been a more contrary statue to place across from one of the largest cathedrals in America? Atlas, who attempted to overthrow the gods on Olympus and was thus condemned to shoulder the celestial spheres for eternity - the very personification of hubris and brute endurance. While back in the shadows of St. Patrick's was the statue's physical and spiritual antitheses, the Pietà - in which our Savior, having already sacrificed himself to God's will is represented.

Please, let him be soft. I know you made him with gunmetal bones and wolf’s teeth. I know you made him to be a warrior a soldier a hero. But even gunmetal can warp and even wolf’s teeth can dull and I do not want to see him break the way old and worn and overused things do. I do not want to see him go up in flames the way all heroes end up martyrs. I know that you will tell me that the world needs him. The world needs his heart and his faith and his courage and his strength and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his– The world needs anything he will give them. Damn the world, and damn you too. Damn anyone that ever asked anything of him, damn anyone that ever took anything from him, damn anyone that ever prayed to his name. You know that he will give them everything until there is nothing left of him but the imprint of dust where his feet once trod. You know that he will bear the world like Atlas until his shoulders collapse and his knees buckle and he is crushed by all he used to carry. Dear God, you have already made an Atlas. You have already made an Achilles and an Icarus and a Hercules. You have already made a sacrificial lamb of your Son. You have already made so many heroes, and you can make another again. You can have your pick of heroes. So please, I beg you– he is all that I have, and you have so many heroes and the world has so many more. Let him be soft, and let him be mine.

And maybe suffering on behalf of another is the greatest gift of all, because it offers a kind of love that sacrifices. That sees beyond today. This, the hardest thing for a parent to do. To not fix. To just let. For then we have to trust God to do the healing, while we simply hold. But in the end I know my children are worth the feeling, that they are worth this moment, and that love is real in a painful kind of way, the kind that makes a person double over, the kind that puts a Savior on a cross.

Reading Hannah Whitall Smith’s book, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life. Our task is to trust God to be working in us; to make us gradually more like Jesus. So that we don’t grumble about what happens, we work with God in that we allow him to mould us. He directs our paths and if we accept his will with peace and thankfulness he will transform us into his Son’s image. Therefore—I’ll try not to grumble when things go wrong; when life gets difficult; when people misunderstand me or don’t agree with our

The trouble with knowledge, the idiosyncrasy of its particular addiction, was that it was not the same as other types of vice. Someone given a taste of omniscience could never be satisfied by the contents of a bare reality without it; life and death as once accepted would carry no weight, and even the usual temptations of excess would fail to satisfy. The lives they might have had would only feel ill-fitting, poorly worn. Someday, perhaps quite soon, they might be able to create entire worlds; to not only reach, but to become like gods.

Ezra Mikhail Fowler was born as the earth was dying. There had been an entire fuss of it on the news for years, about the carbon crisis and how little time the ozone had left, leaving an entire generation to turn to their therapists and proclaim a collective, widespread existential despair. The United States had been awash in fires and floods for months, with only half the country believing they had any hand in its demolishment. Even the ones who still believed in a vengeful God had failed to see the signs. Still, things would have to get much worse before they got better.

We aren't normal; we are gods born with pain built in. We are incendiary beings and we are flawed, except the weaknesses we pretend to have are not our true weaknesses at all. We are not soft, we do not suffer impairment or frailty - we imitate it. We tell ourselves we have it. But our only real weakness is that we know we are bigger, stronger, as close to omnipotence as we can be, and we are hungry, we are aching for it. Other people can see their limits, Tristan, but we have none. We want to find our impossible edges, to close our fingers around constraints that don't exist, and that - that is what will drive us to madness.

