Bargain Price Quotes

Where did she come from, and where can I find one?" "Picked this one up at a gas station in West Virginia, bargain price. Last one on the shelf, sorry.

Chasing a man is not winning. The only thing you win is the loss of your dignity. Confidence is knowing your value, instead of expecting a man’s love to provide you with value.

At the Feast of Fortune, she'll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like-- like---" "Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!" Stheno suggested.

This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.

I took it for granted that there must be a few men left in the world who had that kind of strength. I assumed that those men would also be looking for women with principle. I did not want to be among the marked-down goods on the bargain table, cheap because they’d been pawed over. Crowds collect there. It is only the few who will pay full price. "You get what you pay for.

We walked through the streets with our protectors. We wore our dresses. We gave up our education because that was the price of safety. That was the bargain we made with the devil we knew to escape the devil we didn't.

I’ll give you 50% off for half a year, or 100% off for a whole year. At these bargain discount prices, my love won’t last forever.

Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, "All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline. Henry Drummond, a character in Inherit the Wind

Experience is never at bargain price.

Death has a price, and all who bargain with the dead must pay it.

If you don't get what you want, it's a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.

The tiny motion was lost on his wife, who warmed herself in front of the fire with two wounded, lost souls beside her. She gave for no gain of her own, no goal she needed to reach. Love was not a price but something she owned inside and shared freely... The woman who was his wife was a fierce, proud creature who both shattered and humbled him, and he realized in the glimmer of firelight, that he loved her.

When you refuse to pay your dues to love, sometimes the price goes up. There’s an inflation, and you end up losing more than you’d bargained.

People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.

Humility can’t be bought at a bargain price. It’s the long working of grace upon grace within the hurts of our hearts.

But all the stories about the devil making a deal and then cheating missed the point. The real horror was that once the bargain was struck, the devil didn’t cheat. He gave you exactly and explicitly all that had been promised. And the price was your soul.

People ask me, “Have you tried yoga? Kombucha? This special water?” And I don’t have the energy to explain that yes, I’ve tried them. I’ve tried crystals and healing drum circles and prayer and everything. What I want to try is acceptance. I want to see what happens if I can simply accept myself for who I am: battered, broken, hoping for relief, still enduring somehow. I will still take a cure if it’s presented to me, but I am so tired of trying to bargain with the universe for some kind of cure. The price is simply too high to live chasing cures, because in doing so, I’m missing living my life. I know only that in chasing to achieve the person I once was, I will miss the person I have become.

You are not to take it, if you please, as the saying of an ignorant man, when I express my opinion that such a book as ROBINSON CRUSOE never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years—generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco—and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. When my spirits are bad—ROBINSON CRUSOE. When I want advice—ROBINSON CRUSOE. In past times when my wife plagued me; in present times when I have had a drop too much—ROBINSON CRUSOE. I have worn out six stout ROBINSON CRUSOES with hard work in my service. On my lady's last birthday she gave me a seventh. I took a drop too much on the strength of it; and ROBINSON CRUSOE put me right again. Price four shillings and sixpence, bound in blue, with a picture into the bargain.

Maybe slavery has been with us for centuries because of the inclination to maintain economic systems geared more toward commodifying human existence than developing its spiritual, creative, or scientific potentials. Such commodification instantly erases any recognition of humanity as a priceless value unto itself and reduces individuals as well as entire races, or a specific gender, to a bargain-priced 'other.

Ronan raised his brows. “To the tune of fifty keystones?” “What do I care?” Kestrel wanted to end this conversation. “I am wealthy enough.” She touched Ronan’s sleeve. “And how much”—she rubbed the silk between her fingers—“did this cost?” “Ronan, whose deftly embroidered shirt was easily the same price the slave had been, allowed that a point had been made. “He will last longer than this shirt.” Kestrel let go of the cloth. “I’d say I got a bargain.

We’d buy great businesses with excellent management at a fair to bargain price and leave them alone.

Stronger, faster companies can detect and pounce on opportunities, for instance, to take advantage of the downturn by snapping up assets at bargain prices and snatching market share out from under their competitors.

Wait,” I repeated. The darkness vanished, leaving Rhysand in his solid form as he grinned. “Yes?” I raised my chin as high as I could manage. “Just two weeks?” “Just two weeks,” he purred, and knelt before me. “Two teensy, tiny weeks with me every month is all I ask.” “Why? And what are to … to be the terms?” I said, fighting past the dizziness. “Ah,” he said, adjusting the lapel of his obsidian tunic. “If I told you those things, there’d be no fun in it, would there?” I looked at my ruined arm. Lucien might never come, might decide I wasn’t worth risking his life any further, not now that he’d been punished for it. And if Amarantha’s healers cut off my arm … Nesta would have done the same for me, for Elain. And Tamlin had done so much for me, for my family; even if he had lied about the Treaty, about sparing me from its terms, he’d still saved my life that day against the naga, and saved it again by sending me away from the manor. I couldn’t think entirely of the enormity of what I was about to give—or else I might refuse again. I met Rhysand’s gaze. “Five days.” “You’re going to bargain?” Rhysand laughed under his breath. “Ten days.” I held his stare with all my strength. “A week.” Rhysand was silent for a long moment, his eyes traveling across my body and my face before he murmured: “A week it is.” “Then it’s a deal

Alberta's two largest cities collected more in library fines than two higher levels of government levied against polluters in 2006-2007.

They made a deal and they liked the deal, until they had to pay the price.

It's a funny thing about Americans, we love to bitch about paying too much for the things we really need and are really a bargain, like gas and postage stamps, but we willingly shell out outrageous amounts for unnecessary crap like gourmet coffee and soap to make your crotch smell good. Two dollars a gallon to go ten miles is too much, but five to the parking valet to go ten feet is okay.

Oh, what love! Christ would not intrust our redemption to angels, to millions of angels; but he would come himself, and in person suffer; he would not give a low and a base price for us clay. He would buy us with a great ransom, so as he might over-buy us, and none could over-bid him in his market for souls. If there had been millions of more believers, and many heavens, without any new bargain his blood should have bought them all, and all these many heavens should have smelled one rose of life; Christ should have been one and the same tree of life in them all. Oh, we under-bid, and undervalue that Prince of love, who did overvalue us; we will not sell all we have to buy him; he sold all he had, and himself too, to buy us.

