B Simone Quotes

You’re a heartbreaker, Isabelle Lightwood,” he said, as lightly as he could with her blood still running through him like fire. “Jace told Clary once you’d walk all over me in high-heeled boots.” “That was then. You’re different now.” She eyed him. “You’re not scared of me.” He touched her face. “A nd you’re not scared of anything.” “I don’t know.” Her hair fell forward. “Maybe you’ll b r eak my heart.” Before he could say anything, she kissed him, and he wondered if she could taste her own blood. “Now shut up. I want to sleep,” she said, and she curled up against his side and closed her eyes. Somehow, now, they fit, where they hadn’t before. Nothing was awkward, or poking into him, or banging against his leg. It didn’t feel like childhood and sunlight and gentleness. It felt strange and heated and exciting and powerful and… different. Simon lay awake, his eyes on the ceiling, his hand stroking Isabelle’s silky black hair absently. He felt like he’d been caught up in a tornado and deposited somewhere very far away, where nothing was familiar. Eventually he turned his head and kissed Izzy, very lightly, on the forehead; she stirred and murmured but didn’t open her eyes.

I flip open my phone to text Jessica: Me: Guess who's pregnant? Jess: u? Me: Get real. Jess: ur mom? Me: yep Jess: Mazel tov!? Me: Don't congratulate me, plz Jess: Could b worse Me: How? Jess: Could be u? Me: I'm a virgin. Jess: Nobody's perfect.

Simone’s mother was an unfortunate mistake. Palackas, Simone’s father, was a bound demon who stumbled across her one night while he was carrying out an order for his master. One thing led to another…he inserted part A into slot B, and he fell in love with her... (Jaden)

I know how it works, Esther. I graduated from Harvard." "Book-smart, but life-stupid," said Esther.

Simon presses his lips against mine. This dance we share is as natural as breathing. But this isn't just a kiss. Our tongues mesh together, silently writing the opening lines of a novel and I feel it...I feel him on a completely different level.

Simon traces his fingers up my spine, touching bone after bone like he’s holding the individual beads of a rosary in silent worship.

If you’ve told a child a thousand times, and the child still has not learned, then it is not the child who is the slow learner.” —Walter B. Barbe

There should always be a Plan B - Simon Anthony Craig

In fact, a study by Leah B. Shapira and Myriam Mongrain showed that speaking to oneself as a good friend for seven days straight lowers depression for three months and raises happiness for six months.

Marathon In 490 B.C., a Greek messenger named Pheidippides ran twenty-six miles, from Marathon to Athens, to bring the senate news of a battle. He died from exhaustion, but his memory lives on thanks to the “marathon,” a twenty-six-mile footrace named in his honor. I thought it would be neat to bring Pheidippides to a modern-day marathon and talk to him about his awesome legacy.   ME: So, Pheidippides: What was it like to run the first “marathon”? PHEIDIPPIDES: It was the worst experience of my life. ME: How did it come about? PHEIDIPPIDES: My general gave the order. I begged him, “Please, don’t make me do this.” But he hardened his heart and told me, “You must.” And so I ran the distance, and it caused my death. ME: How did you feel when you finally reached your destination? PHEIDIPPIDES: I was already on the brink of death when I entered the senate hall. I could actually feel my life slipping away. So I recited my simple message, and then, with my final breath, I prayed to the gods that no human being, be he Greek or Persian, would ever again have to experience so horrible an ordeal. ME: Hey, here come the runners! Wooooh! PHEIDIPPIDES: Who are these people? Where are they going? ME: From one end of New York to the other. It’s a twenty-six-mile distance. Sound familiar? PHEIDIPPIDES: What message do they carry…and to whom? ME: Oh, they’re not messengers. PHEIDIPPIDES: But then…who has forced them to do this? ME: No one. It’s like, you know, a way of testing yourself. PHEIDIPPIDES: But surely, a general or king has said to them, “You must do this. Do this or you will be killed.” ME: No, they just signed up. Hey, look at that old guy with the beard! Pretty inspiring, huh? Still shuffling around after all these years. PHEIDIPPIDES: We must rescue that man. We must save his life. ME: Oh, he knows what he’s doing. He probably runs this thing every year. PHEIDIPPIDES: Is he…under a curse? ME: No.