Objectivism and Christianity disagree on where money falls in the hierarchy of values. Objectivists see it at or close to the top because it supports the life of the individual. Christians see it down the hierarchy, not because Christians value the individual any less, but because they value God above all else. While the practical out-workings of each perspective may look similar, the core filter that precipitates each of the respective actions is different. Both value achievement and production. Both can be good Capitalists. But the Objectivist’s choices will value and exalt the worth of the Individual, while the choices of a Christian will exalt the worth of God. The Objectivist idea of virtue is closely linked to work and production.

take a vacation from my worries. I was going to watch as God took care of me. I would live in the moment, thinking only about current events and choosing to enjoy myself, to rise above my circumstances and simply “be.” Why, I wonder, does God make us capable of fear and worry? Why does he let us go through such pain? And then it comes to me. It takes going through hell to appreciate heaven. And on earth we have a choice. We can experience heaven on a daily basis; we can surrender our worries and let our minds and souls be flooded with peace, knowing someone divine is taking care of us. Or we can hold on to control, for fear of letting go and letting God. It’s not about dying and someday going to heaven, it’s about inviting heaven into our everyday existence. Forgiving. Redeeming what is lost. Trusting. Letting go. Living now.

God was saying I had chosen not to hear him. I had chosen not to listen. So I came home and decided to take a vacation from my worries. I was going to watch as God took care of me. I would live in the moment, thinking only about current events and choosing to enjoy myself, to rise above my circumstances and simply “be.” Why, I wonder, does God make us capable of fear and worry? Why does he let us go through such pain? And then it comes to me. It takes going through hell to appreciate heaven. And on earth we have a choice. We can experience heaven on a daily basis; we can surrender our worries and let our minds and souls be flooded with peace, knowing someone divine is taking care of us. Or we can hold on to control, for fear of letting go and letting God. It’s not about dying and someday going to heaven, it’s about inviting heaven into our everyday existence. Forgiving. Redeeming what is lost. Trusting. Letting go. Living now.

You want to believe that your hesitation makes you good, makes you better? It doesn’t. Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don’t you see it’s because we’re riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal— that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn.” He pivoted as one hand fell to his side, exasperated. “We are medeians because we will never have enough,” Callum said hoarsely. “We aren’t normal; we are gods born with pain built in. We are incendiary beings and we are flawed, except the weaknesses we pretend to have are not our true weaknesses at all. We are not soft, we do not suffer impairment or frailty—we imitate it. We tell ourselves we have it. But our only real weakness is that we know we are bigger, stronger, as close to omnipotence as we can be, and we are hungry, we are aching for it. Other people can see their limits, Tristan, but we have none. We want to find our impossible edges, to close our fingers around constraints that don’t exist, and that—” Callum exhaled. “That is what will drive us to madness.” Tristan glanced down at his forgotten toast, suddenly depleted. Callum’s voice didn’t soften. “You don’t want to go mad? Too bad, you are already. If you leave here the madness will only follow you. You’ve already gone too far, and so have I.

His life at the Society was not uninteresting. It was methodical, habitual, but that was a consequence of life in any collective. Self-interest was more exciting—sleeping through the afternoon one day, climbing Olympus to threaten the gods the next— but it scared people, upset them. Tending to every whim made others unnecessarily combative, mistrustful. They preferred the reassurance of customs, little traditions, the more inconsequential the better. Breakfast in the morning, supper at the sound of the gong. It soothed them, normality. Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb. Humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. “My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.” “Better than what?” Callum shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. Does it matter?” He glanced at Tristan over his glass and registered a vibration of malcontent. “Ah,” Callum said. “You’d prefer me to lie to you.” Tristan bristled. “I don’t want you to lie—” “No, you want my truths to be different, which you know they won’t be. The more of my true intentions you know, the guiltier you feel. That’s good, you know,” Callum assured him. “You want so terribly to disassociate, but the truth is you feel more than anyone in this house.” “More?” Tristan echoed doubtfully, recoiling from the prospect. “More,” Callum confirmed. “At higher volumes. At broader spectrums.

