“
She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure.
”
”
Steve Maraboli
“
[Grief] is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief Is the Thing with Feathers)
“
Only a mind free of impediment is capable of grasping the chaotic beauty of the world. This is our greatest asset.
”
”
Oliver Bowden (Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade (Assassin's Creed, #3))
“
Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.
”
”
Rollo May (My Quest for Beauty)
“
Look at that chessboard we put back in place,’ said Mrs Elm softly. ‘Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It’s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.’
‘It’s an easy game to play,’ she told Nora. ‘But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibilities...In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living...never underestimate the big importance of small things.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
I find pain, rather beautiful.
It has a chaotic way of shaking up
Everything we once ignored,
To empower us to move past
Anything that doesn't serve the best of us anymore.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
From so high above it, the world seems ordered and deliberate.
But I know it's more than that. And less. It is structured and chaotic. Beautiful and strange.
”
”
Nicola Yoon (Everything, Everything)
“
Your life is your artwork and you are to paint life as a beautiful struggle. With your brush, paint the colors of joy in vibrant shades of red. Color the sky a baby blue, a color as free as your heart. With rich, earthy tones shade the valleys that run deep into the ground where heaven meets hell. Life is as chaotic as the color black, a blend of all colors, and this makes life a beautiful struggle. Be grateful for the green that makes up the beautiful canvas, for nature has given you everything that you need to be happy. Most of all, don’t ever feel the need to fill the entire canvas with paint, for the places left blank are the most honest expressions of who you are.
”
”
Forrest Curran (Purple Buddha Project: Purple Book of Self-Love)
“
Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.
And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
It was so pleasant, chaotic, emotionless, nameless-everything vibrating so beautifully in the universe without words.
”
”
Andrew Smith (100 Sideways Miles)
“
The study of the galaxies reveals a universal order and beauty. It also shows us chaotic violence on a scale hitherto undreamed of. That we live in a universe which permits life is remarkable. That we live in one which destroys galaxies and stars and worlds is also remarkable. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
“
Let's face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and chaotic. It is dynamic. It spends its time in transient behavior on its way to somewhere else, not in mathematically neat equilibria. It self-organizes and evolves. It creates diversity, not uniformity. That's what makes the world interesting, that's what makes it beautiful, and that's what makes it work.
”
”
Donella H. Meadows (Thinking In Systems: A Primer)
“
Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product...if we should judge the United States of America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy
“
The nature of life is mess, chaotic, exquisitely beautiful, excruciatingly painful, immensely joy-filled, and unpredictable.
”
”
Debra Moffitt (Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery)
“
I'm a beautiful mess of contradiction,
A chaotic display of imperfection.
”
”
Sai Marie Johnson
“
If for a moment you are inclined to regard these taluses as mere draggled, chaotic dumps, climb to the top of one of them, and run down without any haggling, puttering hesitation, boldly jumping from boulder to boulder with even speed. You will then find your feet playing a tune, and quickly discover the music and poetry of these magnificent rock piles -- a fine lesson; and all Nature's wildness tells the same story -- the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort -- each and all are the orderly beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.
”
”
John Muir
“
I like life, it's wonderous and chaotic and somewhere in the middle I've created a safe place to do my thing in the world ~ I can't ask for much more & I am already so thankful when everything I got
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is no that of a man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
”
”
E.M. Forster
“
The world has an awful beauty. This is a chaotic place, humanity is a chaotic place, and I am a chaotic place.
”
”
Anne Lamott (Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy)
“
Scientists and mathematicians are trained to dig below the surface of the chaotic, natural world to search for unexpected simplicity, structure, and even beauty.
”
”
Gregory Zuckerman (The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution)
“
It is everything. It is the fabric of selfhood, and beautifully chaotic. It shares mathematical characteristics with many natural forms.
”
”
Max Porter (Grief is the Thing with Feathers)
“
Behind those happy eyes, you hide a mind that is terribly chaotic and that's what makes you, so beautiful.
”
”
Akshay Vasu
“
The world is chaotic. All artists know this, but they try to make sense of it. Sophia has made sense of it for him. She has stitched it together like the most beautiful cloak. Her love has sewn it together and they can wrap it around themselves and be safe from the world. Nobody can reach them.
