Backbone And Heart Quotes

Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his. The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.

There are weak men; men who run and hide when life slaps them in the ass. Then there are men; men who have a backbone yet occasionally, when life slaps them in the ass, will rely on others. And then there are real men; men who don’t cry or complain, who don’t just have a backbone, they are the backbone. Men who make their own decisions and live with the consequences, who accept responsibility for their actions or words. Men who, when life slaps them in the ass, slap back and move on. Men who live hard and die even harder. Men like my father and my uncles. Men I loved with all my heart. Men like Deuce.

This note about anatomy from me to you is for the remembering that after you speak after you shout your open mouth will breathe in the light for which you've hungered and your backbone will unfurl, until you can again dance to the beat of your steadfast heart.

If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save. But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.

. . . but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone.

There is a smile of love, And there is a smile of deceit, And there is a smile of smiles In which these two smiles meet. And there is a frown of hate, And there is a frown of disdain, And there is a frown of frowns Which you strive to forget in vain, For it sticks in the heart's deep core And it sticks in the deep backbone-- And no smile that ever was smil'd, But only one smile alone, That betwixt the cradle and grave It only once smil'd can be; And, when it once is smil'd, There's an end to all misery.

Enter with passion, climb into my soul! My heart is now free! I’ve lost all control! In others, I know where the heart had been placed. Everyone knows - it beats in the chest. But even anatomy is absurd in my case one massive heart and no room for the rest.

I usually avoided looking at my wrist, at my scars, but this time, I focused on them and realized my body was more than something I was trapped in. I saw a strong backbone, a big heart,

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will know Thee and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son whose heart will be clean, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past. And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain.

You have a backbone of steel. You went through months of hell looking after a small child, a dying husband and an entire household, with unholy patience. You missed meals and went without sleep, but you never forgot to read Justin a bedtime story and tuck him in at night. When you let yourself cry and fall apart, it was only in private, for a few minutes, and then you washed your face, put your broken heart back together, and went out with a cheerful expression and a half-dozen handkerchiefs in your pockets. And you did all of it while feeling queasy most of the time because you were expecting another child. You never failed the people who needed you. You're not going to fail them now." Shocked down to her soul, Phoebe could only manage a whisper. "Who told you all that?" "No one." The smile at the corners of his eyes deepened. "Phoebe... anyone who knows you, even a little, would know these things about you.

The tactic of terror.” Linus Pitt threw the burbot’s head and backbone overboard. “Violence breeds violence. Hatred has grown into hearts … and has poisoned kindred blood …

One heart, one brain, one backbone - that's all it takes to change the world.

The last words, or the seven sayings of Jesus on the cross can be said to form the backbone of Christianity.

The women in my family are medicine. They are backbones and ribcages and hearts. They are whispers in men's ears. They are the guardians that kept us whole.

Big, burly Harley with the heart of an angel, soul of a teddy bear, and Sue with her backbone of titanium, spiked with rusty nails, ready to take on any threat to those close to her.

Lilichka! (Instead of a letter)" Tobacco smoke eats the air away. The room,-- a chapter from Kruchenykh's Inferno. Recall,-- by the window, that day, I caressed you ecstatically, with fervor. Here you sit now, with your heart in iron armor. In a day, you'll scold me perhaps and tell me to leave. Frenzied, the trembling arm in the gloomy parlor will hardly be able to fit the sleeve. I'll rush out and hurl my body into the street,-- distraught, lashed by despair and sadness. There's no need for this, my darling, my sweet. Let's part tonight and end this madness. Either way, my love is an arduous weight, hanging on you wherever you flee. Let me bellow out in the final complaint all of my heartbroken misery. A laboring bull, if he had enough, will leave and find cool water to lie in. But for me, there's no sea except for your love,-- from which even tears won't earn me some quiet. If an elephant wants to relax, he'll lie, pompous, outside in the sun-baked dune, Except for your love, there's no sun in the sky and I don't even know where you are and with whom. If you thus tormented another poet, he would trade in his love for money and fame. But nothing sounds as precious to me as the ringing sound of your darling name. I won't drink poison, or jump to demise, or pull the trigger to take my own life. Except for your eyes, no blade can control me, no sharpened knife. Tomorrow you'll forget that it was I who crowned you, who burned out the blossoming soul with love and the days will form a whirling carnival that will ruffle my manuscripts and lift them above... Will the dry autumn leaves of my sentences cause you to pause, breathing hard? Let me pave a path with the final tenderness for your footsteps as you depart. (1916)

Soldiers were the backbone of a people, but the leader was the head and heart. We had to make the big choices, the hard choices, and we had to live with the consequences of them when we screwed up. Following orders was not one of our stronger suits. Bones

If we were honest about it, our lives are all fiascoes. There really isn’t anything of importance except maybe who gets handed your heart and what they do with it. And just so you don’t spend a lot of time fretting over it, even that may be pretty meager.” A few seconds passed. “We’re just small, Judy. All of us, even though we do stuff every day of the week to distract ourselves from the fact, it’s still true. We’re just little and small and maybe if we have some backbone we do a few things worth doing and then we’re gone.