For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't deny that you're beautiful. No mirror could tell you otherwise. But there are beautiful women for the buying in any brothel in London. Oh yes, and the ballrooms, too, if one has the proper price. It wasn't your appearance that caught me. It was the way you put me down in the gallery at Sibley Court." Vaughn's lips curved in a reminiscent smile. "And the way you tried to bargain with me after." "Successfully bargained," Mary corrected. "That," replied Lord Vaughn, "is exactly what I mean. Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?" Mary couldn't in honesty say that anyone had. Vaughn's eyes were as hard and bright as silver coins. "Those are the reasons I want you. I want you for your cunning mind and your hard heart, for your indomitable spirit and your scheming soul, for they're more honest by far than any of the so-called virtues." "The truest poetry is the most feigning?" Mary quoted back his own words to him. "And the most feigning is the most true.

You're welcome. I love the bargain book section. I always find some good deals at more than half off the cover price.

Then into the trash, la de da. For the bargain price of a dollar, I receive sixteen ounces of tap water and contribute to the waste crisis.

It is an ill wind that does not blow some good. For example, it is well to be born in a decadent age; for one may obtain a reputation for virtue at a bargain price.

Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4

put it up for sale at an asking price of $25 million. I first looked at Mar-a-Lago while vacationing in Palm Beach in 1982. Almost immediately I put in a bid of $15 million, and it was promptly rejected. Over the next few years, the foundation signed contracts with several other buyers at higher prices than I’d offered, only to have them fall through before closing. Each time that happened, I put in another bid, but always at a lower sum than before. Finally, in late 1985, I put in a cash offer of $5 million, plus another $3 million for the furnishings in the house. Apparently, the foundation was tired of broken deals. They accepted my offer, and we closed one month later. The day the deal was announced, the Palm Beach Daily News ran a huge front-page story with the headline MAR-A-LAGO’S BARGAIN PRICE ROCKS COMMUNITY. Soon, several far more modest estates on property a fraction of Mar-a-Lago’s size sold for prices in excess of $18 million. I’ve been told that the furnishings in Mar-a-Lago alone are worth more than I paid for the house. It just goes to show that it pays to move quickly and decisively when the time is right. Upkeep

MARY: Are our readers going to know what the Athena Club is? CATHERINE: They will if they read the first two books! Which they should, and I hope if they are reading this volume and have not read the previous ones, they will go right out and purchase them. Two shillings each, a bargain at the price!

Reliability investing requires finding companies trading below their inherent worth--stocks with strong fundamentals including earnings, dividends, book value, and cash flow selling at bargain prices give their quality.

At the end of the day, we supported globalization because we wanted to be able to buy cheaper computers, cheaper vehicles, cheaper clothes and cheaper furniture. Wal-Mart parking lots were jammed with North American workers buying bargain-basement-priced goods made in China even if in the process they were shopping themselves right out of their own jobs.

Real love is not the pretty stuff of the jongleurs. It is a feeling inside that you are one with this man, no matter what he is. Were Travers to sell his soul to the Devil, I would still love him and mayhaps I would bargain for a good price myself.

Narcissists will be thrilled to hear that studies continually show that, as a group, they are usually rated more attractive and likeable than everyone else on first appearances. Not only are they shits, but they are attractive shits into the bargain.

I paid a higher price than anyone will ever know, but I lived with the bargain I made just the same. I did more than that. When the dust bunnies and the dreams of what could have been were all I had left, I took the dreams and made them my own. The dust bunnies? Well, they might have gotten me in the end, but I lived with them for a lot of years before they did. Now you've got a bunch of your own to deal with, but if you've lost the guts you had on the day when you told me that firing the Jolander girl was a boogery thing to do, go on. Go on and jump. Because without your guts, Dolores Claiborne, you're just another stupid old woman.

There is a belief, current in many countries, which has been elevated to the rank of an official article of faith in the United States, that free competition is itself a homeostatic process: that in a free market the individual selfishness of the bargainers, each seeking to sell as high and buy as low as possible, will result in the end in a stable dynamics of prices, and with redound to the greatest common good. This is associated with the very comforting view that the individual entrepreneur, in seeking to forward his own interest, is in some manner a public benefactor and has thus earned the great rewards with which society has showered him. Unfortunately, the evidence, such as it is, is against this simpleminded theory. The market is a game, which has indeed received a simulacrum in the family game of Monopoly. It is thus strictly subject to the general theory of games, developed by von Neumann and Morgenstern. This theory is based on the assumption that each player, at every stage, in view of the information then available to him, plays in accordance with a completely intelligent policy, which will in the end assure him of the greatest possible expectation of reward.

I am memorializing the just-barely-adults (mostly boys, mostly less privileged) who have died fighting wars that for the most part were not their own... the families who have had to go on without them... those who gave their life to this country by standing for our freedoms in non-wars--struggles-- struggles about race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, contraception and abortion rights, the environment, eradication of global disease and world hunger, the right to collectively bargain and unionize... who paid the ultimate price through their civil disobedience, protest, collective action, or just by living in a way that was so challenging to others that they were executed for it... the ones from whom we stole this land and those whose lives we stole to build it... those who were just trying to go to school, pray, shop, watch a movie, be, when they were gunned down in a country that loves its guns far more than its people... those who were killed for driving while black, walking while black, talking while black, sleeping while black. On Decoration Day we are decorated with their blood and their memory

they were demons about cost. They enjoyed finding a bargain and were proud of getting good quality at a low price. They took great satisfaction in not paying extra for fancy packaging or marketing gimmicks. They were committed to keeping the weekly shopping bill as low as possible.

Know what the problem with your generation is? You refuse to understand that love has a price. That’s what makes it significant, pungent, rich. It costs you anger, jealousy, heartbreak, time, money, health…” “Food for thought—is she worth it? You have to pay your dues, you see.” “When you refuse to pay your dues to love, sometimes the price goes up. There’s an inflation, and you end up losing more than you’d bargained.

Sometimes, we must learn to open our hearts and grow to love someone we think we might not be able to. It’s the lot of women, especially noble women. We are little more than property, bargaining chips, or chains that hold alliances together. That is the price we pay for our comfort, riches, and titles.

if you just stick to buying good companies (ones that have a high return on capital) and to buying those companies only at bargain prices (at prices that give you a high earnings yield), you can end up systematically buying many of the good companies that crazy Mr. Market has decided to literally give away.