Unattractive, like a selfish woman. Ugly, like an ambitious one. Like one who chose to punish a good man for not being the right man, who left because staying was too boring, too painful, too hard. Like a woman who had to be a weapon because she couldn’t be anything else. thing, for one chance— Parisa tousled her hair, switching her part from one side to the other. She didn’t have a bad side. —but I’m done being grateful! I’m done trying to make myself suitable for this family, for this God, for this life. I’m done being small, I’ve outgrown the person who needed you to save her, I don’t even know who she is anymore— She pouted at the mirror and started again, pinching her cheeks to see the color come and go. —and I want more, so much more— Lip balm. Mascara. Lips softer, eyes wider, be something different, something else. —I just want to live, Nas! Just let me live! What was the point of reliving the past? She was hunting her invisible nemeses, grappling for power, finding new methods of control. She should be busy, too busy being the most dangerous person in this or any world to think about why she’d been such an easy target for Atlas Blakely, a man in need of weapons just to make a universe that he could stand. But now— Now she was thinking about Nasser, as if it mattered at all what kind of person she’d been over a decade ago. Just an hour of your time, now and then. That’s all I ask. I know, I know, I’m asking a lot more from you inside my head, but that’s not fair—doesn’t it matter what I choose to put in front of you? Someday maybe you’ll understand that there’s a difference between what a person thinks and who they choose to be— A glint caught her eye from her reflection. A brief, unnatural sparkle in the placid lake of her appearance, the consistency of her beauty, the easy grace she always wore. She leaned forward, forgetting her internal monologue, letting it collapse. Someday the view will be different, eshgh, and I hope you see me in a softer light— “Parisa?” Dalton leaned against the frame of the bathroom door. In his left hand was one of her dresses. In his right hand was her phone. “I don’t care if you want to see your husband. Sorry—Nasser. If you want me to call him that, I will. I suppose you’re right, anyway, you’ll need to see him, because if the Society could find evidence of him in your past then the Forum surely can as well, and so can Atlas. And so can anyone else who wants you dead.” Another pause as Dalton set her phone back on the bathroom counter. “I replied to the physicist for you as well. I think you’ll need to find out what he plans to do about the archives, or at least keep track of what Atlas is doing at the house. Atlas is going to win over both the physicists unless you can convince one of them to do it differently. “What is it?” Dalton asked, frowning at her silence. His gaze traced the placement of her fingers, which had been parsing the thickness of her hair. “I—” Parisa was caught somewhere between laughing and crying. “I found a gray hair.” “So?” Laughter, definitely laughter. It escaped her in something of a rueful bray. Unattractive, like a selfish woman. Ugly, like an ambitious one. Like one who chose to punish a good man for not being the right man, who left because staying was too boring, too painful, too hard. Like a woman who had to be a weapon because she couldn’t be anything else. “Nothing.” Only the future loss of her desirability, the collapse of her personhood. The first glimpse of an empire steadily falling to unseen ruin. The fate she already knew was coming, the punishment she’d always known she deserved. What timing!

I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how this story will end. All I know is that there is a very real God whom my mother adores, and if she, in all her pain and suffering, can still radiate worship, how much more should I? He sees the little sparrow fall. He sees my mum dancing to the rhythms of his grace, and he sees me in all my anger trying to love him in spite of it all. So I will continue to trust, even if it means letting her go.