To live as I incline, or not to live at all: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have I still - inclination? Have I-still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set? A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him. What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; and unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone. This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.

If there was one thing Officer Kyŏn had taught me, it was that brute strength was not a measure of a man’s courage. He could have muscles made of steel and yet a backbone made of mother’s milk—the only thing occupying his heart was love for no one other than himself.

If your Product or Service be the Backbone of the Organisation; Production and Operations be the Brain; Business Development and Marketing is considered as the Heart of the Organisation. For a Healthy and Prospering Company both Heart and Brain are Vital and Inseparable.

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

A flash of something—hope, excitement, disbelief— flickered over the boy’s face, shattering the remaining pieces of her heart. She’d known it would be a hard journey, and staring at Riley’s cast and bruises, she struggled to hold a smile on her face. Being a mother, especially a foster mother, took strength and courage, a backbone of steel and a loving heart. All the qualities her mother had lacked—and all the things Carly was slowly learning she possessed.

Blame this dress,” I tell her. “It shows off the sexiest parts of you.” “Let me guess.” Her laugh rumbles into me. “The ass?” I caress the dramatic curve from her back to her butt, rubbing my hand along her spine. “No, this is the sexiest thing about you.” The laughter leaves my voice. “This gorgeous backbone.” She pulls back to study my face in the shadows. With the sun setting, soon we’ll have to pick each other out of the dark like we did the first time we made love. “Your strength,” I continue, pressing my fingers along the delicate bones strung up her back. “And this.” I skim the curve of her breasts, but don’t stop there, not until I reach the skin left bare by the neckline of her dress. Until my hand rests on her heart. “This heart of yours.” My laugh is full of self-deprecation. “That you somehow miraculously have given to me, it’s the other sexiest thing about you.” She traces the line of my eyebrows, the slant of my cheekbones, my lips. I know what she sees. A good-looking guy with a not-always-good heart. Not a heart like hers. “That’s just about the most perfect thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she says.

Never play the princess when you can be the queen: rule the kingdom, swing a scepter, wear a crown of gold. Don’t dance in glass slippers, crystal carving up your toes -- be a barefoot Amazon instead, for those shoes will surely shatter on your feet. Never wear only pink when you can strut in crimson red, sweat in heather grey, and shimmer in sky blue, claim the golden sun upon your hair. Colors are for everyone, boys and girls, men and women -- be a verdant garden, the landscape of Versailles, not a pale primrose blindly pushed aside. Chase green dragons and one-eyed zombies, fierce and fiery toothy monsters, not merely lazy butterflies, sweet and slow on summer days. For you can tame the most brutish beasts with your wily wits and charm, and lizard scales feel just as smooth as gossamer insect wings. Tramp muddy through the house in a purple tutu and cowboy boots. Have a tea party in your overalls. Build a fort of birch branches, a zoo of Legos, a rocketship of Queen Anne chairs and coverlets, first stop on the moon. Dream of dinosaurs and baby dolls, bold brontosaurus and bookish Belle, not Barbie on the runway or Disney damsels in distress -- you are much too strong to play the simpering waif. Don a baseball cap, dance with Daddy, paint your toenails, climb a cottonwood. Learn to speak with both your mind and heart. For the ground beneath will hold you, dear -- know that you are free. And never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.

POLLARD had known better, but instead of pulling rank and insisting that his officers carry out his proposal to sail for the Society Islands, he embraced a more democratic style of command. Modern survival psychologists have determined that this “social”—as opposed to “authoritarian”—form of leadership is ill suited to the early stages of a disaster, when decisions must be made quickly and firmly. Only later, as the ordeal drags on and it is necessary to maintain morale, do social leadership skills become important. Whalemen in the nineteenth century had a clear understanding of these two approaches. The captain was expected to be the authoritarian, what Nantucketers called a fishy man. A fishy man loved to kill whales and lacked the tendency toward self-doubt and self-examination that could get in the way of making a quick decision. To be called “fishy to the backbone” was the ultimate compliment a Nantucketer could receive and meant that he was destined to become, if he wasn’t already, a captain. Mates, however, were expected to temper their fishiness with a more personal, even outgoing, approach. After breaking in the green hands at the onset of the voyage—when they gained their well-deserved reputations as “spit-fires”—mates worked to instill a sense of cooperation among the men. This required them to remain sensitive to the crew’s changeable moods and to keep the lines of communication open. Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities. Not all mates had the necessary edge to become captains, and there were many future captains who did not have the patience to be successful mates. There was a saying on the island: “[I]t is a pity to spoil a good mate by making him a master.” Pollard’s behavior, after both the knockdown and the whale attack, indicates that he lacked the resolve to overrule his two younger and less experienced officers. In his deference to others, Pollard was conducting himself less like a captain and more like the veteran mate described by the Nantucketer William H. Macy: “[H]e had no lungs to blow his own trumpet, and sometimes distrusted his own powers, though generally found equal to any emergency after it arose. This want of confidence sometimes led him to hesitate, where a more impulsive or less thoughtful man would act at once. In the course of his career he had seen many ‘fishy’ young men lifted over his head.” Shipowners hoped to combine a fishy, hard-driving captain with an approachable and steady mate. But in the labor-starved frenzy of Nantucket in 1819, the Essex had ended up with a captain who had the instincts and soul of a mate, and a mate who had the ambition and fire of a captain. Instead of giving an order and sticking with it, Pollard indulged his matelike tendency to listen to others. This provided Chase—who had no qualms about speaking up—with the opportunity to impose his own will. For better or worse, the men of the Essex were sailing toward a destiny that would be determined, in large part, not by their unassertive captain but by their forceful and fishy mate.