The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell. It is far from certain that the typical investor should regularly hold off buying until low market levels appear, because this may involve a long wait, very likely the loss of income, and the possible missing of investment opportunities. On the whole it may be better for the investor to do his stock buying whenever he has money to put in stocks, except when the general market level is much higher than can be justified by well-established standards of value. If he wants to be shrewd he can look for the ever-present bargain opportunities in individual securities. Aside from forecasting the movements of the general market, much effort and ability are directed on Wall Street toward selecting stocks or industrial groups that in matter of price will “do better” than the rest over a fairly short period in the future. Logical as this endeavor may seem, we do not believe it is suited to the needs or temperament of the true investor—particularly since he would be competing with a large number of stock-market traders and first-class financial analysts who are trying to do the same thing. As in all other activities that emphasize price movements first and underlying values second, the work of many intelligent minds constantly engaged in this field tends to be self-neutralizing and self-defeating over the years. The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down. He would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.” An

The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune. The fortunate speculator who had funds to answer the first margin call presently got another and equally urgent one, and if he met that there would still be another. In the end all the money he had was extracted from him and lost. The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited for volume of trading to return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next 24 months. The Coolidge bull market was a remarkable phenomenon. The ruthlessness of its liquidation was, in its own way, equally remarkable.

no amount of money could buy security, and if it could, it would be a bad bargain at any price, since security was a form of paralysis, just as satisfaction was a form of death;

Don't just bargain for success. Pay the price!

All-access consumerism is likely finished... This is a permanent change for Americans, who will face a declining standard of living over the next 20 years.

Life has no bargains. Everything that you get that's worthy of having has a price upon it.

She accepted the bargain without understanding the price. A terrible mistake, for an accountant.

If you want something and don' get it, there are only two reasons. You either really didn't want it, or you tried to bargain over the price

The priest Zadok looked stricken. He had hoped to bargain information for a higher price. Now I, as a prophet, had given it to David for free.

One thing my father taught me,” he told her quietly, “is that everyone has their price. From the highest to the lowest, we will all bargain. It’s just a matter of finding what yours is.

Feminism is not immune to this. For should we fail to keep up our end of the unspoken bargain, should we tug at the invisible leash that whiteness and white feminism have secured around our necks, then that solidarity is revoked and White Womanhood ensures it is always us, and never them, who pay the price for speaking out. Turns out, they too saw us as threats all along.

He did not mention that his skill was as a carver. He had never sold pounamu. He would not sell pounamu. For one could not put a price upon a treasure, just as one could not purchase mana, and one could not make a bargain with a god. Gold was not a treasure—this Tauwhare knew. Gold was like all capital in that it had no memory: its drift was always onward, away from the past.

This false appearance distinguishes wages labour from other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing.

I will do anything to save Laurana, he swore beneath his breath, clenching his fist. Anything! If it means sacrificing myself or— He stopped. Would he really give up Berem? Would he really trade the Everman to the Dark Queen, perhaps plunge the world into a darkness so vast it would never see light again? No, Tanis told himself firmly. Laurana would die before she would be part of such a bargain.

As high as the fire in me burns, Evie, I will stoke it in you." "Sebastian..."She strained a little, and he pinned her more firmly against the table. "It's my right to kiss you," he reminded her. "whenever I want, for as long as I want. That was our bargain." She threw an agitated glance around the room, and he read her thoughts easily. "I don't give a damn if anyone sees us. You're my wife." A smile chased across his lips. "My better half, to be certain." Leaning over her, he nuzzled into the fine tendrils that strayed over her forehead. His breath was hot and soft on her skin. "My prize... my pleasure and pain... my endless desire. I've never known anyone like you, Evie." His lips touched gently at the bridge of her nose and slid down to the tip. "You dare to make demands of me that no other woman would think of asking. And for now, I'll pay your price, love. But later you'll pay mine... over and over..." He caught her trembling lips with his, his hands cupping the back of her head.

Of a real, true contract, on whatsoever subject, there is no vestige in Rousseau's book. To give an exact idea of his theory, I cannot do better than compare it with a commercial agreement, in which the names of the parties, the nature and value of the goods, products and services involved, the conditions of quality, delivery, price, reimbursement, everything in fact which constitutes the material of contracts, is omitted, and nothing is mentioned but penalties and jurisdictions. "Indeed, Citizen of Geneva, you talk well. But before holding forth about the sovereign and the prince, about the policeman and the judge, tell me first what is my share of the bargain? What? You expect me to sign an agreement in virtue of which I may be prosecuted for a thousand transgressions, by municipal, rural, river and forest police, handed over to tribunals, judged, condemned for damage, cheating, swindling, theft, bankruptcy, robbery, disobedience to the laws of the State, offence to public morals, vagabondage,--and in this agreement I find not a word of either my rights or my obligations, I find only penalties! "But every penalty no doubt presupposes a duty, and every duty corresponds to a right. Where then in your agreement are my rights and duties? What have I promised to my fellow citizens? What have they promised to me? Show it to me, for without that, your penalties are but excesses of power, your law-controlled State a flagrant usurpation, your police, your judgment and your executions so many abuses. You who have so well denied property, who have impeached so eloquently the inequality of conditions among men, what dignity, what heritage, have you for me in your republic, that you should claim the right to judge me, to imprison me, to take my life and honor? Perfidious declaimer, have you inveighed so loudly against exploiters and tyrants, only to deliver me to them without defence?

Su initiated Phooli and Chilki into computer games, while they taught her how to play hoola-hoop with a discarded cycle tyre, how to catch raindrops in her mouth and the secret art of taming a goat. Su listened to them with absolute, unwavering concentration. Her eyes wide open, almost unblinking. The bartering also included swapping Toblerones with brightly coloured candy bought from a Kacchi Basti vendor at a bargain price.

Somehow, when ownership interests are divided into shares that bounce around with Mr. Market’s moods, individuals and professionals start to think about and measure risk in strange ways. When short-term thinking and overly complicated statistics get involved, owning many companies that you know very little about starts to sound safer than owning stakes in five to eight companies that have good businesses, predictable futures, and bargain prices.

She’d paid full price, but life was a competition and she knew non-working wives of wealthy men loved to talk about how they’d saved by bargain-shopping for designer clothes. It was their contribution to the household finances.

