Bachelor Quotes

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.

This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.

Must be weird for you, having your mom here." "Weird for me, weird for her, probably weird for you since you had to give up your swinging bachelor pad." "Mrs. Casnoff let me install my heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my new dorm room." "Cal," I said with mock astonishment, "did you just make a joke?" "Maybe.

There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.

When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.

Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.

Summer bachelors like summer breezes, are never as cool as they pretend to be.

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

When a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his.

No one's making any decisions today," Mom translated. "It's late, and we're all tired and a little overwhelmed. Besides, Lucius, Jessica is not ready to contemplate marriage. She hasn't even kissed a boy yet, for goodness' sake." Lucius smirked at me, raising one eyebrow. "Really? No suitors? How shocking. I would have thought your pitchfork skills would be attractive to certain bachelors here in farm country.

Jasper? What do vampires do for bachelor parties? You're not taking him to a strip club, are you?

Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.

Bachelor parties are designed for those who are sad to see the passing of their single days. I couldn’t be more eager to have mine behind me. So there’s really no point.

I’m on the benevolent side of antisocial. I don’t mind people, but I’d prefer not to have a lot of them around.

One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

Friendship was another illusion like love, though it did not reach the same mad heights. People pretended that they were friends, when the fact was they were brought together by force of circumstances.

You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

Some of us were brought into this troubled world primarily or only to increase our fathers’ chances of not being left by our mothers, or vice versa.

When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.

Never worry for fear you have broken a man's heart; at the worst it is only sprained and a week's rest will put it in perfect working condition again.

I like to stretch my mind by reading and writing and watching educational TV shows like The Bachelor to learn the complex mating rituals of heterosexuals.

What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?' said Sir James. 'He has one foot in the grave.' 'He means to draw it out again, I suppose.

It was all Mrs. Bumble. She would do it," urged Mr. Bumble; first looking round, to ascertain that his partner had left the room. That is no excuse," returned Mr. Brownlow. "You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and, indeed, are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.

I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

Jesus was a bachelor and never lived with a woman. Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it.

A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.

Silence, please? I'm trying to watch this documentary." Laurel nodded at The Bachelor. "I believe one of the females is about to present to the alpha.

The ranks of society are once again filled with Ambitious Mamas, whose only aim is to see their Darling Daughters married off to Determined Bachelors

Jealousy is a strange transformer of characters.

As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across premieval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.

He quietly groaned. Again and again, he’d witnessed this phenomenon with his friends. They got married. They were happy in that sated, grateful way of infrequently pleasured men with a now-steady source of coitus. Then they went about crowing as if they’d invented the institution of matrimony and stood to earn a profit for every bachelor they could convert.

I want to change my life...except I sort of like it. I mean, I couldn't be more delighted every Monday night after Fletch goes to bed when I come downstairs, pull up the Bachelor on TiVo, drink Riesling, and eat cheddar/port wine Kaukauna cheese without freakign out over fat grams. I'm perpetually in a good mood because I do everything I want. I love having the freedom to skip the gym to watch a Don Knots movie on the Disney Channel without a twinge of guilt. I've figured out how to not be beholden to what other people believe I should be doing, and when the world tells me I ought to be a size eight, I can thumb my nose at them in complete empowerment.

A bachelor is a man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.

I never shall be an old maid, because I have elected to be a Girl Bachelor.

Finally, my mother's training will be put to good use. Never mind finding an eligible bachelor, I mean to find a murderer.

Can’t you get me some swank bachelor’s pad like Keith has downtown so I can party with all the rich vacationers? Drinking alone is sad and pathetic. I need people. Even human people.

Nostalgia pierced me. I started to cry. I wasn't sad, but remembered happiness hurts.

his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.

They say bachelors have all the fun. Not so. You just get old and full of sand, nasty.

A bachelor, a studio, those were the names for that kind of apartment. Separate entrance it would say in the ads, and that meant you could have sex, unobserved.

Here’s a fact for you: Married men live seven to ten years longer than bachelors. Married women, on the other hand, die about eight years earlier than their single counterparts. Are you shocked? Me neither.