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,) I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems, Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above, Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg, Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female, The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean, The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity, Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings, The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out, The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the soul!

However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1119 his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Enjolras

Euterpe,” he blurted, and I stopped dead, jarred to the backbone. “What?” I whispered. “What?” “Lost,” he said, in a voice that wasn’t his own. “Lost. With all hands.” “No,” I said, trying for reason. “No, it’s not.” He looked at me directly then, for the first time, and seized me by the forearm. “Listen to me,” he said, and the pressure of his fingers terrified me. I tried to jerk away but couldn’t. “Listen,” he said again. “I heard it this morning from a naval captain I know. I met him at the coffeehouse, and he was recounting the tragedy. He saw it.” His voice trembled, and he stopped for a moment, firming his jaw. “A storm. He had been chasing the ship, meaning to stop and board her, when the storm came upon them both. His own ship survived and limped in, badly damaged, but he saw the Euterpe swamped by a broaching wave, he said—I have no notion what that is—” He waved away his own digression, annoyed. “She went down before his eyes. The Roberts—his ship—hung about in hopes of picking up survivors.” He swallowed. “There were none.

As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

The difference between a dictator and a true leader, is in intention. Given enough resources anybody can manipulate the minds of the masses and become their chosen authority, for the masses rarely look past the veil of the candidate's charm. And this is more evident today than ever, as a psychologically unfit misogynistic bully has swayed his way into the oval office with nothing but charm and charisma. So, basically we live in a society where a bully can become the authority of a great nation, the history of which is filled with true leaders who were the forerunners of humanitarian glory and real progress - these leaders were not simply the leaders of a country, or a party, but they were and still remain in the heart of the civilized humans as the leaders of humanity. They were the torch-bearers of egalitarianism and their light spread across the globe and touched countless lives with the warmth of humaneness. They lived among the masses but they didn't let the prejudices of the masses become their own, let alone infect the masses with more prejudices, unlike today's so-called leadership in America. They made America truly a great nation, by turning it into a symbol of liberty and acceptance, and today that very greatness is at stake, as the primitive evils of prejudices and discriminations have once again begun to creep into its backbone, through the words and actions of its very so-called leader. This is not a threat to democracy, for democracy itself at our current evolutionary stage, is a threat to our progress, rather it is a threat to the heritage of every single act of kindness, reasoning and acceptance ever committed in the history of humanity. The masses are existentially allowed to talk nonsense and advocate prejudices, but when an authority of the masses begins to talk nonsense and advocate prejudice and bigotry, it is an existential crisis for not just those masses but all humans around the world, with implications of catastrophic proportions. A leader is to take away prejudices from the psychological edifice of a country - a leader is to uplift a country, that is, a people, while warming their minds with the gentle flames of love, acceptance and reasoning. In fact, that's the only kind of true leadership there is, rest are just uncivilized tribalism that brings along more and more conflicts in the heart of the people within a country as well as outside of it.

He felt it. Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is so far magnificent that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty strips the material life entirely bare, and makes it hideous; thence arise inexpressible yearnings towards the ideal life. The rich young man has a hundred brilliant and coarse amusements, racing, hunting, dogs, cigars, gaming, feasting, and the rest; busying the lower portions of the soul at the expense of its higher and delicate portions. The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but reverie. He goes free to the play which God gives; he beholds the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams again, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the numberless enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls, and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred goes out of his heart in proportion as all light enters his mind. And then is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never miserable. The first lad you meet, poor as he may be, with his health, his strength, his quick step, his shining eyes, his blood which circulates warmly, his black locks, his fresh cheeks, his rosy lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always be envied by an old emperor. And then every morning he sets about earning his bread; and while his hands are earning his living, his backbone is gaining firmness, his brain is gaining ideas. When his work is done, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joy; he sees his feet in difficulties, in obstacle, on the pavement, in thorns, sometimes in the mire; his head is in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, benevolent; and he blesses God for having given him these two estates which many of the rich are without; labour which makes him free, and thought which makes him noble. This is what had taken place in Marius.