Has Stalin understood correctly?’ asked Stalin. ‘You were on Franco’s side, you have fought against Comrade Mao, you have… saved the life of the pig in London and you have put the deadliest weapon in the world in the hands of the arch-capitalists in the USA. ‘I might have known,’ Stalin mumbled and in his anger forgot to talk in the third person. ‘And now you are here to sell yourself to Soviet socialism? One hundred thousand dollars, is that the price for your soul? Or has the price gone up during the course of the evening?’ Allan no longer wanted to help. Of course, Yury was still a good man and he was the one who actually needed the help. But you couldn’t get away from the fact that the results of Yury’s work would end up in the hands of Comrade Stalin, and he was not exactly Allan’s idea of a real comrade. On the contrary, he seemed unstable, and it would probably be best for all concerned if he didn’t get the bomb to play with. ‘Not exactly,’ said Allan. ‘This was never about money…’ He didn’t get any further before Stalin exploded again. ‘Who do you think you are, you damned rat? Do you think that you, a representative of fascism, of horrid American capitalism, of everything on this Earth that Stalin despises, that you, you, can come to the Kremlin, to the Kremlin, and bargain with Stalin, and bargain with Stalin?’ ‘Why do you say everything twice?’ Allan wondered, while Stalin went on: ‘The Soviet Union is prepared to go to war again, I’ll tell you that! There will be war, there will inevitably be war until American imperialism is wiped out.’ ‘Is that what you think?’ asked Allan. ‘To do battle and to win, we don’t need your damned atom bomb! What we need is socialist souls and hearts! He who knows he can never be defeated, can never be defeated!’ ‘Unless of course somebody drops an atom bomb on him,’ said Allan. ‘I shall destroy capitalism! Do you hear! I shall destroy every single capitalist! And I shall start with you, you dog, if you don’t help us with the bomb!’ Allan noted that he had managed to be both a rat and a dog in the course of a minute or so. And that Stalin was being rather inconsistent, because now he wanted to use Allan’s services after all. But Allan wasn’t going to sit there and listen to this abuse any longer. He had come to Moscow to help them out, not to be shouted at. Stalin would have to manage on his own. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Allan. ‘What,’ said Stalin angrily. ‘Why don’t you shave off that moustache?’ With that the dinner was over, because the interpreter fainted

Communist Romania almost everything was owned by the state. Democratic Romania quickly privatised its assets, selling them at bargain prices to the ex-communists, who alone grasped what was happening and collaborated to feather each other’s nests. Government companies that controlled national infrastructure and natural resources were sold to former communist officials at end-of-season prices while the party’s foot soldiers bought houses and apartments for pennies. Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania, while his colleagues became ministers, parliament members, bank directors and multimillionaires. The new Romanian elite that controls the country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and their families. The masses who risked their necks in Timişoara and Bucharest settled for scraps, because they did not know how to cooperate and how to create an efficient organisation to look after their own interests.21

If I were starving, I would have taken her money. But since I am not, why should I make a deal that isn’t any fun? I enjoy the clash of wits involved in bargaining, when two persons try to outdo each other with ruses and with eloquence. She didn’t even flinch. She didn’t know any better. She didn’t pay me the respect of assuming that I was going to try to take advantage of her. If I had sold those pieces to that woman at that ridiculous price, I would have felt cheated.

Every gift comes with a price.” I frowned, and he grinned. “A kiss.” “Absolutely not!” But my blood raced, and I had to clench my hands in the grass to keep from touching him. “Don’t you think it puts me at a disadvantage to not be able to see all this?” “I’m one of the High Fae—we don’t give anything without gaining something from it.” To my own surprise, I said, “Fine.” He blinked, probably expecting me to have fought a little harder. I hid my smile and sat up so that I faced him, our knees touching as we knelt in the grass. “What about your part of the bargain?” “What?” He leaned closer, his smile turning wicked. “What about my kiss?” I grabbed his fingers. “Here,” I said, and slammed my mouth against the back of his hand. “There’s your kiss.

Seeing them again in mufti, a year later, confirmed the verdict of defeat and showed these men now to be guilty of numerous sartorial misdemeanors. They squeaked around the store in bargain-basement penny loafers and creased budget khakis, or in ill-fitting suits advertised by wholesalers for the price of buy-one-get-one-free. Ties, handkerchiefs, and socks were thrown in, though what was really needed was cologne, even of the gigolo kind, anything to mask the olfactory evidence of their having been gleefully skunked by history.

Your website shows only one booking in that time period.” “Really? I need to update that. So, that’s the price.” “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. MacCormick.” “Captain.” “Captain.” He glanced around. “Let’s get a table.” “Why?” “There are some other details you need to know.

Racath’s eyebrows drew together. “Terms?” “Yes, terms,” Briz’nar replied, a forked tongue dancing behind its sharkish teeth. “Conditions for the riots to cease. The rabble must have some sort of price if they are sending one of your kind to do the bargaining. What is it, then? Coin? Food? Perhaps a much needed bath?” Some of the Arkûl chuckled. Racath rolled his eyes. “I’m not here to negotiate with anyone!” he answered incredulously. “The only terms I have are that you die, this Bridge is destroyed, and the Dominion never even thinks about looking at the Burrows ever again.

As a value investor, your ideal situation is to find a company increasing its intrinsic value. Ideally, the company would be one with a declining stock price, thus creating an even better bargain as time unfolds. No one has employed these principles more effectively than Buffett and Munger.

The United States must play a counterrevolutionary containment role in order to protect our national interests?' This is true only if we equate "our national interests" with the investment interests of high finance. U.S. interventionism has been very effective in building neo-imperialism, keeping the land, labor, natural resources, and markets of Third World countries available at bargain prices to multinational corporations. But these corporate interests do not represent the interests of the U.S. people. The public pays for the huge military budgets and endures the export of its jobs to foreign labor markets, the inflow of thousands of impoverished immigrants who compete for scarce employment and housing, and various other costs of empire.

For instance, in a popularized 2010 study, researchers from Harvard, Yale, and MIT had eighty-six volunteer subjects participate in a mock financial negotiation: bargaining down the price of a car with the sticker price of $16,500. One by one, each subject would sit in a chair facing an experimenter who was playing the part of the car salesman. But there was a catch: half the participants were seated in hard, wooden chairs, and the other half were treated to plush, cushioned ones. The result? Those given the hard chairs were the harder bargainers. They were more forceful in their negotiations and bargained the salesman down to a price that was on average $347 lower than that of the comfy chair group. Apparently, the added comfort of the cushioned chairs led the other group to agree to a higher price.

By no means is my friend original in this last use of the “expensive = good” rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men’s tailor shop in Rosten’s neighborhood while he was growing up in the 1930s. Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop’s three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit he liked and had asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, “Harry, how much for this suit?” Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the suit’s true price—Harry would call back, “For that beautiful all-wool suit, forty-two dollars.” Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, “Forty-two dollars.” At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, “He says twenty-two dollars.” Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with his “expensive = good” bargain before Poor Sid discovered the “mistake.

Demi's linguistic quirk is essentially and definingly female. It just is. Drawing in breath to denounce this proposition, women will often come out with something like, "Up you!" or "Ballshit!" For I am referring to Demi's use of the conflated or mangled catchphrase--Demi's speech-bargains: she wanted two for the price of one. The result was expressive, and you usually knew what she meant, given the context.