There’s nothing more attractive than a good man

I enjoyed reading when I was a boy, but these days, I read all the time and it has rather taken the pleasure out of it for me. When I am at leisure, reading is the last thing I want to do.” “That makes sense, I suppose. But for me, reading is an adventure. It makes me an armchair traveler and takes me places I shall never be able to go.

He's not, he thinks, upset people know. He's always been pretty unapologetic when it came to things like who he dates and what he's into, although those were never anything like this. Still, the cocky shithead part of him is slightly pleased to finally have a claim on Henry. Yep, the prince? Most eligible bachelor in the world? British accent, face like a Greek god, legs for days? Mine.

I’ve found that life is just too short to be anything other than positive. When something isn’t going the way you want it to, then you have to switch gears and make a change,

Some day, Prince Kheldar, you will fall in love," the queen said with a little smirk, "and the twelve kingdoms will stand around and chortle over the fall of so notorious a bachelor.

You have qualities that are just as important, far more so, in fact. It's perhaps cheeky of me to say so, I don't know you very well. I'm a bachelor, I don't know very much about women, I lead a quiet sort of life down here at Manderley, as you know, but I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so—modesty—are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.

[F]or in this queer world of ours, fatherly and motherly hearts often beat warm and wise in the breasts of bachelor uncles and maiden aunts; and it is my private opinion that these worthy creatures are a beautiful provision of nature for the cherishing of other people's children. They certainly get great comfort out of it, and receive much innocent affection that otherwise would be lost.

There’s a lot I don’t tell my father when he calls asking after Amy. He wouldn’t understand that she has no interest in getting married and was, in fact, quite happy to break up with her live-in boyfriend, whom she replaced with an imaginary boyfriend named Ricky. The last time she was asked out by a successful bachelor, Amy hesitated before saying, ‘Thanks for asking, but I’m really not into white guys right now.

Never hide your light, for how else is a man to notice you? Your spark, your fire, is your most cherished possession.

Novels and gardens," she says. "I like to move from plot to plot.

Dat had always told her that whenever you got angry at another person, it was an opportunity to take a glimpse of your own faults.

In his bachelor's heart of hearts, he loved pie with an intensity that alarmed him. Yet, when he was offered seconds, he usually refused. "Wouldn't you like another piece of this nice coconut pie, Father?" he might be asked. "No, I don't believe I'd care for anymore," he'd say. An outright lie!

Most of my friends from Columbia are going on to get advanced degrees. And why not? A Ph.D. is the new M.A., a master's is the new bachelor's, a B.A. is the new high school diploma, and a high school diploma is the new smiley-face sticker on your first-grade spelling test.

You are worth it! You may be a stubborn, chauvinistic, cold-hearted, ruthless, self-righteous son of a bachelor-" "Don't flatter me too much, Miss Linton." "-but you're a good man. Well, to me, anyway. Sometimes. Mostly." "Are you quite sure that you are in love with me?" "Yes!" "Just checking.

God created you with special talents for a purpose, and sometimes those we love most don't understand that. Don't let the doubts of others ring louder than God's whispers to your spirit. Sometimes God's whispers are harder to hear, but they're to be trusted the most.

A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.

We walked in the door, and I was stunned by the sterile emptiness of the place. Most of the tiny living room was taken up by one of those giant strength-building home gyms you see on TV. In addition to that, there was one metal folding chair, an old wooden end table (being used as a coffee table, in front of the one chair), and a TV sitting on a milk crate. And it was the cleanest bachelor pad I had ever seen. “Wow. Nice place. The prison cell motif is really working for you. Very feng shui.

During December we are all ingesting, imbibing, and spending with a reckless abandon like a bachelor party on a guilt-free boondoggle. Everyone has the unspoken agreement that what happens in December stays in December.

Think about my invitation. It’s not a bad way to start off the year—on the arm of the most eligible bachelor in school . . . See you tomorrow, Goldilocks.” Trent winked and, finally releasing my captive hand, walked away.