Chapman, G.D. The Five Love Languages (Moody Press, 2015) DeMarco, M.J. The Millionaire Fastlane (Viperion Publishing, 2011) Dunn, J. The SoulMate Experience (A Higher Possibility, first edition, 2011) Goldsmith, M. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People become even more successful (Profile Books, 2008) Gottman, J.M. The Seven Principles For Making a Marriage Work (Orion, 2007) Harv Eker, T. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (Piatkus, 2007) Hill, N., Think and Grow Rich (Wilder Publications, 2007) Kelly, M. The Rhythm of Life (Simon & Schuster, 2006) Pavlina, S., Personal Development for Smart People (Hay House, 2009) Ramsey, D. Total Money Makeover (Thomas Nelson Publishers, reprint edition, 2013) Stevenson, S. Sleep Smarter: 21 Proven Tips to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success. (Model House Publishing, 2014) Tracy, B. Eat That Frog! (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007) Whitsett, D. The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer (McGraw Hill, 1998). Williamson, M. A Return To Love (Thorsons, 1996)

LUKE 5 On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by  uthe lake of Gennesaret, 2 vand he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were  wwashing their nets. 3Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And  xhe sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,  y“Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5And Simon answered, “Master,  zwe toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6And when they had done this,  athey enclosed a large number of fish, and  atheir nets were breaking. 7They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  bAnd they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying,  c“Depart from me, for  dI am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” [1] 11And when they had brought their boats to land,  ethey left everything and followed him.

Syllabic scripts occupy the middle ground, with between 50 and 100 syllabic characters. Beyond these two facts, Linear B was an unfathomable mystery.

first ever military cryptographic device, the Spartan scytale, dating back to the fifth century B.C. The scytale is a wooden staff around which a strip of leather or parchment is wound,

My favorite part of our honeymoon was when Simon dipped me backwards in a passionate kiss on the Ponts des Arts bridge just before we hung a padlock with our initials to the rails, immortalizing our love.

He will always be my Simon. My unintended. My favorite, most hated mistake.

One of the most overlooked aspects of excellence is how much work it takes. Fame can come easily and overnight, but excellence is almost always accompanied by a crushing workload, pursued with single-minded intensity. Strenuous effort over long periods of time is a repetitive theme in the biographies of the giants, sometimes taking on mythic proportions (Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). Even the most famous supposed exception, Mozart, illustrates the rule. He was one of the lighter spirits among the giants, but his reputation for composing effortlessly was overstated—Mozart himself complained on more than one occasion that it wasn’t as easy as it looked1—and his devotion to his work was as single-minded as Beethoven’s, who struggled with his compositions more visibly. Consider the summer of 1788. Mozart was living in a city that experienced bread riots that summer and in a country that was mobilizing for war. He was financially desperate, forced to pawn his belongings to move to cheaper rooms. He even tried to sell the pawnbroker’s tickets to get more loans. Most devastating of all, his beloved six-month old daughter died in June. And yet in June, July, and August, he completed two piano trios, a piano sonata, a violin sonata, and three symphonies, two of them among his most famous.2 It could not have been done except by someone who, as Mozart himself once put it, is “soaked in music,…immersed in it all day long.”3 Psychologists have put specific dimensions to this aspect of accomplishment. One thread of this literature, inaugurated in the early 1970s by Herbert Simon, argues that expertise in a subject requires a person to assimilate about 50,000 “chunks” of information about the subject over about 10 years of experience—simple expertise, not the mastery that is associated with great accomplishment.4 Once expertise is achieved, it is followed by thousands of hours of practice, study, labor.5 Nor is all of this work productive. What we see of the significant figures’ work is typically shadowed by an immense amount of wasted effort—most successful creators produce clunkers, sometimes far more clunkers than gems.6

The great writers—Marcel Proust, Anton Chekhov, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, Max Weber, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin and others—knew that thought is subversive. They challenged and critiqued the dominant narrative, assumptions and structures that buttress power. They freed us. They did not cater to the latest fashion of the academy or popular culture. They did not seek adulation. They did not build pathetic monuments to themselves. They elucidated difficult and hard truths. They served humanity. They lifted up voices the power elites seek to discredit, marginalize or crush