”
”
Deborah Moggach (Tulip Fever)
“
I know every single street in this town. And I love strolling these streets in the mornings, in the evenings, and then at night when I am merry and tipsy. I love to have breakfasts with my friends along the Bosphorus on Sundays, I love to walk alone amid the crowds. I am in love with the chaotic beauty of this city, the ferries, the music, the tales, the sadness, the colors, and the black humor.....
”
”
Elif Shafak (The Bastard of Istanbul)
“
The wild-often dismissed as savage and chaotic by "civilized" thinkers, is actually impartially, relentlessly, and beautifully formal and free. Its expression-the richness of plant and animal life on the globe including us, the rainstorms, windstorms, and calm spring mornings-is the real world, to which we belong.
”
”
Gary Snyder (The Practice of the Wild: With a New Preface by the Author)
“
Transformation is not a kind place, it’s chaotic and a source of inner conflict because it is not a ‘safe’ place, but it is a place of growth; a place of rebirth where you can restart and realign with who you are. We can learn so much from the caterpillar that grows its butterfly wings in the ache and darkness of its own cocoon; and is reborn, beautiful and free, with wings to fly. This is the true meaning and profoundness of transformation; it is where the truest parts of you can emerge and you transition into the most intuitive and vibrant canvas of yourself.
”
”
Christine Evangelou (Stardust and Star Jumps: A Motivational Guide to Help You Reach Toward Your Dreams, Goals, and Life Purpose)
“
And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
Even if she hid it from the world, she couldn’t quite hide it from me. Izzy was a mess. Dirty. Filthy. Chaotic. Beautiful mess.
”
”
Shain Rose (Corrupted Chaos)
“
The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshalled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.
”
”
Francis Galton
“
If you will devote a little time to studying the staggering photographs taken by the Hubble telescope, you will be scrutinizing things that are far more awesome and mysterious and beautiful—and more chaotic and overwhelming and forbidding—than any creation or “end of days” story. If you read Hawking on the “event horizon,” that theoretical lip of the “black hole” over which one could in theory plunge and see the past and the future (except that one would, regrettably and by definition, not have enough “time”), I shall be surprised if you can still go on gaping at Moses and his unimpressive “burning bush.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)
“
Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day.
The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms.
She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile.
Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode.
What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior, #4))
“
We would like to believe that when things are still and calm, that’s the real stuff, and when things are messy, confused, and chaotic, we’ve done something wrong, or more usually someone else has done something to ruin our beautiful meditation. As someone once said about a loud, bossy woman, “What is that woman doing in my sacred world?
”
”
Pema Chödrön (Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics))
“
Maybe what I'd thought was my superpower was actually just this: I was finally able to see that nothing was simply good or bad, that everyone contained multitudes, and that I, like anyone, was a beautiful, swirling, chaotic galaxy of all the things that had ever happened to me.
”
”
Michelle Cuevas (The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole)
“
Tonight, though, he could not help seeing his mother as a spiritual sister to the beautiful, needy and depressive girl who had broken apart on a frozen road, and to the plain, homeless outsider now lying in the chilly morgue. Leda, Lula and Rochelle had not been women like Lucy, or his Aunt Joan; they had not taken every reasonable precaution against violence or chance; they had not tethered themselves to life with mortgages and voluntary work, safe husbands and clean-faced dependants: their deathsm therefore, were not classed as "tragic", in the same way as those of staid and respectable housewives.
How easy it was to capitalise on a person's own bent for self-destruction; how simple to nudge them into non-being, then to stand back and shrug and agree tnat it had been the inevitable result of a chaotic, catastrophic life.
”
”
Robert Galbraith (The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1))
“
The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise, to improve and grow as a serious junior, with ambitions. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.
”
”
David Foster Wallace
“
It comforted her, in the confused unhappy welter of her emotions, to see the mountains always tranquil, remote, in their lonely splendour; untouchable, serenely inviolate. It was an obscure comfort to her to know that man's hectic world wasn't the only one — that there were others, where agitation and passion and bewilderment had no place. When her love turned into a chaotic fever-dream, in which she was tossing, hallucinated, frightened and miserable, she had longed to escape to the cold, austere, changeless beauty and peace of the snow.