I would have liked to say, "I'm a doctor," to those who asked me what I did, doctors being the current purveyors of magic and miracle. But I'm sure we would have had a bus accident around the next bend, and with all eyes fixed on me I would have to explain, amidst the crying and moaning of victims...I would have to confess that as a matter of fact it was a bachelor's in philosophy; next, to the shouts of what meaning such a bloody tragedy could have, I would have to admit that I had hardly touched kierkegaard; and so on.

I'd seen elevated social mamas do far worse in the name of securing a husband for their daughters. An eldery, gray-curled grandmother once tripped an eligible bachelor on his way to the gaming table so he would fall at her granddaughter's satin-slippered feet. Instead he'd landed on a footman and broken his arm.

If a man is unmarried, he is called a bachelor. If a woman is unmarried, she is called a spinster or an old maid. What is it about an unmarried woman that poses such a threat to the patriarchal order? Mainly, it is that women are no one's property when we're unmarried. We're under no one's control, and neither are our children. There is no telling what we might do or say.

He’s a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he’s fifty, and even then there’s still hope for the ladies, as Mary Whitney used to say.

You don't want to look back at your years with regrets. Regrets have no place in your memory jar.

Lord Peter's library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediæval painting

Josh’s smile disappeared. “What do you mean, you’ve beaten Alex in chess? When did you play chess together?” He whipped his head toward Alex. “You’ve been playing chess with someone else?”.....Josh looked stricken. “You have another, secret best friend? But…I’m your best friend! I bought you a banana float for your bachelor party!

Believe me. There was nothing good in always being second place. Next to you, I may as well have been invisible - at least when it came to the ladies. If I'd known, we'd both end up as bachelors, I wouldn't have been so jealous of you.' 'Jealous?' Akkarin's smile faded. He turned away to stare at the horizon. 'No. Don't be jealous.

Men make this great pretense of not wanting to be caught, but in the end they usually beg for a lady’s hand.

All the jarring, rattling and clanking, spurting and hissing of the moving train of the train dissolved in the distance into something that was half a sob and half a sigh.

Staring is half the victory in love.

People think that they can love only when they find a worthy partner—nonsense! You will never find one. People think they will love only when they find a perfect man or a perfect woman. Nonsense! You will never find them, because perfect women and perfect men don’t exist. And if they exist, they won’t bother about your love. They will not be interested. I have heard about a man who remained a bachelor his whole life because he was in search of a perfect woman. When he was seventy, somebody asked, “You have been traveling and traveling—from New York to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Rome, from Rome to London you have been searching. Could you not find a perfect woman? Not even one?” The old man became very sad. He said, “Yes, once I did. One day, long ago, I came across a perfect woman.” The inquirer said, “Then what happened? Why didn’t you get married?” Sadly, the old man said, “What to do? She was looking for a perfect man.

My correspondence has certainly the charm of variety, and the humbler are usually the more interesting. This looks like one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.

To Have Without Holding: Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch, to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's buttons blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

He'd missed matching wits with her. "Shall we duel with our lips?" "You may find yourself eating grass for breakfast.

Sometimes there is naught you can do for a man, save stand quietly beside him and believe. (Advice to Felicity Langley from her Nanny Rana)

You’re a sandwich short of a picnic, mate.

That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks. But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none. And the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.

More and more clearly as the scones disappeared into his interior he saw that what the sensible man wanted was a wife and a home with scones like these always at his diposal.

The Flowers All the names I know from nurse: Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse, Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock, And the Lady Hollyhock. Fairy places, fairy things, Fairy woods where the wild bee wings, Tiny trees for tiny dames-- These must all be fairy names! Tiny woods below whose boughs Shady fairies weave a house; Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme, Where the braver fairies climb! Fair are grown-up people's trees, But the fairest woods are these; Where, if I were not so tall, I should live for good and all