WHAT WE WANT of course is the same old story. The trees pushing out their leaves, fluttering them, shucking them off, the water thrashing around in the oceans, the tweedling of the birds, the unfurling of the slugs, the worms vacuuming dirt. The zinnias and their pungent slow explosion. We want it all to go on and go on again, the same thing each year, monotonous and amazing, just as if we were still behaving ourselves, living in tents, raising sheep, slitting their throats for God’s benefit, refusing to invent plastics. For unbelief and bathrooms you pay a price. If apples were the Devil’s only bait we’d still be able to call our souls our own, but then the prick threw indoor plumbing into the bargain and we were doomed. Now we use up a lot of paper telling one another how to conserve paper, and the sea fills up with killer coffee cups, and we worry about the sun and its ambivalent rays.

Power as I possess is not, as many believe, given in exchange for a soul. To hear the ignorant speak, one would think it is merely a simple bargain, an exchange of vows, perhaps, and the power one seeks simply flows from the fingertips for the asking. But no, it is not so easy as that! The truly great gifts are not gifts at all, but treasures obtained after long and difficult searching, prizes won only through hard-fought victories over relentless, near-invincible adversaries. [...] The ignorant speak of hidden arts, but they are not hidden. Indeed, there is nothing secret about them at all; they are freely open and available to any who would pursue them. Ah, but the price! The price is nothing less than the devotion of an entire life. So perhaps the simple-minded are right, after all, in thinking of the acquisition of power as a pact in which the soul is bartered. There is no other way. - Morgian

Yep,” Annabeth said weakly. “He really did it.” The giant belched. He wiped his steaming greasy hands on his robe and grinned at us. “So, if you’re not breakfast, you must be customers. What can I interest you in?” He sounded relaxed and friendly, like he was happy to talk with us. Between that and the red velour housecoat, he almost didn’t seem dangerous. Except of course that he was ten feet tall, blew fire, and ate cows in three bites. I stepped forward. Call me old-fashioned, but I wanted to keep his focus on me and not Annabeth. I think it’s polite for a guy to protect his girlfriend from instant incineration. “Um, yeah,” I said. “We might be customers. What do you sell?” Cacus laughed. “What do I sell? Everything, demigod! At bargain basement prices, and you can’t find a basement lower than this!” He gestured around the cavern. “I’ve got designer handbags, Italian suits, um…some construction equipment, apparently, and if you’re in the market for a Rolex…” He opened his robe. Pinned to the inside was a glittering array of gold and silver watches. Annabeth snapped her fingers. “Fakes! I knew I’d seen that stuff before. You got all this from street merchants, didn’t you? They’re designer knockoffs.” The giant looked offended. “Not just any knockoffs, young lady. I steal only the best! I’m a son of Hephaestus. I know quality fakes when I see them.

But prove to me that one who holds inferior judgments can prevail over a man who is superior in his judgments. You never will prove it, nor anything like it; for the law of nature and of god is this: Let the better always be superior to the worse… Thus I, too, lost my lamp to a thief because the thief was better at keeping awake than I. But he bought a lamp at the price of being a thief, a rogue, and a brute. That seemed to him a good bargain. Epictetus

There are no tarts in there, Charles. They were much too expensive, and Mr. Jenkins would not be reasonable. I told him I would buy a whole dozen, but he would not reduce the price by so much as a penny, so I refused to buy even one-on principle. Do you know,” she confided with a chuckle, “last week when he saw me coming into his shop he hid behind the flour sacks?” “He’s a coward!” Charles said, grinning, for it was a known fact among tradesmen and shopkeepers that Elizabeth Cameron pinched a shilling until it squeaked, and that when it came to bargaining for price-which it always did with her-they rarely came out the winner. Her intellect, not her beauty, was her greatest asset in these transactions, for she could not only add and multiply in her head, but she was so sweetly reasonable, and so inventive when she listed her reasons for expecting a better price, that she either wore out her opponents or confused them into agreeing with her

Thus, constriction and impoverishment of personality make it possible to avoid subjective conflict and concomitant anxiety. But the person's freedom, originality, capacity for independent love, as well as his other possibilities for expansion and development as an autonomous personality are renounced in the same process. By accepting impoverishment of personality, one can buy temporary freedom from anxiety, to be sure. But the price for this 'bargain' is the loss of those unique and most precious characteristics of the human self.

James reminded Lulu of things best forgotten, of the cost of survival and the price of high living. Lulu had paid the price by trading in her tongue. Lo had cut out her heart. Audrey, who had been born into this world, had no ability to see beyond its borders. Emma alone seemed untouched by any kind of deal with the devil. But Lulu didn't believe that to be true. Nobody could go without paying the price. The prize of being accepted into the fold of the one-day rich and powerful was too tempting, too all-encompassing. Emma's bargain must have been the worst of all to stay so neat and invisible.

Everywhere you turn you see signs of its place at the top of the Italian food chain: fresh-pasta shops vending every possible iteration of egg and flour; buzzing bars pairing Spritz and Lambrusco with generous spreads of free meat, cheese, and vegetable snacks; and, above all, osteria after osteria, cozy wine-soaked eating establishments from whose ancient kitchens emanates a moist fragrance of simmered pork and local grapes. Osteria al 15 is a beloved dinner den just inside the centro storico known for its crispy flatbreads puffed up in hot lard, and its classic beef-heavy ragù tossed with corkscrew pasta or spooned on top of béchamel and layered between sheets of lasagne. It's far from refined, but the bargain prices and the boisterous staff make it all go down easily. Trattoria Gianni, down a hairpin alleyway a few blocks from Piazza Maggiore, was once my lunch haunt in Bologna, by virtue of its position next to my Italian-language school. I dream regularly of its bollito misto, a heroic mix of braised brisket, capon, and tongue served with salsa verde, but the dish I'm looking for this time, a thick beef-and-pork joint with plenty of jammy tomato, is a solid middle-of-the-road ragù.