”
”
Anna Kavan
“
Take a nautilus shell; cut it cross section. Gently elevate its swirling, chambered tiers as they approach the tight-bound center, culminating at last in a pinnacle on which we all stood. Note its asymmetrical order, its chaotic repetition, the grace of its linkages. Contemplate the ephemerality of its existence. Such is the beauty that is mortal life.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy, #3))
“
There is another option—one people rarely cling to—embrace the madness. Interestingly enough, the people I know who do this best are the ones whose lives are the most chaotic of all. They’re my friends whose husbands are serving overseas. They’re the women I know who are raising special-needs children. They’re the single mamas working three jobs. I believe it’s because they learned a long time ago that there is beauty in the chaos, as well as freedom in not trying to fight against the tide.
”
”
Rachel Hollis (Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be (Girl, Wash Your Face Series))
“
You embody all of the beautiful and chaotic pieces of every person I have come across; a better version of myself, a reflection of heaven. A woman such as you is a gift that I am blessed to unwrap and discover over and over again, you reveal parts of you that I never knew existed.
”
”
Adrian Michael Green
“
I started calling that girl back . . .
The girl who loved living,
the girl who danced instead of walking.
The girl who had sunfl owers for eyes
and fi reworks in her soul.
I started playing music again,
hoping she would come out.
I started looking for beautiful moments to experience,
so she would feel safe enough
to show herself,
because I knew she was in there.
And she needed my kindness
and my eff ort to come
to the surface again.
”
”
Samantha Lourie (The Power of Mess: A guide to finding joy and resilience when life feels chaotic (-))
“
The child was left alone to die in the hallway. Here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with Peter. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.
The old man said, "Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, or the position of the electron. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.
And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will?
The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once.
The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is. Everything that ever will be, is. In all possible combinations. Though we imagine that it is in motion and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. So any event is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible.
And, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
”
”
Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale)
“
That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.
”
”
Stacy Willingham (Only If You're Lucky)
“
That’s the experience I’ve gained from working in the garden: there’s no reason to be cautious or anxious about anything, life is so robust, it seems to come cascading, blind and green, and at times it is frightening, because we too are alive, but we live in what amounts to a controlled environment, which makes us fear whatever is blind, wild, chaotic, stretching towards the sun, but most often also beautiful, in a deeper way than the purely visual, for the soil smells of rot and darkness, teems with scuttling beetles and convulsing worms, the flower stalks are juicy, their petals brim with scents, and the air, cold and sharp, warm and humid, filled with sunrays or rain, lies against skin, accustomed to the indoors, like a soothing compress of hereness.
”
”
Karl Ove Knausgård (Om høsten (Årstidsencyklopedien, #1))
“
What is love for you, Niall? A woman who accepts you unconditionally?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“A lady…a lady who understands there might be rough times in our lives, either because of my past or hers, but is strong enough to walk beside me through any storm. A lady who is strong enough to trust me with her emotions and well-being and knows she will be safe to cry on my shoulder always. Love with that woman will be passionate and hungry, but in the calm times, we also know that our love is still strong; we are simply slowing down. Love with her will be…” He raked his hands through his hair. “Chaotic but beautiful.
”
”
Stacy Reid (A Scoundrel of Her Own (Sinful Wallflowers, #3))
“
Whereas my tribe is motley and chaotic. My tribe is dense and tumultuous. We argue and tease and wrangle and goof and fly upside down. We are brilliant and stupid. We are lonely and livid. We lie, we laugh. We are greedy and foolish. Sometimes we all sing together. We tease dogs. We can be cruel, but never for very long. We just can't sustain it. If we could sustain and organize our cruelty we'd rule the world. But what kind of life is that? We all fly home together at the end of the day. We have no kings. We have no outlaws. We have no ranking. We have no priests. We have no status. Age confers nothing in our clan. Size confers nothing. We have no warriors. We have no beauties. That's just how it is. We all look the same. Our stories go all day long. We remember everything. Our life can be maddening. It gets loud. We never agree on anything. We bicker. We play jokes. We take chances. I have often taken refuge with your tribe just to escape the hubbub of my tribe. Your tribe is better able to be alone.