Xav sprinkled olive oil on his lettuce. 'Lola was very particular that it all had to fit properly.' 'Lola?' squeaked Diamond. I wanted to warn her not to rise to the bait Xav was dangling in front of her but it was too late. Xav added some Parmesan and pepper. 'Suspicious, Diamond? You should be. This is a bachelor party I'm organizing, not a school outing, and it is going to tick all of Trace's boxes. Lola is either a very efficient water sports instructor or an exotic dancing girl; I'll leave it your imagination.' I rolled my eyes at Diamond. 'Myabe she's both. I mean the guys will really go for that, I guess. Don't worry,Di, Luigi and his crew will not disappoint us girls.' Luigi was in fact Contessa Nicoletta's little bespectacled chef with whom I had been consulting about the menu for Friday, but the Benedicts weren't to know that. 'He has promised to provide something suitably spicy for our tastes.

Did I want to dance? Of course I did and that's not all.

He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' is ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine life, for his intellect and emotions were clearly separate; he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the state wherin they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family.In short he was twenty-eight and a bachelor.

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask merely for information. I attribute it to the superior quality of the wine, sir. I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand. Good Heavens! Is marriage so demoralizing as that? I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person.

Mr Wisdom,' said the girl who had led him into the presence. 'Ah,' said Howard Saxby, and there was a pause of perhaps three minutes, during which his needles clicked busily. 'Wisdom, did she say?' 'Yes. I wrote "Cocktail Time"' 'You couldn't have done better,' said Mr Saxby cordially. 'How's your wife, Mr Wisdom?' Cosmo said he had no wife. 'Surely?' "I'm a bachelor.' Then Wordsworth was wrong. He said you were married to immortal verse. Excuse me a moment,' murmured Mr Saxby, applying himself to the sock again. 'I'm just turning the heel. Do you knit?' 'No.' 'Sleep does. It knits the ravelled sleave of care.' (After a period of engrossed knitting, Cosmo coughs loudly to draw attention to his presence.) 'Goodness, you made me jump!' he (Saxby) said. 'Who are you?' 'My name, as I have already told you, is Wisdom' 'How did you get in?' asked Mr Saxby with a show of interest. 'I was shown in.' 'And stayed in. I see, Tennyson was right. Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers. Take a chair.' 'I have.' 'Take another,' said Mr Saxby hospitably.

If you’re not gratified, you should be,” he told her as he tucked the letter back in the breast pocket of his jacket. “All the other members of my staff were running around like panicked rabbits without you.” “But not you, I am sure.” “I was too astonished to panic.

Harry - “No plovers no pigeons no snipe. No oysters mussels clams or whole lobsters. No artichokes no savories no cheese.” He paused for breath then went on “Nothing too rich nothing too highly seasoned. And never more than one glass of wine. Did I miss any no-noes ” Emma - She sighed. “When it comes to my work I do wish you would be serious.” Harry - “I am serious ” he assured her. “After reading this I understand why women have such tiny waists and go about fainting all the time. I thought it was corsets but no. You’re all hungry .

It was Monday morning. Swaminathan was reluctant to open his eyes. he considered Monday specially unpleasant in the calendar. After the delicious freedom of Saturday and Sunday, it was difficult to get into the Monday mood of work and discipline. He shuddered at the very thought of school: the dismal yellow building; the fire-eyed Vedanayagam, his class teacher, and headmaster with his thin long cane...

It seems so dreadful to be a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one's dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in company, having to carry one's meal home in one's hand, unable to expect anyone with a lazy sense of calm confidence, able only with difficulty and vexation to give a gift to someone, having to say good night at the front door, never being able to run up a stairway beside one's wife, to lie ill and have only the solace of the view from one's window when one can sit up, to have only side doors in one's room leading into other people's living rooms, to feel estranged from one’s family, with whom one can keep on close terms only by marriage, first by the marriage of one's parents, then, when the effect of that has worn off, by one's own, having to admire other people's children and not even being allowed to go on saying: “I have none myself,” never to feel oneself grow older since there is no family growing up around one, modeling oneself in appearance and behavior on one or two bachelors remembered from our youth.