--Birthday Star Atlas-- "Wildest dream, Miss Emily, Then the coldly dawning suspicion— Always at the loss—come day Large black birds overtaking men who sleep in ditches. A whiff of winter in the air. Sovereign blue, Blue that stands for intellectual clarity Over a street deserted except for a far off dog, A police car, a light at the vanishing point For the children to solve on the blackboard today— Blind children at the school you and I know about. Their gray nightgowns creased by the north wind; Their fingernails bitten from time immemorial. We're in a long line outside a dead letter office. We're dustmice under a conjugal bed carved with exotic fishes and monkeys. We're in a slow drifting coalbarge huddled around the television set Which has a wire coat-hanger for an antenna. A quick view (by satellite) of the polar regions Maternally tucked in for the long night. Then some sort of interference—parallel lines Like the ivory-boned needles of your grandmother knitting our fates together. All things ambigious and lovely in their ambiguity, Like the nebulae in my new star atlas— Pale ovals where the ancestral portraits have been taken down. The gods with their goatees and their faint smiles In company of their bombshell spouses, Naked and statuesque as if entering a death camp. They smile, too, stroke the Triton wrapped around the mantle clock When they are not showing the whites of their eyes in theatrical ecstasy. Nostalgias for the theological vaudeville. A false springtime cleverly painted on cardboard For the couple in the last row to sigh over While holding hands which unknown to them Flutter like bird-shaped scissors . . . Emily, the birthday atlas! I kept turning its pages awed And delighted by the size of the unimaginable; The great nowhere, the everlasting nothing— Pure and serene doggedness For the hell of it—and love, Our nightly stroll the color of silence and time.

Every Sunday, the Weavers drove their Oldsmobile east toward Waterloo and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Cedarloo Baptist Church, on a hill between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, took their place in the pews, and listened to the minister. But there seemed to be no fire or passion, no sense of what was really happening in the world. They’d tried other churches and found congregations interested in what God had done 2,000 years ago, but no one paying attention to what God was doing right then. Certainly, churches weren’t addressing the crime in Cedar Falls, the drugs, or the sorry state of schools and government, not to mention the kind of danger that Hal Lindsey described. They would have to find the truth themselves. They began doing their own research, especially Vicki. She had quit work to raise Sara, and later Samuel, who was born in April 1978. When Sara started school, Randy and Vicki couldn’t believe the pagan things she was being taught. They refused to allow her to dress up for Halloween—Satan’s holiday—and decided they had to teach Sara at home. But that was illegal in Iowa. A booster shot of religion came with cable television and The PTL Club, the 700 Club, and Jerry Falwell. The small television in the kitchen was on all the time for a while, but most of Vicki’s free time was spent reading. She’s lose herself in the Cedar Falls public library, reading the science fiction her dad had introduced her to as a kid, the novels and self-help books friends recommended, biblical histories, political tracts, and obscure books that she discovered on her own. Like a painter, she pulled out colors and hues that fit with the philosophy she and Randy were discovering, and everywhere she looked there seemed to be something guiding them toward “the truth,” and, at the same time, pulling them closer together. She spent hours in the library, and when she found something that fit, she passed it along first to Randy, who might read the book himself and then spread it to everyone—the people at work, in the neighborhood, at the coffee shop where he hung out. They read books from fringe organizations and groups, picking through the philosophies, taking what they agreed with and discarding the rest. Yet some of the books that influenced them came from the mainstream, such as Ayn Rand’s classic libertarian novel Atlas Shrugged. Vicki found its struggle between the individual and the state prophetic and its action inspiring. The book shows a government so overbearing and immoral that creative people, led by a self-reliant protagonist, go on strike and move to the mountains. “‘You will win,’” the book’s protagonist cries from his mountain hideout, “‘when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have taken at the start of my battle—and for those who wish to know the day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world: “‘I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live my life for the sake of another man, nor ask another to live for mine.

Don’t take decision blindly, #1 Put yourself in other’s situation #2 Observe the situation #3 Make decision #4 Forgive (If Possible) Because strictness and revenge cannot meet your loss. God is the only one, who can meet your losses!


If God created the world, how do we know what things we can change and what things must remain sacred and inviolable?

Joy is sudden, unexpected, short-lasting, and high-intensity. It’s characterized by a connection with others, or with God, nature, or the universe. Joy expands our thinking and attention, and it fills us with a sense of freedom and abandon.

Still, while the Old Testament God of Genesis might well have used the sixth day of the week to create all the creatures that lived on dry land, in the contemporary epoch Fridays, surely, are more readily associated with winding down than embarking on bold new exercises in urban development.