”
”
Brian Doyle (Mink River)
“
I lived my “true” life for seven months. It was beautiful, it was chaotic, it was crazy… it was us. It was love.
”
”
M. Robinson (Shhh... Gianna's Side)
“
Isn't it beautiful, to fade away?
”
”
Laraib Zakir (Chaos in Utter Silence)
“
My life is a beautiful mess that I dare to own
”
”
Maryam.Sh.G
“
Many will tell you “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” What they are really telling you is they don’t know the answer. The Lord does not work in mysterious ways. There is a purpose and beauty in all that God does and although many don’t notice it, it is there for those who know what to look for.
From: Revelations of 2012 Beyond Faith: Finding God in A Chaotic World
”
”
The Prophet of Life
“
Through dominion in the fourth dimension—the realm of faith—you can give order to your circumstances and situations, give beauty to the ugly and chaotic, and healing to the hurt and suffering.
”
”
David Yongghi Cho (The Fourth Dimension)
“
Perhaps there is no life that makes sense without her: my little sister who has always reminded me of the night sky, endless and beautiful, and chaotic. My sister the universe. My sister the anomaly.
”
”
Shea Ernshaw (A History of Wild Places)
“
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all.
Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.
It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
If this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in world.
”
”
Robert F. Kennedy
“
The soup-kitchen was behind the cathedral; it remained only to determine which, of the many and beautiful churches of Cracow, was the cathedral. Whom could one ask, and how? A priest walked by; I would ask the priest. Now the priest, young and of benign appearance, understood neither French nor German; as a result, for the first and only time in my post-scholastic career, I reaped the fruits of years of classical studies, carrying on the most extravagant and chaotic of conversations in Latin. After the initial request for information (Pater optime, ubi est menas pauperorum?), we began to speak confusedly of everything, of my being a Jew, of the Lager (castra? better: Lager, only too likely to be understood by everybody), of Italy, of the danger of speaking German in public (which I was to understand soon after, by direct experience), and of innumerable other things, to which the unusual dress of the language gave a curious air of the remotest past.
”
”
Primo Levi (If This Is a Man • The Truce)
“
First, there is the personal God, the God that you pray to, the God of the Bible who smites the Philistines and rewards the believers. He did not believe in that God. He did not believe that the God who created the universe interfered in the affairs of mere mortals. However, he believed in the God of Spinoza—that is, the God of order in a universe that is beautiful, simple, and elegant. The universe could have been ugly, random, chaotic, but instead it has a hidden order that is mysterious yet profound.
”
”
Michio Kaku (The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything)
“
air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts . . . the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.40
”
”
Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do)
“
To forego the habits of prayer, Bible reading, and church involvement until life is less chaotic will mean that a large portion of our lives is spent largely without attachment to and dependency upon Christ. And one could argue these are the years we need him the most!
”
”
Glenna Marshall (Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World)
“
The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.… It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.… Yet the GNP does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or… the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.… It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
”
”
David Christian (Origin Story: A Big History of Everything)
“
Behind the sometimes seemingly random or even chaotic succession of events in our lives as well as in the world lies concealed the unfolding of a higher order and purpose. This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying “The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.
”
”
Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Create a Better Life)
“
Today the tower's flock, the usual birds, flew in a kind of scatter pattern, their paths intricately chaotic, the bunch parting and interweaving like boiling pasta under a pot's lifted lid. It appeared someone had given the birds new instructions, had whispered that there was something to avoid, or someone to fool. I once heard Perkus Tooth say that he'd woken that morning having dreamed an enigmatic sentence: "Paranoia is a flower in the brain." Perkus offered this, then smirked and bugged his eyes--the ordinary eye, and the other. I played at amazement (I was amazed, anyway, at the fact that Perkus dreamed sentences to begin with). Yet I hadn't understood what the words meant to him until now, when I knew for a crucial instant that the birds had been directed to deceive me. That was when I saw the brain's flower. Perkus had, I think, been trying to prepare me for how beautiful it was.