Heidegger’s word Sein (being) cannot be easily defined, because what it refers to is not like other categories or qualities. It certainly is not an object of any kind. Nor is it an ordinary shared feature of objects. You can teach someone what a ‘building’ is by pointing to a lot of different structures from grass huts to skyscrapers; it may take a while but eventually they will get it. But you could go on forever pointing out huts, meals, animals, forest paths, church portals, festive atmospheres, and looming thunderclouds, saying each time, ‘Look: being!’, and your interlocutor is likely to become more and more puzzled. Heidegger sums this up by saying that Being is not itself a being. That is, it is not a defined or delineated entity of any kind. He distinguishes between the German word Seiende, which can refer to any individual entity, such as a mouse or a church door, and Sein, which means the Being that such particular beings have. (In English, one way of signalling the distinction is by using the capital ‘B’ for the latter.) He calls it the ‘ontological difference’ — from ‘ontology’, the study of what is. It is not an easy distinction to keep clear in one’s mind, but the ontological difference between Being and beings is extremely important to Heidegger. If we get confused between the two, we fall into errors — for example, settling down to study some science of particular entities, such as psychology or even cosmology, while thinking that we are studying Being itself.

He distinguishes between the German word Seiende, which can refer to any individual entity, such as a mouse or a church door, and Sein, which means the Being that such particular beings have. (In English, one way of signalling the distinction is by using the capital ‘B’ for the latter.) He calls it the ‘ontological difference’ — from ‘ontology’, the study of what is. It is not an easy distinction to keep clear in one’s mind, but the ontological difference between Being and beings is extremely important to Heidegger. If we get confused between the two, we fall into errors — for example, settling down to study some science of particular entities, such as psychology or even cosmology, while thinking that we are studying Being itself. Unlike beings, Being is hard to concentrate on and it is easy to forget to think about it. But one particular entity has a more noticeable Being than others, and that is myself, because, unlike clouds and portals, I am the entity who wonders about its Being. It even turns out that I have a vague, preliminary, non-philosophical understanding of Being already — otherwise I would not have thought of asking about it. This makes me the best starting point for ontological inquiry. I am both the being whose Being is up for question and the being who sort of already knows the answer. I

Now, in cross-examination, the witnesses Asquith, George, Grey, Simon, Runciman, and indeed nearly all the plaintiffs, have confessed that they have been guilty from time to time of legislation, or proposals for legislation, of which the main purpose was to make people do something which they did not wish to do, or prevent people from doing something they did wish to do. Few of them could point to an item in their legislative programmes which had any other purpose, and, with the single exception of Mr. Haddock, they have no legislation to suggest of which the purpose is to allow people to do something which they cannot do already. On the contrary, it appears, they are as anxious as any other party in Parliament to make rules and regulations for the eating, drinking, sleeping, and breathing of the British citizen... Mr. Haddock's own programme is simple: (a) to propose no legislation unless its purpose is to allow people to do what they like, and (b) to support no legislation whose purpose is to stop people from doing what they like. "Which is the Liberal Party?

We walked home in the cold afternoon past Franklin Simon's windows, where the children of all nations revolved steadily in the light. Most of the stores were concentrating on the gift aspect of the Nativity, displaying frankincense, myrrh, and bath salts, but Franklin Simon advertised the Child Himself, along with a processional of other children of assorted races, lovely to behold. We stood and watched passers-by take in this international and interracial scene, done in terms of childhood, and we observed the gleam in the eyes of colored people as they spotted the little colored child in with the others. There hasn't been a Christmas like this one since the first Christmas--the fear, the suffering, the awe, the strange new light that nobody understands yet. All the traditional characteristics of Christmas are this year in reverse: instead of the warm grate and the happy child, in most parts of the world the cold room and the starveling. The soldiers of the triumphant armies return to their homes to find a hearty welcome but an unfamiliar air of uneasiness, uncertainty, and constraint. They find, too, that people are groping toward something which still has no name but which keeps turning up--in department-store windows and in every other sort of wistful human display. It is the theme concealed in the victory which the armies of the democracies won in the field, the yet unclaimed triumph: justice among men of all races, a world in which children (of whatever country) are warm and unafraid. It seems too bad that men are preparing to blow the earth to pieces just as they have got their hands on a really first-rate idea. Our Christmas greetings this year are directed to the men and women who will represent the people of the world at the meeting of the United Nations Organization in January. We send them best wishes and a remembrance of that first Christmas. Our hope is that they will shed the old robes which have adorned dignitaries for centuries and put on the new cloth that fits one man as well as another, no matter where he lives on this worried and all too shatterable earth.