I love my fans [and] Slayer fans,” wrote Lombardo. “But the fact is: Today's Slayer is not SLAYER. They can play all of the songs, but the heart and the backbone is gone.  If the current mindset was present at the beginning, we would have never made it this far.  We were not greedy sellouts, going through the motions on stage merely to cash a check. We were the epitome of the punk/thrash mentality. If they ever get back

From the late 1970s on, due to the success of Keys’s diet-heart hypothesis, the drive to oust saturated fats from the US food supply intensified. And as a result, hydrogenated oils came to be used to make not only Crisco and margarine but virtually all manufactured food products. By the late 1980s, in fact, these hardened oils had become the backbone of the entire food industry, used in most cookies, crackers, chips, margarines, and shortenings, as well as fried, frozen, and baked goods.

Secrets make up the backbone of a small town. Secrets, gossip, and lies. No one cops up to it. Sweet-looking old biddies talk shit about their friends, but follow it up with a “bless her heart” and everyone pretends it's all right. It doesn’t matter if you try and dress it up with a pretty bow; gossip is gossip is gossip, and I loved every juicy piece I could get.

Love not Allegiance (A Sonnet) If I am remembered O Soldier of Destiny, Remember me with love not allegiance. If you place me on the altar of your heart, Make it not exclusive but exude acceptance. When the darkness around bothers you, Bask all you want in my timeless light. But when you see others in darkness, Forget your needs and serve with delight. My heart will never leave your backbone, So long as you have a cell crying for others. I will receive honor and my highest reward, When you annihilate yourself to wipe their tears. I will keep burning through you for eternity, Your actions will herald the victory of humanity.

Almost every child will complain about their parents sometimes. It is natural, because when people stay together for a long time, they will start to have argument. But ignore about the unhappy time, our parents love us all the time. No matter what happen to us, they will stand by our sides. We should be grateful to them and try to understand them. 카톡☛ppt33☚ 〓 라인☛pxp32☚ 홈피는 친추로 연락주세요 Nowadays, more and more middle-aged people are suffering from insomnia, as life for the middle-aged is stressful indeed. For one thing, as they are the backbones of their companies, they have plenty of things to do at work. And they usually have to work overtime. For another, they have to take great responsibilities at home, for their aged parents need to be supported and their little children need to be brought up. That's why they don't have enough time to have a good rest. 네노마정처방,네노마정판매,네노마정구매,네노마정구입방법,네노마정구매방법,프릴리지처방,프릴리지판매,프릴리지구매,프릴리지구입방법,프릴리지구매방법 I have a dream. When I grow up, I want to be an actor. Being an actor can play many roles and experience different lifestyles. It is so cool. What’s more, I can make a lot of money and then travel around the world. I have passion in performance and have joined many dramas. I hope someday I can realize my dream. Here are several reasons why you should train yourself for success like a champion boxer! You don’t practice in the arena, that’s where your skills and your abilities are evaluated. This also means that you don’t practice solving problems and developing yourself when problems occur, you prepare yourself to face them long before you actually face them. Talent is good but training is even better. Back in college, one of my classmates in Political Science did not bring any textbook or notebook in our classes; he just listened and participated in discussions. What I didn’t understand was how he became a magna cum laude! Apparently, he was gifted with a great memory and analytical skills. In short, he was talented. If you are talented, you probably need less preparation and training time in facing life’s challenges. But for people who are endowed with talent, training and learning becomes even important. Avoid the lazy person’s maxim: “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” Why wait for your roof to leak in the rainy season when you can fix it right away. Training enables you to gain intuition and reflexes. Malcolm Glad well, in his book Outliers, said those artists, athletes and anyone who wants to be successful, need 10,000 hours of practice to become really great. With constant practice and training, you hone your body, your mind and your heart and gain the intuition and reflexes of a champion. Same thing is true in life.

Years later I read a statement that said, “A tot of people have a wishbone, but they don't have a backbone.” I thought, That's the truth. Wishing won't get us anything. We have got to dig in and do whatever we have to do to get

Our hearts, like sails on a ship, are not designed to grasp the why and the where. Our hearts are designed to do one thing—respond.

A man should be a man. A man should have the backbone to speak his heart regardless of the outcome.

How did we get here? How does a group of people synonymous with Middle Britain and Middle America—the heart, soul, and backbone of their respective countries—drift to marginality? What drives their emerging radicalism? What transformations lead a group with such enduring numerical power to, in many instances, consider themselves a “minority” in the countries they once defined?