You’ll wear loads of face powder and rouge.” “They’ll itch.” She knew from experimenting with Cousin Augusta’s. “And you must use a false name.” “I’ll forget it. I know it.” He sighed. “You can’t afford to forget it.” “Then it must be Delilah,” she said. “It’s the only name I’ll be able to remember.” “Why Delilah?” “I don’t know. But I already know I won’t forget it.

The history of Immanuel Kant's life is difficult to portray, for he had neither life nor history. He led a mechanical, regular, almost abstract bachelor existence in a little retired street of Königsberg, an old town on the north-eastern frontier of Germany. I do not believe that the great clock of the cathedral performed in a more passionless and methodical manner its daily routine than did its townsman, Immanuel Kant. Rising in the morning, coffee-drinking, writing, reading lectures, dining, walking, everything had its appointed time, and the neighbors knew that it was exactly half-past three o'clock when Kant stepped forth from his house in his grey, tight-fitting coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, and betook himself to the little linden avenue called after him to this day the "Philosopher's Walk." Summer and winter he walked up and down it eight times, and when the weather was dull or heavy clouds prognosticated rain, the townspeople beheld his servant, the old Lampe, trudging anxiously behind Kant with a big umbrella under his arm, like an image of Providence. What a strange contrast did this man's outward life present to his destructive, world-annihilating thoughts! In sooth, had the citizens of Königsberg had the least presentiment of the full significance of his ideas, they would have felt far more awful dread at the presence of this man than at the sight of an executioner, who can but kill the body. But the worthy folk saw in him nothing more than a Professor of Philosophy, and as he passed at his customary hour, they greeted him in a friendly manner and set their watches by him.

Is six a.m. too early to watch The Bachelor and mock all the giggly, desperate women?" "Go for it. Though I bet it'd work better as a drinking game," Laurel said. "One shot for the flirty arm touch. Chug if they strip and bum-rush the pool." Anne hit play. "Like they'd get their hair wet." Laurel stared at the screen, laughed at Anne's comments but felt another weird pang upset her insides. "Would you say this show makes something incredibly complex--you know, relationships--into something mind-numbingly vapid? Or does it make something actually rather simple into a big fucking circus?" "Both. That's why I love it." "I couldn't stand competing for a man like that," Laurel murmured. "I don't have the right...programming for it. Like to fight like that. Some people get an adrenaline rush and they're like foosh, give me somebody to beat down. I just, like curl up into a ball and want to hide." "I'm somewhere in the middle," Anne said. "I'm like a ninja. I'll like, come out of my shadowy hiding space and beat you down, bitches. You won't even see me.

Mom frowned, and I wanted to give her a thumbs-up to let her know I was okay. All I could manage was raising my bound hands in her general direction, clocking Cal on the chin as I did so. "Sorry." "No problem. Must be weird for you, having your mom here." "Weird for me, weird for her, probably weird for you since you had to give up your swinging bachelor pad." "Mrs. Casnoff let me install my heart-shaped Jacuzzi in my new dorm room." "Cal," I said with mock astonishment, "did you just make a joke?" "Maybe," he replied. We'd reached the end of the pier. I looked down at the water and tried not to shudder. "I'll be pretending, of course, but do you have any advice on how I'm supposed to not drown?" I asked Cal. "Don't breathe in water." "Oh,thanks,that's super helpful." Cal shifted me in his arms, and I tensed. Just before he tossed me into the pond, he leaned in and whispered, "Good luck." And then I hit the water. I can't say what my first thought was as I sunk below the surface, because it was mostly a string of four-letter words. The water was way too cold for a pond in Georgia in May, and I could feel the chill sinking all the way into my bones. Plus my chest started burning almost immediately, and I sunk all the way to the bottom, landing in the slimy mud. Okay,Sophie,I thought. Don't panic. Then I glanced over to my right, and through the murky water, made out a skull grinning back at me. I panicked.

He likes you,” Miss Dove said, sounding surprised. “Yes,” Harry answered with an unhappy sigh. He had long ago accepted the fact that cats adored him. The reason, of course, was because both God and cats had the same perverse sense of humor. When the animal buried its claws in his thigh and began to knead with happy abandon, he set his jaw and bore it. “Mr. Pigeon? Rather fitting for you to choose that name, Miss Dove. Both birds, you know.