I’ve lived near here at several different stretches across time, but once, when I lived here a few hundred years ago, I had a camel I named Oded. He was just about the laziest creature ever to talk the Earth. He would pass out when I was in the middle of feeding him, and making it to the closest Bedouin camp for tea was a minor miracle. But when I first met you in that lifetime-“ “Oded broke into a run,” Luce said without thinking. “I screamed because I thought he was going to trample me. You said you’d never seen him move like that.” “Yeah, well,” Daniel said. “He liked you.” They paused and looked at each other, and Daniel started laughing when Luce’s jaw dropped. “I did it!” she cried out. “It was just there, in my memory, a part of me. Like it happened yesterday. I came to me without thinking!” It was miraculous. All those memories from all those lives that had been lost each time Lucinda died in Daniel’s arms were somehow finding their way back to her, the way Luce always found her way back to Daniel. No. She was finding her way to them. It was like a gate had been left open after Luce’s quest through the Announcers. Those memories stayed with her, from Moscow to Helston to Egypt. Now more were becoming available. She had a sudden, keen sense of who she was-and she wasn’t just Luce Price from Thunderbolt, Georgia. She was every girl she’d ever been, an amalgamation of experience, mistakes, achievements, and, above all, love. She was Lucinda. “Quick,” she said to Daniel. “Can we do another?” “Okay, how about another desert life? You were living in the Sahara when I found you. Tall and gangly and the fastest runner in your village. I was passing through one day, on my way to visit Roland, and I stopped for the night at the closest spring. All the other men were very distrustful of me, but-“ “But my father paid you three zebra skins for the knife you had in your satchel!” Daniel grinned. “He drove a hard bargain.” “This is amazing,” she said, nearly breathless. How much more did she have in her that she didn’t know about? How far back could she go? She pivoted to face him, drawing her knees against her chest and leaning in so that their foreheads were almost touching. “Can you remember everything about our pasts?” Daniel’s eyes softened at the corners. “Sometimes the order of things gets mixed up in my head. I’ll admit, I don’t remember long stretches of time I’ve spent alone, but I can remember every first glimpse of your face, every kiss of your lips, every memory I’ve ever made with you.

What is the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?” Dragging his gaze from the beauty of the gardens, Ian looked down at the beauty beside him. “Any place,” he said huskily, “were you are.” He saw the becoming flush of embarrassed pleasure that pinkened her cheeks, but when she spoke her voice was rueful. “You don’t have to say such things to me, you know-I’ll keep our bargain.” “I know you will,” he said, trying not to overwhelm her with avowals of love she wouldn’t yet believe. With a grin he added, “Besides, as it turned out after our bargaining session, I’m the one who’s governed by all the conditions, not you.” Her sideways glance was filled with laughter. “You were much too lenient at times, you know. Toward the end I was asking for concessions just to see how far you’d go.” Ian, who had been multiplying his fortune for the last four years by buying shipping and import-export companies, as well as sundry others, was regarded as an extremely tough negotiator. He heard her announcement with a smile of genuine surprise. “You gave me the impression that every single concession was of paramount importance to you, and that if I didn’t agree, you might call the whole thing off.” She nodded with satisfaction. “I rather thought that was how I ought to do it. Why are you laughing?” “Because,” he admitted, chuckling, “obviously I was not in my best form yesterday. In addition to completely misreading your feelings, I managed to buy a house on Promenade Street for which I will undoubtedly pay five times its worth.” “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, and, as if she was embarrassed and needed a way to avoid meeting his gaze, she reached up and pulled a leaf off an overhanging branch. In a voice of careful nonchalance, she explained, “In matters of bargaining, I believe in being reasonable, but my uncle would assuredly have tried to cheat you. He’s perfectly dreadful about money.” Ian nodded, remembering the fortune Julius Cameron had gouged out of him in order to sign the betrothal agreement. “And so,” she admitted, uneasily studying the azure-blue sky with feigned absorption, “I sent him a note after you left itemizing all the repairs that were needed at the house. I told him it was in poor condition and absolutely in need of complete redecoration.” “And?” “And I told him you would consider paying a fair price for the house, but not one shilling more, because it needed all that.” “And?” Ian prodded. “He has agreed to sell it for that figure.” Ian’s mirth exploded in shouts of laughter. Snatching her into his arms, he waited until he could finally catch his breath, then he tipped her face up to his. “Elizabeth,” he said tenderly, “if you change your mind about marrying me, promise me you’ll never represent the opposition at the bargaining table. I swear to God, I’d be lost.” The temptation to kiss her was almost overwhelming, but the Townsende coach with its ducal crest was in the drive, and he had no idea where their chaperones might be. Elizabeth noticed the coach, too, and started toward the house. "About the gowns," she said, stopping suddenly and looking up at him with an intensely earnest expression on her beautiful face. "I meant to thank you for your generosity as soon as you arrived, but I was so happy to-that is-" She realized she'd been about to blurt out that she was happy to see him, and she was so flustered by having admitted aloud what she hadn't admitted to herself that she completely lost her thought. "Go on," Ian invited in a husky voice. "You were so happy to see me that you-" "I forgot," she admitted lamely.

It would no doubt be shocking to reckon the macroeconomic price of all our time spent with the attention merchants, if only to alert us to the drag on our own productivity quotient, the economist’s measure of all our efforts. At bottom, whether we acknowledge it or not, the attention merchants have come to play an important part in setting the course of our lives and consequently the future of the human race, insofar as that future will be nothing more than the running total of our individual mental states. Does that sound like exaggeration? It was William James, the fount of American Pragmatism, who, having lived and died before the flowering of the attention industry, held that our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. At stake, then, is something akin to how one’s life is lived. That, if nothing else, ought to compel a greater scrutiny of the countless bargains to which we routinely submit, and, even more important, lead us to consider the necessity, at times, of not dealing at all. If we desire a future that avoids the enslavement of the propaganda state as well as the narcosis of the consumer and celebrity culture, we must first acknowledge the preciousness of our attention and resolve not to part with it as cheaply or unthinkingly as we so often have. And then we must act, individually and collectively, to make our attention our own again, and so reclaim ownership of the very experience of living.

Perhaps a necklace of tears to weep so that she won't have to? A pin of teeth to bite annoying husbands? No.' He continues to walk through the small space. He lifts a ring. 'To bring on a child?' And then, seeing my face, lifts a pair of earrings, one in the shape of a crescent moon and the other in the shape of a star. 'Ah, yes. Here. This is what you want.' 'What do they do?' I ask. He laughs. 'They are beautiful- isn't that enough?' I give him a skeptical look. 'It would be enough, considering how exquisite they are, but I bet it isn't all.' He enjoys that. 'Clever girl. They are not only beautiful, but they add to beauty. They make someone more lovely than they were, painfully lovely. Her husband will not leave her side for quite some time.' The look on his face is a challenge. He believes I am too vain to give such a gift to my sister. How well he knows the selfish human heart. Taryn will be a beautiful bride. How much more do I, her twin, want to put myself in her shadow? How lovely can I bear her to be? And yet, what better gift for a human girl wedded to the beauty of the Folk? 'What would you take for them?' I ask. 'Oh, any number of little things. A year of your life. The luster of your hair. The sound of your laugh.' 'My laugh is not such a sweet sound as all that.' 'Not sweet, but I bet it's rare,' he says, and I wonder at his knowing that. 'What about my tears?' I ask. 'You could make another necklace.' He looks at me, as though evaluating how often I weep. 'I will take a single tear,' he says finally. 'And you will take an offer to the High King for me.