You need to understand that sometimes things can be so totally fucked up that all you can hope for is to find a way stay in the fight just a little while longer. Entire goddamn wars have been won just because some grim, stubborn son of a bitch had enough grit in his gizzard and iron in his backbone to keep fighting for just a little while longer. And, goddamn it, if that’s all you’ve fucking got, then that’s what you fucking do. Maybe you can’t see a road out of the valley of the shadow of death, but so long as you’ve got life in your body and defiance in your heart, you have not been beaten.

Am I never to meet the backbone of Venda, or will I only be pointed at with your long, bony finger?" He looked down briefly at his gloved hands, and a sliver of satisfaction warmed me.

My heart pounded as I kissed Devin, thrilling the thread between us. It was a slow, sweet kiss that filled me with warmth. Pulling him by the tie, that was absolutely a Candace move. But it was worth channeling her if it gave me the backbone to reach out and make the move I wanted. His hands tightened on the steering wheel, the scent of him in my face and making my head swim. A snap startled me--- a small gasp escaped my mouth against his and Devin took full advantage of it. Moving his tongue against my parted lips, I welcomed him in as we deepened the kiss. The string at my heart pulled tighter and tighter as if screaming for more. When the pull between us felt impossibly needy, asking for more than I could physically give it, everything suddenly went slack. It was like a light switch had turned off. The pull was gone; in its place was a gentle warmth coming from Devin. I felt his heart, his adrenaline. Letting the tie slide through my fingers, I leaned back so I could see him. My lips left his, and his hungry expression was slowly replaced by his mask of calm. That made one of us. My breath was burning sharp and fast as I panted down air; my chest rushed to keep up. "That's better," I breathed. "I wasn't going to be able to sleep with that thread dangling like that." Devin was surprisingly speechless, and my eyes flicked to the top half of his steering wheel, which had broken off in his hands. That explained the snap I'd heard.

Happy Holidays (The Sonnet) Spirit of Christmas doesn't grow on a fir tree, Christmas blooms wherever the heart is hatefree. Ramadan isn't fulfilled by feasting on some tasty beef, The greatest of feast is haram if others go hungry. Hanukkah's miracle isn't about the oil lasting 8 days, Rather it's about the resilience of light amidst darkness. Fireworks may be diwali for those still in kindergarten, Everyday is diwali for an existence rooted in kindness. The will to love and the will to lift are the backbone, Of all human celebration, tradition and communion. Take that fundamental will out of the equation, All you have left are rituals without meaning and mission. Fasting, feasting and decorating are step two of any festival. First and foremost, at our altar within, we gotta light a candle.

Himalayan Sonneteer Sonnet 16 Hope is nature's defibrillator that, Electrifies the heart to unsubmission. Hope rescues us from the depths of despair, Hope drags the being even out of cremation. Hope lights the way when clouds convene, Hope brings sight when smog sets in. Hope is the bird that heralds the dawn, Hope is the answer to all things disheartening. Never let intellect trod on the sapling of hope, When things get rough intellect is first to scarper. The brain needs backbone to trudge through hardship, Without hope, backbone is first to lose its caper. But again, most times inaction sets in, disguised as hope. Real hope sets you on fire, it doesn't make you mellow.

Heart, brain and backbone, if you have these three, you have everything to succeed.

Standing at a distance ( Part 1 ) I stand at a distance intermittently looking at her, Envying the Sun rays that bathe her from head to toe, While I from the distance keep looking at her, With longing eyes and my head slightly bent low, In the distance rainbow appears in the sky, And the rain drops kiss her skin, And I only glance at her by and by, With a deep desire to win, Her heart and her gaze of affection, I see the raindrop dripping down through her backbone, And oh my imagination and its dereliction, With the wish to be the lucky Sun that over her had shone, Before the daylight embraced her from everywhere, And it was just the light that covered her, And in this light she was everywhere, Now it was the light and her, and just her, While I stood in the distance waiting for my chance, Turning my head and ogling at her, Hoping she would smile someday, and I shall live my moment of romance, To be the sunshine and the raindrop always kissing her, And melt everywhere over her skin, And never to return to the light nor to this world, I shall now forever reside in this beauty’s eternal inn, Sometimes spreading over her skin, & often like the sun rays around her hair curled, But for now she is busy with the rain drops, the Sun, the Moon, I wonder if she even notices my presence, So I often wish the Sun and the Moon to set soon, So that she could somehow notice my presence, Alas the time too loves to love her, And when the Sun shines over her it seems to shine forever, And time remains there circling around her, And ah my pain to keep hoping in this moment that lasts forever, That she would someday acknowledge my smile, Nevertheless, I am happy as long as I can see her, I shall manage to walk a million mile, Just for that glimpse of her,