[B]ut newspapers nowadays had too many pages, no one could proof everything before it went to press, and even the major newspapers were now writing “Simone de Beauvoire,” or “Beaudelaire,” or “Roosvelt,” and the proofreader was becoming as outmoded as the Gutenberg press.

Mistakes give us a chance to learn. So if you think about it, son, you don’t really make mistakes. You learn new ways to do things so you’re better at it next time. Or so you can help somebody else if it happens to them.

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity John Gribbin, Random House (2005) F.F.I.A.S.C.O.: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader Frank Partnoy, Penguin Books (1999) Ice Age John & Mary Gribbin, Barnes & Noble (2002) How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It Arthur Herman, Three Rivers Press (2002) Models of My Life Herbert A. Simon The MIT Press (1996) A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe Gino Segre, Viking Books (2002) Andrew Carnegie Joseph Frazier Wall, Oxford University Press (1970) Guns Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared M. Diamond, W. W. Norton & Company The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal Jared Nt[. Diamond, Perennial (1992) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Robert B. Cialdini, Perennial Currents (1998) The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Benjamin franklin, Yale Nota Bene (2003) Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos Garrett Hardin, Oxford University Press (1995) The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins, Oxford University Press (1990) Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr. Ron Chernow, Vintage (2004) The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor David Sandes, W. W Norton & Company (1998) The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategist Robert G. Hagstrom, Wiley (2000) Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters Matt Ridley, Harper Collins Publishers (2000) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giz.ting In Roger Fisher, William, and Bruce Patton, Penguin Books Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an Age of Information Robert Wright, Harper Collins Publishers (1989) Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove, Currency (1996 And a few from your editor... Les Schwab: Pride in Performance Les Schwab, Pacific Northwest Books (1986) Men and Rubber: The Story of Business Harvey S. Firestone, Kessinger Publishing (2003) Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West, 1840-1900 Irving Stone, Book Sales (2001)

W.B.D and the devils are chasing us and there’s only one way to stop them… War!

One symptom Lears points to is a 1907 book with the immodest title The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Nelson Patten, in which the moral valence of debt and spending is reversed, and the multiplication of wants becomes not a sign of dangerous corruption but part of the civilizing process. That is, part of the disciplinary process.

Ține-ți mereu capul sus,iar dacă vei fi nevoită să ți-l apleci, încearcă să o faci fără să-ți compromiți sufletul!

Herod’s death is conventionally dated to 4 B.C., but this is based on the wrong consular year that the Jewish historian Josephus gave for Herod’s enthronement as king by the Romans. It is now argued that the evidence strongly suggests that Herod died in 1 B.C.19 This means that the birth of Jesus was in early 2 B.C. (or late 3 B.C.). If this is the case, then we can confidently date Jesus’ death and Resurrection to A.D. 33.

The Passover was always on the 14th day of Nisan (Exodus 12:6). In A.D. 33, the 14th of Nisan was on April 3rd. Jesus’ birth in early 2 B.C. would have made him around 30–31 in Tiberius Caesar 15th year (Luke 3:1) in A.D. 29, making Him “about 30” when He started His ministry (Luke 3:23).

Based on a straightforward reading of the MT, there are three dates in biblical history that give us great confidence for establishing a dating scheme for the Old Testament: 967 B.C., 1446 B.C., and 1876 B.C. These three dates give a solid foundation for determining the dates for the lives of the patriarchs and for the global Flood. The foundation of Old Testament history in establishing a solid chronology is 1 Kings 6:1:

Another biblical evidence confirms the 1446 B.C. date for the exodus. The early date for the Israelites in Egypt is affirmed in Jephthah’s statement in Judges 11:26:

Taken together, 1 Kings 6:1 and Judges 11:26 place the exodus from Egypt in 1446 B.C. (also 1 Chronicles 6:33–37 reveals 19 generations from the exodus to Solomon). Compelling arguments have even been made for the precise date of the exodus on Friday, April 24, 1446 B.C.; synchronizing perfectly with the 18th dynasty of Egypt under the reign of Amenhotep II.

Archaeological evidence for the family of Jacob being in Egypt at that time is confirmed by Dr Douglas Petrovich’s translation of a caption on Sinai 115, composed by Joseph’s son Manasseh: “6 Levantines: Hebrews of Bethel, the beloved.” Bethel was the home of Jacob (see Genesis 35:1). This places Joseph’s son Manasseh in Egypt in 1842 B.C.19 If the translation is correct, this would make it the world’s oldest extrabiblical reference to the Hebrews (Israelites) in Egypt at the time the Bible places them there. This is in the reign of Sesostris III, who dies two years later (1840 B.C.), after a prosperous reign in Egypt. This fits with Jacob having previously blessed the Pharaoh (Genesis 47:7-10), the only reference in Genesis to the blessing of a foreigner by a patriarch.

The Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq I (Shishak, 1 Kings 11:40, 14:25), invaded the land of Judah/Israel around 925/926 B.C. When he returned to Egypt, he had inscribed on the temple wall at Karnak a list of the places he conquered in his campaign into Canaan. One of those names says it was the fort (or enclosure) of Abraham that he conquered, in a region near the Negev (cf. Genesis 12:1, 13:1, 20:1). This is the only ancient inscription that mentions Abraham.

In an Asiatic (Semitic) settlement (c. 1876–1560 B.C.) that was discovered at Avaris (Tell el-Dab’a), there is a monumental tomb where archaeologists found fragments of a colossal statue of an Asiatic dignitary that had been broken up. The statue had been deliberately destroyed and defaced. The original statue of the seated official was 150% of life size, approximately 2 m high, made of limestone and carved by Egyptian sculptors. This Asiatic man has a red mushroom-shaped hairstyle, yellow painted skin (traditional color of an Asiatic in Egyptian artwork), a long multi-colored cloak (red, white, and black stripes) which is non-Egyptian, and a throw stick (the Egyptian hieroglyph for a foreigner) held against his right shoulder. There is no name on the statue to identify the person, but the size of the statue indicates a person of great importance. Although some have suggested that this is Joseph, a more plausible explanation is that it is Jacob, the patriarch of the family. The clothing on the statue and its color are Asiatic; Joseph was clothed in Egyptian garments of fine linen (Genesis 41:42). The hairstyle on the statue is distinctly Asiatic; Joseph’s hairstyle would have almost certainly been Egyptian given that his brothers did not recognize him when they saw him (Genesis 42:8). Also, a fragment of the statue’s base shows that it was inscribed with the Egyptian word sntr = incense (a word used on funerary inscriptions), which signifies death. The statue was apparently built to commemorate a dead person. The style of the fragments that come from this statue are in harmony with statuary that came from a facility that produced statues during the reign of Amenemhat III, who came onto the throne the year Jacob died (1859 B.C.).34 It makes perfect sense that the statue is made to honor Jacob, who was not buried in Avaris but in Canaan (Genesis 47:29–30, 49:28–30).

The narrative in Genesis portrays Joseph (1915–1805 B.C.) serving as Egypt’s vizier (chief administrator) in the court of native Egyptian rulership, not Semitic (Hyksos, “Shepherd Kings” or “Rulers of Foreign Countries"), most likely in their Twelfth Dynasty. Many of the features of Joseph’s lifespan reflect this setting: 1) the personal names are Egyptian: Potiphar, Asenath, Zaphenath-paneah (Joseph’s Semitic name would not have been changed to an Egyptian name under a Hyksos ruler — Genesis 39:1; 41:45); 2) Joseph shaves himself before seeing Pharaoh, an Egyptian custom not a Semitic one (Genesis 41:14); 3) the embalming process was an Egyptian practice (Genesis 50:2–3); 4) assuming that Joseph was Egyptian, his brothers spoke Hebrew to one another when they first met him (Genesis 42:23), something they would not do if they supposed he was Hyksos;37 and 5) Joseph married the daughter of Potiphera priest of On (Heliopolis), as arranged by the Pharaoh (Genesis 41:45).

Although Sinai 361 is not dated, it is found among other inscriptions in the mines at Serâbît el Khadîm of the Egyptian New Kingdom. The pottery found in those mines was used during the reigns of Thutmose III (the Pharaoh who chased Moses out of Egypt) and Amenhotep II (the Pharaoh of the exodus) — so the pottery dates the inscription (c. 1446 B.C.).

In his 2016 book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet — Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script, Dr. Douglas Petrovich argues that it was not the Phoenicians who invented the first alphabet but rather a group of Hebrew sojourners in Egypt (Lahun, Wadi el-Ḥôl) and Sinai (Serâbît el Khadîm, Wadi Nasb) spanning the period from Joseph to Moses (1850– 1446 B.C.). If Dr. Petrovich is correct, then the Israelites played a central role in establishing one of the great pillars of civilization: the alphabet

A lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four. —Aesop, sixth century B.C.