The influence of William Shakespeare on the English language and literature can hardly be exaggerated. His life spanned A.D. 1564 to 1616 and he made a name for himself as a poet and playwright. Creating such memorable works as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, he has become the most-quoted author of the English-speaking world. Because of this, many of the words and phrases he used or coined are still in use today. His plays are still studied and performed.

In addition to proselytes, there were those who were attracted to Judaism but who were reluctant to take on the full rigour of the Jewish law. Those described in the New Testament as ‘God-fearers’ (see Acts 10: 2; 13: 16, 26) or the ‘devout’ (see Acts 13: 43; 17: 4, 17) probably belonged to this category. They believed in the God of the Jews and attended the synagogues. The Hellenized Jews of the Diaspora, the proselytes, and the God-fearers were regarded by Paul as the most likely to be converted to Christianity, and it is likely that the proselytes and in particular the God-fearers were most responsive, since they welcomed release from what they regarded as the burden of the Jewish law.

What surprised me the most when I was growing up was how little other people seemed to understand or even think about the connection between feelings, thinking, and behavior. I remember often thinking, Oh, God. Do you not see this coming? I didn’t feel smarter or better, just weirder and pained by the amount of hurt that we are capable of causing one another. The observation powers were partly survival and partly how I’m wired.

It’s awful that the same substances that take the edge off anxiety and pain also dull our sense of observation. We see the pain caused by the misuse of power, so we numb our pain and lose track of our own power. We become terrified of feeling pain, so we engage in behaviors that become a magnet for more pain. We run from anger and grief straight into the arms of fear, perfectionism, and the desperate need for control. Oh, God.

As Tim Keller once put it: The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.

I don’t care to talk shop,” was his answer whenever she mentioned the railroad. She tried to plead with him once. “Jim, you know what I think of your work and how much I admire you for it.” “Oh, really? What is it you married, a man or a railroad president?” “I . . . I never thought of separating the two.” “Well, it is not very flattering to me.” She looked at him, baffled: she had thought it was. “I’d like to believe,” he said, “that you love me for myself, and not for my railroad.” “Oh God, Jim,” she gasped, “you didn’t think that I—!” “No,” he said, with a sadly generous smile, “I didn’t think that you married me for my money or my position. I have never doubted you.” Realizing, in stunned confusion and in tortured fairness, that she might have given him ground to misinterpret her feeling, that she had forgotten how many bitter disappointments he must have suffered at the hands of fortune-hunting women, she could do nothing but shake her head and moan, “Oh, Jim, that’s not what I meant!” He chuckled softly, as at a child, and slipped his arm around her. “Do you love me?” he asked. “Yes,” she whispered. “Then you must have faith in me. Love is faith, you know. Don’t you see that I need it? I don’t trust anyone around me, I have nothing but enemies, I am very lonely. Don’t you know that I need you?

Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you’ll see what motive is the opposite of charity.” “What?” she whispered. “Justice, Cherryl.” Cherryl shuddered suddenly and dropped her head. “Oh God!” she moaned. “If you knew what hell Jim has been giving me because I believed just what you said!” She raised her face in the sweep of another shudder, as if the things she had tried to control had broken through; the look in her eyes was terror. “Dagny,” she whispered, “Dagny, I’m afraid of them . . . of Jim and all the others . . . not afraid of something they’ll do . . . if it were that, I could escape . . . but afraid, as if there’s no way out . . . afraid of what they are and . . . and that they exist.

You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the social. You have been taught that morality is a code of behavior imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbor’s welfare, to please an authority beyond the grave or else next door—but not to serve your life or pleasure. Your pleasure, you have been taught, is to be found in immorality, your interests would best be served by evil, and any moral code must be designed not for you, but against you, not to further your life, but to drain it. “For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it. “Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your self-interest and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are opposites, that morality is not the province of reason, but the province of faith and force. Both sides agreed that no rational morality is possible, that there is no right or wrong in reason—that in reason there’s no reason to be moral.