REMEMBERING THE WORDS OF MY LATE FATHER The time is 03.16 am the UK time and I have been thinking of you lately, nyana kaBhixa, Mngwevu, Tshangisa, Zulu, Skhomo, Mhlatyana, Rudulu. I listen and hear nothing but the echoes of your words of wisdom and encouragement in my daily life. Your priceless love for me and my late sister was the most solid foundation for our lives and the most nourishment of our souls which is still the pillar of the unbeatable strength that helps me stand tall against all odds. You always told us that life is a double-edged sword, it’s beautiful and enjoyable but there are times when it stings like a bee and the best thing to do is to take a cautious approach and remember that there will always be some victories along the way. Here are some of your words that continue to give me the ability to navigate throughout the challenges of life: . Know who you are,never compromise and sell yourself short . Stay authentic and never change because authenticity stiffens your backbone. . Always stand up for the truth no matter how high is the cost . Never eat like there is no tomorrow because you will not be able to survive in the times of famine. . Never sit too close to the fire because not every place is always has that kind of comfort. . Be aware of your surroundings and make it the part of your daily routine. . Always try to pull yourself together and remember that there are places where your tears will mean nothing to certain people. . Always remember that you were created to overcome every obstacle and to rise above every challenge. And never keep silent in the presence of your adversaries. . Always remember to share the little you have with those who are in need. . Never be afraid to say no when you have to say so. I give God all the glory for the choice He made before the foundation of the earth for choosing you to be my earthly father and I’m grateful for the years He allowed us to spend together on this planet. Thank you so much Tata for being a good and faithful steward of my life and thank you for the spirit of resilience that runs through the veins of every Xhosa heart. Lala ngoxolo Tshangisa. Love you so much.

Sergeant Dix told me that at Fort Bragg they found that two to three days of constant tension was what it took to figure out if a soldier was going to break. Most who made it to the Special Forces Qualification Course could take anything the Army cared to throw at them for forty-eight hours. But by day three, with reserves depleted and nothing but misery on the horizon, a soldier’s core became exposed. His baseline ability. His essence. Superficially, this was evidenced by the decision to quit or continue, a temptation the drill sergeants dangled every time they spoke.  The real game, of course, was mental. Beating the Q boiled down to a soldier’s ability to disassociate his body from his mind, his being from his circumstance. This was relatively easy during the mindless procedures — the hikes, runs, and repetitive drills that form the backbone of military training. Disassociation became much tougher, however, when the physical activity was paired with judgment calls and problem solving. If a soldier could engage his higher-order thinking while simultaneously ignoring the pain and willing his body to continue beyond fatigue, then he had a chance at making it to the end. If he couldn’t, then the strength of his back, heart, and lungs didn’t matter.  Dix had concluded that the Q-Course was as much about self-discovery as a prestigious shoulder patch.  Katya was in that discovery phase now.  The big question was what we’d do if she decided to quit. She broke the silence after a few miles. “Do you ever get used to it?” “The killing?” “Yes.” “We’re all used to killing — just not people. We kill when we spray for bugs, or squash a spider, or buy a leather bag, or order a hamburger. I don’t think of the individuals I’ve killed as people any more than you thought of the last steak you ate as Bessie.

Let's fall in love like our grandparents When a man truly treated a woman like a Queen and a Queen understand the value of a king. Be my strength & I'll be your backbone Be my protector & I'll build you a home Be my Nurturer & I'll help you grow. When you're sick I'll Be your doctor When you're hungry I'll Be your chef when your funds get low I'll be your account I just need you to love me and trust me with your heart I promise to never hurt you or leave your side I want to be your everything your best friend your lover And you're confidant

Charge up your mind with facts and reason, Charge up your heart with love and vision. Backbone alive repels cowardly inaction, Even if peddled by thousand year tradition.

Thousand Naskars (The Sonnet) When one Naskar dies in body, Thousand Naskars will take his place. Cowards seek comfort in reincarnation, While the brave step in to fill the void. Don't you dare make a cult of me, Waiting for yet another second coming! Reclaim your life from the land of myths, Wishful inaction is most unbecoming. Charge up your mind with facts and reason, Charge up your heart with love and vision. Backbone alive repels cowardly inaction, Even if peddled by thousand year tradition. When one Naskar dies in body, Thousand Naskars will take his place. Naskar the person died a long time ago, What speaks to you is Naskar the oneness.

Biasproof your brain, Bulletproof your backbone, Hateproof your heart.

Sapiosultan (The Sonnet) They ask me, do I believe in destiny? Sure, I do - you are looking at it. I am destiny - of you - of the world, I am the destiny of entire humanity. I am the bridge - between everything - science, poetry, philosophy - everything. Between everything and everyone - I am the bridge between hearts still beating. I am not a servant to the field, I am a servant to the valley - the valley of life and light - beyond the squabbles of dead sanity. Who am I - or better yet, what am I? I am but a spark of reason tempered by warmth, I am but a spark of boldness tempered by humility, I am but a spark of justice tempered by conscience. I am neither man nor woman, I am neither mind nor machine, I am neither head nor heart, I am neither spine nor spleen. I am but that - that one ceaseless truth, aspiring across all fallacies untrue. I am but that - that one untainted light, shining as proof of time yet to come true.