The habituation of workers to the assembly line was thus perhaps made easier by another innovation of the early twentieth century: consumer debt. As Jackson Lears has argued, through the installment plan previously unthinkable acquisitions became thinkable, and more than thinkable: it became normal to carry debt. 11 The display of a new car bought on installment became a sign that one was trustworthy. In a wholesale transformation of the old Puritan moralism, expressed by Benjamin Franklin (admittedly no Puritan) with the motto “Be frugal and free,” the early twentieth century saw the moral legitimation of spending. One symptom Lears points to is a 1907 book with the immodest title The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Nelson Patten, in which the moral valence of debt and spending is reversed, and the multiplication of wants becomes not a sign of dangerous corruption but part of the civilizing process.

One of the features of the Enigma machine was its inability to encipher a letter as itself, which was a consequence of the reflector. The letter a could never be enciphered as A, the letter b could never be enciphered as B, and so on.

Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. (Luke 22:31–32) Our faith is the center of the target God aims at when He tests us, and if any gift escapes untested, it certainly will not be our faith. There is nothing that pierces faith to its very marrow—to find whether or not it is the faith of those who are immortal—like shooting the arrow of the feeling of being deserted into it. And only genuine faith will escape unharmed from the midst of the battle after having been stripped of its armor of earthly enjoyment and after having endured the circumstances coming against it that the powerful hand of God has allowed. Faith must be tested, and the sense of feeling deserted is “the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual” (Dan. 3:19) into which it may be thrown. Blessed is the person who endures such an ordeal! Charles H. Spurgeon Paul said, “I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7), but his head was removed! They cut it off, but they could not touch his faith. This great apostle to the Gentiles rejoiced in three things: he had “fought the good fight,” he had “finished the race,” and he had “kept the faith.” So what was the value of everything else? The apostle Paul had won the race and gained the ultimate prize—he had won not only the admiration of those on earth today but also the admiration of heaven. So why do we not live as if it pays to lose “all things . . . that [we] may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8)? Why are we not as loyal to the truth as Paul was? It is because our math is different—he counted in a different way than we do. What we count as gain, he counted as loss. If we desire to ultimately wear the same crown, we must have his faith and live it.

67“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.y     68Simon Peter answered him,z “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.a 69We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”b

Alexander said as soon as it got cold, they would leave. September came and it was still warm; he liked that. Better still, not only was Tatiana making them a little money, she was drinking some sparkling wine, some Bisol Brut, for which she developed a bit of a taste. After work, she would sit with Anthony, have bread and cheese, and a glass of sparkler. She closed the winery, counted the money, played with the boy, waited for Alexander to finish work, and sipped her drink. By the time they drove to the B&B, had dinner, chocolate cake, more wine, a bath, put Anthony to bed, and she fell down onto the goose down covers, arms flung above her head, Tatiana was so bubbled up, so pliant, so agreeable to all his relentless frenzies, and so ceaselessly and supernally orgasmic that Alexander would not have been a mortal man if he allowed anything to come between his wife and her Bisol Brut. Who would do a crazy thing like quit to go into dry country? This country was flowing with foaming wine, and that is just how they both liked it. He started whispering to her again, night by night, little by little. Tania . . . you want to know what drives me insane? Yes, darling, please tell me. Please whisper to me. When you sit up straight like this with your hands on your lap, and your breasts are pushed together, and your pink nipples are nice and soft. I lose my breath when your nipples are like that. The trouble is, as soon as I see you looking at me, the nipples stop being nice and soft. Yes, they are quite shameful, he whispers, his breath lost, his mouth on them. But your hard nipples also drive me completely insane, so it’s all good, Tatia. It’s all very very good. Anthony was segregated from them by an accordion room partition. A certain privacy was achieved, and after a few nights of the boy not being woken up, they got bolder; Alexander did unbelievable things to Tatiana that made her sparkler-fueled moaning so extravagant that he had to invent and devise whole new ways of sustaining his usually impeccable command over his own release. Tell me what you want. I’ll do anything you want, Tania. Tell me. What can I do—for you? Anything, darling . . . anything you want, you do . . . There was nothing Gulag about their consuming love in that enchanted bed by the window, the bed that was a quilted down island with four posters and a canopy, with pillows so big and covers so thick . . . and afterward he lay drenched and she lay breathless, and she murmured into his chest that she should like a soft big bed like this forever, so comforted was she and so very pleased with him. Once she asked in a breath, Isn’t this better than being on top of the hard stove in Lazarevo? Alexander knew she wanted him to say yes, and he did, but he didn’t mean it, and though she wanted him to say it, he knew she didn’t want him to mean it either. Could anything come close to crimson Lazarevo where, having been nearly dead, without champagne or wine or bread or a bed, without work or food or Anthony or any future other than the wall and the blindfold, they somehow managed for one brief moon to live in thrall sublime? They had been so isolated, and in their memories they still remained near the Ural Mountains, in frozen Leningrad, in the woods of Luga when they had been fused and fevered, utterly doomed, utterly alone. And yet!—look at her tremulous light— as if in a dream—in America—in fragrant wine country, flute full of champagne, in a white quilted bed, her breath, her breasts on him, her lips on his face, her arms in rhapsody around him are so comforting, so true—and so real.