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon him—it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man. “The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. “A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimension, ’ which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it ‘the future,’ which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit. A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out. “It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. A leech would want to seek escape from the necessity to name its own nature—escape from the necessity to know that the substance on which it builds its private universe is blood. “What is the nature of that superior world to which they sacrifice the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit. The first wish men to profit by renouncing the earth, the second wish men to inherit the earth by renouncing all profit. Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an enormous investment of virtue—of intelligence, integrity, energy, skill—is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance of one mile; in their non-material, non-profit world, they travel from planet to planet at the cost of a wish. If an honest person asks them: ‘How?’—they answer with righteous scorn that a ‘how’ is the concept of vulgar realists; the concept of superior spirits is ‘Somehow.’ On this earth restricted by matter and profit, rewards are achieved by thought; in a world set free of such restrictions, rewards are achieved by wishing.

Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see, of exempting from the absolute of reality some one small wish of yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judgment of reason the cookies I stole, or the existence of God, let me have my one irrational whim and I will be a man of reason about all else—that was the act of subverting your consciousness, the act of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch—and a censored reality is the result, a splintered reality where the bits you chose to see are floating among the chasms of those you didn’t, held together by that embalming fluid of the mind which is an emotion exempted from thought.

No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare of God or of the disembodied gargoyle he describes as ‘The People,’ no matter what ideal he proclaims in terms of some supernatural dimension—in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture. “Destruction is the only end that the mystics’ creed has ever achieved, as it is the only end that you see them achieving today, and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them question their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them, the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they practice are means to nobler ends. The truth is that those horrors are their ends.

You who’re depraved enough to believe that you could adjust yourself to a mystic’s dictatorship and could please him by obeying his orders—there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and destruction for the sake of destruction. You who are craven enough to believe that you can make terms with a mystic by giving in to his extortions—there is no way to buy him off, the bribe he wants is your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it up—and the monster he seeks to bribe is the hidden blank-out in his mind, which drives him to kill in order not to learn that the death he desires is his own. “You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder—the mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life, and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend to themselves that they desire to live. But their swinish indulgence in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape. They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself. “You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe them as ‘misguided idealists’—may the God you invented forgive you!—they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

All right,” said Mulligan guiltily, “I won’t say it. I won’t say that we couldn’t get along without you—we can. I won’t beg you to stay here for our sake—I didn’t think I’d ever revert to that rotten old plea, but, boy!—what a temptation it was, I can almost see why people do it. I know that whatever it is you want, if you wish to risk your life, that’s all there is to it—but I’m thinking only that it’s . . . oh God, John, it’s such a valuable life!” Galt smiled. “I know it. That’s why I don’t think I’m risking it—I think I’ll win.

I mean it, Mr. Rearden. And I know what the word means and it’s the right word. I’m tired of being paid, with your money, to do nothing except make it impossible for you to make any money at all. I know that anyone who works today is only a sucker for bastards like me, but . . . well, God damn it, I’d rather be a sucker, if that’s all there’s left to be!” His voice had risen to a cry. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Rearden,” he said stiffly, looking away. In a moment, he went on in his woodenly unemotional tone. “I want to get out of the Deputy-Director-of-Distribution racket. I don’t know that I’d be of much use to you, I’ve got a college diploma in metallurgy, but that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. But I think I’ve learned a little about the work in the two years I’ve been here—and if you could use me at all, as a sweeper or scrap man or whatever you’d trust me with, I’d tell them where to put the deputy directorship and I’d go to work for you tomorrow, next week, this minute or whenever you say.” He avoided looking at Rearden, not in a manner of evasion, but as if he had no right to do it.