One can hardly fault China for seizing on a great bargain, but for Zambia, the auctioning off of its most lucrative economic resources at fire-sale prices constituted another big stroke of bad national luck. Copper prices were still depressed and the government’s state of near bankruptcy at the time meant that Zambia had little negotiating power. Edith Nawakwi, who was the Zambian finance minister at the time of the sale, said that the country was pressured by its more traditional partners to accept this pittance. “We were told by advisers, who included the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, that … for the next twenty years, Zambian copper would not make a profit. [Conversely, if we privatized] we would be able to access debt relief, and this was a huge carrot in front of us—like waving medicine in front of a dying woman. We had no option [but to go ahead].” The

One day a boy asked his father, “What is the value of this life?” Instead of answering, the father told his son, “Take this rock and go offer it at a market, however do not accept any offer and bring the rock back to me. If anybody asks the price, raise two fingers and don’t say anything.”The boy then went to the market and a man asked,”How much is this rock? I want to put it in my garden.” The boy didn’t say anything and raised two fingers, so the man said… “$2? I’ll take it.” And the boy went home and told his father, “A man at the market wants to buy this rock for $2.” The father then said, “Son I want you to take this rock to the museum, and if you are asked the price, raise two fingers and don’t say a word.” The boy then went to the museum, and quickly a man wanted to buy the rock, The boy didn’t say anything and raised two fingers and the man said… “$200? I’ll take it.” The boy was shocked and went running home with the rock in hand, “Father a man wants to buy this rock for $200.” His father then said, “There is one last place I’d like you to offer this rock, take it to the precious stone store and show it only to the owner and don’t say a word, if he asks the price raise two fingers.” The son then went to the precious stone store and showed the rock to the owner. “Where did you find this?” The owner asked, “This is a most precious unpolished gem, one of the most valuable in the whole world, I must have it. What price would you take for it?” The boy didn’t say anything and raised two fingers to which the man replied “Two million dollars? That is a bargain, I’ll take it!” The boy not knowing what to say went breathlessly running home to his father anxiously clutching this now priceless gem, terrified that he might lose it, “Father there is a man who wants to buy this rock for two million dollars!!!” The father then said, “Son you have been carrying in your hands, one of the most precious objects of our people, it is truly priceless!” The father then said, “Son do you now know the value of your life?” To which the son replied… 'The value of my life, is much like this rock, it depends on who it is offered to. Some place a value of $2, others $200, and still others two million dollars. I must surround myself with other precious Souls who recognize the greatest value of my life, because it is my most precious possession, and I must not allow it to be under valued, it’s true value is priceless.' " In reply the father said, " Son you have actually held in your possession the TWO most precious things that our people have, one is the stone and the other is YOU, that is why I asked you to hold up TWO fingers" What is the value of this life??? Priceless!

When we subtract two numbers, say, 9 − 6, the time that we take is directly proportional to the size of the subtracted number34—so it takes longer to perform 9 − 6 than, say, 9 − 4 or 9 − 2. Everything happens as if we have to mentally move along the number line, starting from the first number and taking as many steps as the second number: the further we have to go, the longer we take. We do not crunch symbols like a digital computer; instead, we use a slow and serial spatial metaphor, motion along the number line. Likewise, when we think of a price, we cannot help but attribute to it a fuzzier value when the number gets larger—a remnant of our primate-based number sense, whose precision decreases with number size.35 This is why, against all rationality, when we negotiate, we are ready to give up a few thousand dollars on the price of an apartment and, the same day, bargain a few quarters on the price of bread: the level of imprecision that we tolerate is proportional to a number’s value, for us just as for macaques.

Believe me," Dr. Tamalet summed up, "if you wanted that operation in France, you could get it" Which is, of course, the boon and the bane of France's health care system. It offers a maximum of free choice among skillful doctors and well-equipped hospitals, with little or not waiting, at bargain-basement prices [in out-of-pocket terms to the consumer]. It's a system that enables the French to live longer and healthier lives, with zero risk of financial loss due to illness. But somebody has to pay for all that high-quality, ready-when-you-need-it care--and the patients, so far, have not been willing to do so. As a result, the major health insurance funds are all operating at a deficit, and the costs of the health care system are increasing significantly faster than the economy as a whole. That's why the doctors keep striking and the sickness funds keep negotiating and the government keeps going back to the drawing board, with a new 'major health care reform' every few years. So far, the saving grace for France's system has been the high level of efficiency, as exemplified by the 'carte vitale,' that keeps administrative costs low--much lower than in the United States.

How much are you asking for it?" "It is a durable and dependable storage device. Many of my customers appreciate items that are incognito. With the size and craftsmanship involved, the price should be eighty platinum, but I am only asking for sixty," Vuitton said. Hugo winced. He didn’t have that much. He said, "That might be reasonable for a ring with ten cubic feet of easily accessible space, but this is eight separate storage spaces. That really limits its usefulness. I was thinking twenty-five would be much more reasonable." "I am afraid reason has left you then. I couldn’t part with it for anything less than fifty," the impundulu said haughtily as sparks of lightning danced across his hair. "Ah, I understand. It must have some sentimental value to you. I couldn’t pay more than thirty for it, since I am not a sentimental man," Hugo said. "Storage items never lose value. You can buy this today and your grandson will thank you for it a hundred years from now. Why not pay the forty-five platinum now and invest in your future?" he replied. "My grandson will need to eat. Let me keep five plat for him and I will give you the forty," Hugo said with a smile. "You drive a hard bargain, honored customer. Forty will suffice

It was the secret no one told you, the thing you had to learn for yourself: viz. that in the antiques trade there was really no such thing as a “correct” price. Objective value—list value—was meaningless. If a customer came in clueless with money in hand (as most of them did) it didn’t matter what the books said, what the experts said, what similar items at Christie’s had recently gone for. An object—any object—was worth whatever you could get somebody to pay for it. In consequence, I’d started going through the store, removing some tags (so the customer would have to come to me for the price) and changing others—not all, but some. The trick, as I discovered through trial and error, was to keep at least a quarter of the prices low and jack up the rest, sometimes by as much as four and five hundred percent. Years of abnormally low prices had built up a base of devoted customers; leaving a quarter of the prices low kept them devoted, and ensured that people hunting for a bargain could still find one, if they looked. Leaving a quarter of the prices low also meant that, by some perverse alchemy, the marked-up prices seemed legitimate in comparison: for whatever reason, some people were more apt to put out fifteen hundred bucks for a Meissen teapot if it was placed next to a plainer but comparable piece selling (correctly, but cheaply) for a few hundred.