At some time all cities have this feel: in London it's at five or six on a winer evening. Paris has it too, late, when the cafes are closing up. In New York it can happen anytime: early in the morning as the light climbs over the canyon streets and the avenues stretch so far into the distance that it seems the whole world is city; or now, as the chimes of midnight hang in the rain and all the city's longings acquire the clarity and certainty of sudden understanding. The day coming to an end and people unable to evade any longer the nagging sense of futility that has been growing stronger through the day, knowing that they will feel better when they wake up and it is daylight again but knowing also that each day leads to this sense of quiet isolation. Whether the plates have been stacked neatly away or the sink is cluttered with unwashed dishes makes no difference because all these details--the clothes hanging in the closet, the sheets on the bed--tell the same story--a story in which they walk to the window and look out at the rain-lit streets, wondering how many other people are looking out like this, people who look forward to Monday because the weekdays have a purpose which vanishes at the weekend when there is only the laundry and the papers. And knowing also that these thoughts do not represent any kind of revelation because by now they have themselves become part of the same routine of bearable despair, a summing up that is all the time dissolving into everyday. A time in the day when it is possible to regret everything and nothing in the same breath, when the only wish of all bachelors is that there was someone who loved them, who was thinking of them even if she was on the other side of the world. When a woman, feeling the city falling damp around her, hearing music from a radio somewhere, looks up and imagines the lives being led behind the yellow-lighted windows: a man at his sink, a family crowded together around a television, lovers drawing curtains, someone at his desk, hearing the same tune on the radio, writing these words.

To have without holding Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch ; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can’t do it, you say it’s killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systole the rhythm of our unbound bonding, to have and not to hold, to love with minimized malice, hunger and anger moment by moment balanced.

The pony preserved his character for independence and principle down to the last moment of his life; which was an unusually long one, and caused him to be looked upon, indeed, as the very Old Parr of ponies. He often went to and fro with the little phaeton between Mr. Garland's and his son's, and, as the old people and the young were frequently together, had a stable of his own at the new establishment, into which he would walk of himself with surprising dignity. He condescended to play with the children, as they grew old enough to cultivate his friendship, and would run up and down the little paddock with them like a dog; but though he relaxed so far, and allowed them such freedoms as caresses, or even to look at his shoes or hang on by his tail, he never permitted anyone among them to mount his back or drive him; thus showing that even their familiarity must have its limits, and that there were points between them far too serious for trifling. He was not unsusceptible of warm attachments in his later life, for when the good Bachelor came to live with Mr. Garland upon the clergyman's decease, he conceived a great friendship for him, and amiably submitted to be driven by his hands without the least resistance. He did no work for two or three years before he died, but lived on clover; and his last act (like a choleric old gentleman) was to kick his doctor.

How to describe the things we see onscreen, experiences we have that are not ours? After so many hours (days, weeks, years) of watching TV—the morning talk shows, the daily soaps, the nightly news and then into prime time (The Bachelor, Game of Thrones, The Voice)—after a decade of studying the viral videos of late-night hosts and Funny or Die clips emailed by friends, how are we to tell the difference between them, if the experience of watching them is the same? To watch the Twin Towers fall and on the same device in the same room then watch a marathon of Everybody Loves Raymond. To Netflix an episode of The Care Bears with your children, and then later that night (after the kids are in bed) search for amateur couples who’ve filmed themselves breaking the laws of several states. To videoconference from your work computer with Jan and Michael from the Akron office (about the new time-sheet protocols), then click (against your better instincts) on an embedded link to a jihadi beheading video. How do we separate these things in our brains when the experience of watching them—sitting or standing before the screen, perhaps eating a bowl of cereal, either alone or with others, but, in any case, always with part of us still rooted in our own daily slog (distracted by deadlines, trying to decide what to wear on a date later)—is the same? Watching, by definition, is different from doing.

Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way. The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man." "What the devil do you do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. "How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. "It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?" "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?" "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!" The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor- fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!" They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word. "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.