People are stealing nuts and bolts out of rail plates, Miss Taggart, stealing them at night, and our stock is running out, the division storehouse is bare, what are we to do, Miss Taggart?” But a super-color-four-foot-screen television set was being erected for tourists in a People’s Park in Washington—and a super-cyclotron for the study of cosmic rays was being erected at the State Science Institute, to be completed in ten years. “The trouble with our modern world,” Dr. Robert Stadler said over the radio, at the ceremonies launching the construction of the cyclotron, “is that too many people think too much. It is the cause of all our current fears and doubts. An enlightened citizenry should abandon the superstitious worship of logic and the outmoded reliance on reason. Just as laymen leave medicine to doctors and electronics to engineers, so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking to the experts and have faith in the experts’ higher authority. Only experts are able to understand the discoveries of modern science, which have proved that thought is an illusion and that the mind is a myth.” “This age of misery is God’s punishment to man for the sin of relying on his mind!” snarled the triumphant voices of mystics of every sect and sort, on street corners, in rain-soaked tents, in crumbling temples. “This world ordeal is the result of man’s attempt to live by reason! This is where thinking, logic and science have brought you! And there’s to be no salvation until men realize that their mortal mind is impotent to solve their problems and go back to faith, faith in God, faith in a higher authority!

Some false gods are made of wood. Some are bank accounts. Some are in our mirrors. False worship isn’t limited to a few moments of slavish action toward a physical thing; it’s a whole life apart from Jesus, an outpouring wasted on false kingdoms and false gods, even if that god is ourselves.

Atlas Hands" Take me to the docks, there's a ship without a name there And it is sailing to the middle of the sea The water there is deeper than anything you've ever seen Jump right in and swim until you're free I will remember your face 'Cause I am still in love with that place But when the stars are the only things we share Will you be there? Money came like rain to your hands while you were waiting For that cold long promise to appear People in the churches started singing above their hands They say, "My God is a good God and He cares" I will remember your face 'Cause I am still in love with that place When the stars are the only things we share Will you be there? I've got a plan, I've got an atlas in my hands I'm gonna turn when I listen to the lessons I've learned I've got a plan, I've got an atlas in my hands I'm gonna turn when I listen to the lessons I've learned

God’s plan is never just about us.

Marriage is like prayer. You can choose to enter it in duty, and endure it as an individual, or enter it willing to lose oneself to the Spirit, thus becoming one with the heart of God.

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, and not in God himself. Madeleine L’Engle

passports. No matter how many flights I take, no matter how many countries I visit, if God’s will and heart are not my ultimate destination than I am to be more pitied than anyone.

In the years of living this life of faith, I have never known God’s care to fail. Brother Andrew

I’d relapsed in the first place. Because you can’t become healed, truly healed, unless you revisit the past. Unless you revisit all of those aching, pulsing places and invite God into them. And that would mean going home and I wasn’t ready to go home.

I think of Jesus’s legs cracked and bleeding on the Easter-cross and I see in him the foolishness of a weak God, then, three days later, legs strong and whole, standing in the garden before Mary and Thomas and the disciples telling the world to touch and see, he is God. And he is power. And he is trustworthy. In spite of appearing foolish and weak.

Sometimes, for a split second, life’s problems just sort of line up and solve themselves and you see the hand of Jehovah Jireh so gloriously and heavily. Just for a second. Like God shining on Moses’s face and then he’s gone, but still, the shine. And for months afterward your face is alight.

The money has been returned, and yet it’s God’s. It’s been returned and yet it was never ours in the first place. The closer we let ourselves get to Jesus, the more we learn the way he sees. We learn the way he loves. And we learn the way he gives. And he never stops giving and we never stop receiving.

Watch me take care of you. God’s voice is a whisper

I grumble at God and wonder if He loves me, just because things don’t go right. If everything always went right I’d have no sympathy for those who suffered and I’d have no excuse for not being joyful all the time—but I bet I’d still grumble. This way it’s a test of character and faith, to see how I react to disappointments, crying kids, sickness, disturbed nights, etc.