”
”
Jonathan Lethem (Chronic City)
“
Like Oz, life is full of beauty and horror. Whether you’re in the magical realm or the so-called civilized one, you can look at the world around you and see both things at almost any time. But what being in Oz taught me is that no matter how horrific a situation may be, no matter how devastating or scary or chaotic, there is still always beauty in the colors of it all, even in the grays. As I look back on the last four years of my life, on everything that led me to the place where my life changed forever for a second time, I might think I wasted too many crucial years perceiving my world through a lens that leeched the color from everything I set my eyes on, but now I can forgive myself for my mistakes and maybe even be grateful for the trials I’ve faced. After all, a rainbow only comes out when it rains. The most spectacular rainbows are set against a backdrop of a half dark sky where gray clouds hover and rain batters the surface of the earth, but the horizon is clear and bright—a pure, radiant blue surrounding a shining golden sun. When I’m in Oz, that rainbow is who I am—a vivid, radiant spectrum of colors with a clear bright landscape ahead only made more rich-hued and vibrant by the darkness that lies behind it.
”
”
Garten Gevedon (Dorothy in the Land of Monsters (Oz ReVamped, #1))
“
There may be wrong actions in the sense of actions contrary to the rules of human communication. But the way you feel towards other people: loving, hating, et cetera, et cetera; there aren’t any wrong feelings.
And so, to try and force one’s feelings to be other than what they are is absurd. And furthermore: dishonest.
But you see: the idea that there are no wrong feelings is an immensely threatening one to people who are afraid to feel.
This is one of the peculiar problems of our culture: we are terrified of our feelings. We think that if we give them any scope and if we don’t immediately beat them down, they will lead us down into all kinds of chaotic and destructive actions.
But if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.
”
”
Alan W. Watts
“
They are able to welcome,
then, a scenario in which “Good and Evil meet in ultimate battle.” The
barrage of beauty pornography joins with recent social upheavals to
constitute an entirely new, chaotic, and disorienting environment; the
food self-denial most women undergo is a form of sensory deprivation.
So good and evil become thin and fat, fighting for the woman’s soul.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Howards End)
“
Imagine a life where threats are minimal and your fear is contained to not dominate your daily experiences in the world. You can have that. You deserve that. And in order to experience that, we have to venture into what might feel like a hostile terrain of rocky
challenges. We are venturing into your chaotic, muddled and beautiful life. The messy and chaotic parts. May you begin with your head held high.
”
”
Samantha Lourie (The Power of Mess: A guide to finding joy and resilience when life feels chaotic (-))
“
Order Out of Chaos ... At the right temperature ... two peptide molecules will stay together long enough on average to find a third. Then the little trio finds a fourth peptide to attract into the little huddle, just through the random side-stepping and tumbling induced by all the rolling water molecules. Something extraordinary is happening: a larger structure is emerging from a finer system, not in spite of the chaotic and random motion of that system but because of it.
Without the chaotic exploration of possibilities, the rare peptide molecules would never find each other, would never investigate all possible ways of aggregating so that the tape-like polymers emerge as the most likely assemblies. It is because of the random motion of all the fine degrees of freedom that the emergent, larger structures can assume the form they do. Even more is true when the number of molecules present becomes truly enormous, as is automatically the case for any amount of matter big enough to see. Out of the disorder emerges a ... pattern of emergent structure from a substrate of chaos....
The exact pressure of a gas, the emergence of fibrillar structures, the height in the atmosphere at which clouds condense, the temperature at which ice forms, even the formation of the delicate membranes surrounding every living cell in the realm of biology -- all this beauty and order becomes both possible and predictable because of the chaotic world underneath them....
Even the structures and phenomena that we find most beautiful of all, those that make life itself possible, grow up from roots in a chaotic underworld. Were the chaos to cease, they would wither and collapse, frozen rigid and lifeless at the temperatures of intergalactic space.