convened) against domestic Violence. ARTICLE V The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate. ARTICLE VI All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. ARTICLE VII The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same. Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, Go. WASHINGTON— Presid. and deputy from Virginia New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King Connecticut Wm. Saml. Johnson Roger Sherman New York Alexander Hamilton New Jersey Wil: Livingston David Brearley Wm. Paterson Jona: Dayton Pennsylvania B Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robt Morris Geo. Clymer Thos FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouv Morris Delaware Geo: Read Gunning Bedford jun John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jaco: Broom Maryland James Mchenry

Remember every one that calls Thee Father. May a Father's love look on all the children. May the special need of each one be supplied, the special sorrow of each one be assuaged. May we be growing Christians, may we be working Christians, may we be perfected Christians, may we come to the fullness of the stature of men in Christ Jesus. Lord Jesus Thou art a great pillar; in Thee doth all fullness dwell. Thou didst begin Thy life with filling the waterpots to the full; Thou didst fill Simon Peter's boat until it began to sink; Thou didst fill the house where Thy people were met together with the presence of the Holy Ghost; Thou dost fill heaven; Thou wilt surely fill all things; fill us, oh! fill us today with all the fullness of God, and make Thy people thus joyful and strong, and gracious and heavenly!

You do understand what I mean!” he exclaimed, pleased to see Maude responding to his song. “I chose Nina Simone to show you something else. Just like you, Nina Simone had a classical background. When she was younger, she wanted to become a concert pianist. Her skill was beyond measure and she used it in a wide repertoire of jazz, blues, and R&B songs. And I think you can do the same. Music knows no limits and I truly understand why James insisted on signing you, Maude.” Maude remained silent, still thinking about his rendition of Nina Simone. “All you have to do is dig deeper. Try finding some suffering in you. Don’t sing the Cenerentola with a smile. Although you look like a girl who’s had it all. You know, the nice girl from the North of France, who grew up in a quiet, small town with her loving mom and dad and brothers and sisters, always top of her class, quick-tempered when things didn’t go her way. A bit spoiled, I guess. You have to put all that—” “Spoiled?” Maude blurted in utter disbelief, the word echoing through her mind. Of all the things he could’ve said about her, spoiled was the last word that could have appeared remotely appropriate to describe her. As for suffering, she’d had plenty of that, too, which is why she didn’t want to think about it. Not while she was so happy in New York and Carvin and the Ruchets were the last thing she wanted in her head. She painfully pushed the Ruchets away from her mind and turned to Matt, eyes flaring up again. “You know nothing about me, Matt,” she said, her voice quivering with emotion. “And you obviously know nothing about suffering, or you wouldn’t idealize it the way that you do. You see it as a romantic notion that seemingly gives depth to songwriting. And it does. Not because the singers actually thought of woe in a purely aesthetic way, but because that’s how they actually lived. You will never understand that,” she finished, trembling from head to toe. And with that, she grabbed her bag, coat, gloves, scarf, and stormed out of Matt’s Creation Room, slamming the door behind her.

Soon enough, end users (hotels, apartments, b&b, etc.) could be able to manage the entire suite of Google advertising from a single, simple extranet, decreeing the end of hotels' dependence to third-parties (web agencies and vendors)

that sugar-sweet moment when he chases down a vein, slams it home, and discovers that what they’re saying about them Green Tops is true: The shit is right. And if the shit ain’t right, if he cooks it up and guns it home and it’s B-and-Q, or just enough to get him out of the gate, then the first rule still applies.