Without the green of heart, what green apes, what oil apes - all energy leads to but one color - the color of blood - red!

Neither fossil fuel nor artificial intelligence is the problem - the real danger is greed. Do you think everybody will live happily ever after, once you replace fossil fuel with green energy! No - they won't! Apekind will simply use green energy to power their greed instead of oil and gas. They will use green energy to wage war, they'll use green energy to kill people. US military is already developing a high-endurance unmanned solar powered aircraft, to be used as a communication relay platform and for surveillance. Besides, solar powered reconnaissance drones have already been in military use for some years now, in various parts of the world. Which means, the planet will be safer, but the people will be in just as much muck as they are today. Apparently, there is a limit to fossil fuel, but there is no limit to human stupidity. Apekind will find one way or another to continue with their "kill or be killed" nonsense, just like any other animal in the wild. And every time government officials will make the same old statement, "it's necessary for national security" - just as power hungry tribal chiefs have been saying since our jungle days, before putting millions upon millions to death! So, my question is - what good is green energy if it's used for the same inhuman purposes as fossil fuel! Treat greed first, you fools - treat greed first! Then you won't need to make a ton of empty promises and winded policies for a sustainable future - because where there is no greed, sustainability flows like spring water. Treat greed first, then I shall call you humankind - until then, you are nothing but apekind. Without the green of heart, what green apes, what oil apes - all energy leads to but one color - the color of blood - red! Energy used to sustain the same old paradigm of greed, control and disparity, is anything but clean - no matter what it says on the label.

Treat greed first, you fools - treat greed first! Then you won't need to make a ton of empty promises and winded policies for a sustainable future - because where there is no greed, sustainability flows like spring water. Treat greed first, then I shall call you humankind - until then, you are nothing but apekind. Without the green of heart, what green apes, what oil apes - all energy leads to but one color - the color of blood - red! Energy used to sustain the same old paradigm of greed, control and disparity, is anything but clean - no matter what it says on the label.

Military is Legal Terrorism (Ceasefire Sonnet) Any planet that confuses guns with gallantry is a planet of apes. Prioritizing military over education, we only build a world full of terrorists. Military is just legal terrorism, To fathom this you gotta be human. What do monkeys know of peace and love, When guns are their emblem of patriotism! We don't need civilian disarmament, We need absolute universal disarmament. Only a worldwide ban on firearms production, Can facilitate a paradigm of peaceful coexistence. Let's see which nation has the heart and backbone, To legislate absolute ban on firearms manufacture! Let's see who are the first civilized people, Let's see which nation is the first peacemaker! What's the point of one ceasefire, Let's pull the plug on all war. Let's disband all military, and siphon those funds to housing, education and healthcare.

Heart is my gospel, brain is my constitution. Backbone is my law, service is my salvation.

Marriage is like a deck of cards. In the beginning all you need is two hearts and a diamond. By the end you wish you had a club and a spade.

Across the globe I am often referred to as "the Indian neuroscientist" or "the Indian Author", despite the fact that my work is practically nonexistent in India, statistically speaking. Considering that, 90% of my book sales come from US, UK and Canada, the rest 10% from Europe, Mexico, South America and Australia, and zero from India - for transparency and context purposes I'll tell to you one more time - Abhijit Naskar is an Earth Scientist - Abhijit Naskar is an Earth Poet - Abhijit Naskar is an Earth Philosopher. However, it's never about the sales, it's about the love. I only mention the demographics to put things in perspective. For example, there are many countries where people cannot afford to buy my books, since they are expensively exported from US and Europe, and yet, I receive far more love from these countries than the land I was born in. Philippines and Pakistan to name a few. As a matter of fact, hate wise speaking, Philippines is the only country so far, where I have not faced any hate and bigotry - which only goes to prove that, state of a currency does not reflect the broadness of heart. That's why, a substantial portion of my work is available freely on the internet. The point is - I am no more Indian, than I am a Yank or Canadian or Mexican or Turk or Swede or Pinoy or British or Brazilian or Egyptian or Aussie. Passport is just a glorified bus pass - nothing more. So, I repeat - I am an Earth Scientist - remember that. Nationalization of Naskar is desecration of Naskar.