I’m going to sleep now,” she said in a strangled voice. “Alone,” she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him. During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn’t want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written all over her pale face. “Do you know what a man thinks,” he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, “when his wife stays away at night and doesn’t want him in her bed when she does return?” Elizabeth shook her head. “He thinks,” Ian said dispassionately, “that perhaps someone else has been taking his place in it.” Fury sent bright flags of color to her pale cheeks. “You’re blushing, my dear,” Ian said in an awful voice. “I am furious!” she countered, momentarily forgetting that she was confronting a madman. His stunned look was replaced almost instantly by an expression of relief and then bafflement. “I apologize, Elizabeth.” “Would you p-lease get out of here!” Elizabeth burst out in a final explosion of strength. “Just go away and let me rest. I told you I was tired. And I don’t see what right you have to be so upset! We had a bargain before we married-I was to be allowed to live my life without interference, and quizzing me like this is interference!” Her voice broke, and after another narrowed look he strode out of the room. Numb with relief and pain, Elizabeth crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up under her chin, but not even their luxurious warmth could still the alternating chills and fever that quaked through her. Several minutes later a shadow crossed her bed, and she almost screamed with terror before she realized it was Ian, who had entered silently though the connecting door of their suite. Since she’d gasped aloud when she saw him, it was useless to pretend she was sleeping. In silent dread she watched him walking toward her bed. Wordlessly he sat down beside her, and she realized there was a glass in his hand. He put it on the bedside table, then he reached behind her to prop up her pillows, leaving Elizabeth no choice but to sit up and lean back against them. “Drink this,” he instructed in a calm tone. “What is it?” she asked suspiciously. “It’s brandy. It will help you sleep.” He watched while she sipped it, and when he spoke again there was a tender smile in his voice. “Since we’ve ruled out another man as the explanation for all this, I can only assume something has gone wrong at Havenhurst. Is that it?” Elizabeth seized on that excuse as if it were manna from heaven. “Yes,” she whispered, nodding vigorously. Leaning down, he pressed a kiss on her forehead and said teasingly, “Let me guess-you discovered the mill overcharged you?” Elizabeth thought she would die of the sweet torment when he continued tenderly teasing her about being thrifty. “Not the mill? Then it was the baker, and he refused to give you a better price for buying two loaves instead of one.” Tears swelled behind her eyes, treacherously close to the surface, and Ian saw them. “That bad?” he joked.

The Addams dwelling at 25 West Fifty-fourth Street was directly behind the Museum of Modern Art, at the top of the building. It was reached by an ancient elevator, which rumbled up to the twelfth floor. From there, one climbed through a red-painted stairwell where a real mounted crossbow hovered. The Addams door was marked by a "big black number 13," and a knocker in the shape of a vampire. ...Inside, one entered a little kingdom that fulfilled every fantasy one might have entertained about its inhabitant. On a pedestal in the corner of the bookcase stood a rare "Maximilian" suit of armor, which Addams had bought at a good price ("a bargain at $700")... It was joined by a half-suit, a North Italian Morion of "Spanish" form, circa 1570-80, and a collection of warrior helmets, perched on long stalks like decapitated heads... There were enough arms and armaments to defend the Addams fortress against the most persistent invader: wheel-lock guns; an Italian prod; two maces; three swords. Above a sofa bed, a spectacular array of medieval crossbows rose like birds in flight. "Don't worry, they've only fallen down once," Addams once told an overnight guest. ... Everywhere one looked in the apartment, something caught the eye. A rare papier-mache and polychrome anatomical study figure, nineteenth century, with removable organs and body parts captioned in French, protected by a glass bell. ("It's not exactly another human heart beating in the house, but it's close enough." said Addams.) A set of engraved aquatint plates from an antique book on armor. A lamp in the shape of a miniature suit of armor, topped by a black shade. There were various snakes; biopsy scissors ("It reaches inside, and nips a little piece of flesh," explained Addams); and a shiny human thighbone - a Christmas present from one wife. There was a sewing basket fashioned from an armadillo, a gift from another. In front of the couch stood a most unusual coffee table - "a drying out table," the man at the wonderfully named antiques shop, the Gettysburg Sutler, had called it. ("What was dried on it?" a reporter had asked. "Bodies," said Addams.)...

By no means is my friend original in this last use of the "expensive = good" rule to snare those seeking a bargain. Culturist and author Leo Rosten gives the example of the Drubeck brothers, Sid and Harry, who owned a men's tailor shop in Rosten's neighborhood while he was growing up in the 1930s. Whenever the salesman, Sid, had a new customer trying on suits in front of the shop's three-sided mirror, he would admit to a hearing problem, and, as they talked, he would repeatedly request that the man speak more loudly to him. Once the customer had found a suit he liked and had asked for the price, Sid would call to his brother, the head tailor, at the back of the room, "Harry, how much for this suit?" Looking up from his work—and greatly exaggerating the suit's true price—Harry would call back, "For that beautiful all-wool suit, forty-two dollars." Pretending not to have heard and cupping his hand to his ear, Sid would ask again. Once more Harry would reply, "Forty-two dollars." At this point, Sid would turn to the customer and report, "He says twenty-two dollars." Many a man would hurry to buy the suit and scramble out of the shop with his "expensive = good" bargain before Poor Sid discovered

The underlying factor here is the tendency of the security markets to undervalue issues that are involved in any sort of complicated legal proceedings. An old Wall Street motto has been: “Never buy into a lawsuit.” This may be sound advice to the speculator seeking quick action on his holdings. But the adoption of this attitude by the general public is bound to create bargain opportunities in the securities affected by it, since the prejudice against them holds their prices down to unduly low levels.*

To grow the plants and animals that made up my meal, no pesticides found their way into any farmworker’s bloodstream, no nitrogen runoff or growth hormones seeped into the watershed, no soils were poisoned, no antibiotics were squandered, no subsidy checks were written. If the high price of my all-organic meal is weighed against the comparatively low price it exacted from the larger world, as it should be, it begins to look, at least in karmic terms, like a real bargain.

Ben Graham–style bargain equities, we may become quite uncomfortable at times, especially if the market value of the portfolio declined precipitously. We might look at the portfolio and conclude that every investment could be worth zero. After all, we may have a mediocre business run by mediocre management, with assets that could be squandered. Investing in deep value equities therefore requires faith in the law of large numbers—that historical experience of market-beating returns in deep value stocks and the fact that we own a diversified portfolio will combine to yield a satisfactory result over time. This conceptually sound view becomes seriously challenged in times of distress. By contrast, an investor in high-quality businesses that are conservatively financed and run by shareholder-friendly managements may fall back on the well-founded belief that no matter how low the stock prices of those companies fall, the businesses will survive the downturn and recover value over time.