You're all right, young Magee. You're all right. Since you are, I'll tell you this. That lovely lass inside Gallagher's won't settle for less in a man than hot blood, a strong backbone, and a clever brain. I'm considering you have all three.

such figures as Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and Terry McAuliffe, has long been pushing the party to forget blue-collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the DLC wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outweighing anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and—more important—the money of these coveted constituencies, “New Democrats” think, is to stand rock-solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as “class warfare” and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to business interests. Like the conservatives, they take economic issues off the table. As for the working-class voters who were until recently the party’s very backbone, the DLC figures they will have nowhere else to go; Democrats will always be marginally better on economic issues than Republicans. Besides, what politician in this success-worshiping country really wants to be the voice of poor people? Where’s the soft money in that?

Curves, Clothes, Character (The Sonnet) Your abs won't last, your racks won't last, Eventually everything ends up in wrinkle. Polish the outside all you want but, All curves are crookery if the heart is wrinkled. Slimness is not the same as fitness, Skinship is not the same as kinship. Etiquettes don't elevate the world, Apparels don't bring liberty and leadership. Waste not the life on measuring your waist, All waist is waste if the backbone is malnourished. Fitness is fiction when shallowness runs rampant, All curves are filth if the being remains prejudiced. Curves and clothes have no bearing on character whatsoever. Better a character out of shape, than a shape without character.

In India, it is religion that forms the very core of the national heart. It is the backbone - the bed-rock - the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built.

38. No One Cares How Much You Know Until They Know How Much You Care My SAS patrol sergeant Chris Carter was the living embodiment of this advice, and if you are ever in a position of leading a team or managing people, following his selfless example will help you become a better leader and enable your team to achieve more. Can you imagine how I felt after Chris had let me drink his last drops of water? Gratitude doesn’t come close. One of the regiment’s toughest, most hardened of soldiers was showing that he was looking out for me way beyond the call of duty. And once I had been shown how much he cared, I knew that, in return, I would never let him, or the regiment, down. That simple act of kindness, of caring, is always at the heart of great brotherhoods. Call it what you will: camaraderie, shared purpose. The end product was that here was a man I would work my guts out for. And that made us all stronger. Ditto, on a mountain: the most important bit of kit or resource on any expedition is always the human asset. When valued and empowered, humans have proved they can truly overcome the impossible and scale the unconquerable. But first we have to be valued and empowered. The real value of a team is never in the flash hi-tech equipment or branded sponsors. It’s the people and the relationships between them. As a leader, in whatever field, it is one thing for your team to see how much you know, but that knowledge isn’t what will make your team great. What makes the critical difference is how you use that knowledge. Do you use it to empower and support those around you? Do you value others above yourself? Is your ego small enough, and your backbone strong enough, to raise others up high on your shoulders? If you let people know, through your words and actions, that they really matter, that their work matters, that their wellbeing matters to you, then they will go to the ends of the Earth for you. Why? Because they know they can trust you to use all your knowledge, skills and power to support and encourage them. You see, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.

Have you ever wondered how this all began? I don't mean philosophically but simply which of your body parts was first out of the blocks from the moment of egg fertilization? Was it the brain? The heart? The backbone, or even the eyes? In answer, I would ask you to stop being such a poet about it, because the fact is that in that first magical moment you were nothing but an orifice indented on to a cluster of cells. That's right. You started life as an asshole. Nobody can escape this unfortunate fact. We all kicked off in the same way, and it isn't pretty. The philosophers are allowed back in the room at this point, because of course this begs the question whether certain individuals ever truly developed beyond this point.

Ancestry is Garbage (The Sonnet) DNA test may reveal your ancestry, But there is no DNA test for character. IQ may reveal deficit in logical aptitude, There's no IQ test for excellence or genius. If bloodline dictated destiny, We'd still be dangling from trees. Not that we've done much better, But at least there is possibility. In the end we are all monkeys, We all come from the jungle. Question is, have we conquered the jungle that lurks in our heart, have we risen yet above the animal! Ancestry is garbage, IQ is useless, Living humans don't rely on such nonsense. Heart, brain, backbone, these make who we are, Everything else is mythology of the savages.

Stateless Sonnet Some dreams are too big for a town, Some dreams are too big for a city. My dream was too big for one country, So I stood up and engulfed humanity. I am too alive to be bound by ideology, I am too human to be bound by border. Too civilized to pledge flagly allegiance, I am the ultimate geopolitical defector. In poetry I am sufi, In philosophy I am advaitin. In duty I am scientist, In existence I am human. I am a civilized human being, I don't exist to impress governments. I'm a being with heart, brain 'n backbone, I'm the stateless force of world upliftment.

I don't need to write in all these languages of the world - those who care, will find a way. I write in more than one language because I want to. I want to leave at least something extremely personal for every culture in the world - that is, for as many cultures as I humanly can. However in the end, the universal spirit of love, light and oneness transcends language and culture, and finds a home in the heart of every conscientious human being - and that's what counts. It's the bridge that counts, not the shape it comes in.

I’d rather be a dummy with a heart than a genius without a backbone!