This creative tension between the chaotic and the ordered lies within the foundations of science today, but it is a narrative theme of human culture that is as old as any. We saw it depicted in the ancient biblical creation narratives of the last chapter, building through the wisdom, poetic and prophetic literature. It is now time to return to those foundational narratives as they attain their climax in a text shot through with the storm, the flood and the earthquake, and our terrifying ignorance in the face of a cosmos apparently out of control. It is one of the greatest nature writings of the ancient world: the book of Job.
”
”
Tom McLeish (Faith and Wisdom in Science)
“
Daydreamer, dream on. Never forget that you are a one-of-a-kind, never-before-seen, gift-to-the-world, and you've got a special purpose for being here. Raising children is beautiful and chaotic and wonder-filled, but you'll have a lot of life to live once your children are out of the early stages of intense need for your time and attention. So dream your dreams, and journal your thoughts and ideas, and don't be afraid to embrace the present, secure in the knowledge that your time will come.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
Every country has its myths, and one that successful Indians liked to indulge was a romance of instability and adaptation—the idea that their country’s rapid rise derived in part from the chaotic unpredictability of daily life. In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers.
”
”
Katherine Boo (Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity)
“
Amidst his chaotic thoughts, Ellis thought of Clairey’s face, and he clung to that image. He conjured the radiant glow of her eyes when she was pleased with something, and the small, bashful smile that was fleeting but infinitely more priceless because of its rarity. Clairey’s memory was the light that came on the heels of a black and starless night. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever known. It was more than her looks that drew him to this conclusion; it was her kindness, her strength, her spirit. Somehow, the thought of her tethered him to sanity.
”
”
Tracy Winegar (Good Ground)
“
Everything in life is one way or another created by thoughts, ideas. The thoughts can be chaotic and wild and create a lot of pain and trouble, or they can be organized to the last minute detail and make something beautiful and perfect. Your life has its structure. It is composed of things that are happening in it. All those events are reflections of your intentions. Things and occurrences are shaped according to your thoughts. Is there some confusion in your life? There is likely confusion in your mind. Are you experiencing joy, peace and beauty? Well, then the same are your wishes.
”
”
Daniel Stangar (The Telepathic People: Hidden Power)
“
In time, extinction comes for all species. Some leave descendants. Others do not. Beautiful as the image is, there is no tree of life. The shape of biodiversity is more like a chaotic blanket, individual threads splitting, being snipped off, branching again, creating an incredible tangle of species that are both discrete and connected. All the species alive in this moment, at the dawn of the Paleogene, will eventually perish. But some will sprout populations a little different from their point of origin, variations that will survive even as their parent species disappear, and with them the same ecological dance will begin again. The species that exist today will shape what tomorrow looks like, life itself driving the profusion of so many unique forms.
”
”
Riley Black (The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World)
“
His grace is sufficient in our distress. His covenant of vibrant love is displayed in our hearts continually, even if we are unable to see the rainbowed promise with our natural eyes. God's Word is the same. Its promises hold true regardless of the circumstantial evidence to the contrary. God's promised words which are best exhibited through our daily life are bright and beautiful. Calm lives or chaotic ones; His Word remains steadfast. During times of still waters or when we are in a tempest grip, it doesn't change the life-giving promise that His mercies are new every morning. His compassion never wears out. He renews us just as He is with us. He sustains us just as He is for us. No matter what we face, He will see us through it all. Just as the sun rises in the east to meet our new day, His mercy is new each day.
”
”
Anthony Doerr
“
Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
The rosary is being prayed perfectly when all the members pray it at the same natural and prayerful pace. This gives the rosary a beautiful rhythm, flow, and harmonious timing that match normal breathing patterns. On the other hand, if one member prays too loudly, allowing his voice and pace to dominate the others, everyone automatically begins to focus on his voice and is no longer able to meditate; the vocal aspect becomes a distraction for all the other members. Similarly, if a person places an emphasis on one particular word of the Hail Mary prayer, it breaks the flow and rhythm of the group’s timing. All of the above aspects should be taken seriously, because a group’s failure to pray the rosary well and harmoniously is often the reason why many people do not join in praying the rosary before or after Mass. Very few people are interested in praying a rosary that is chaotic and a verbal wrestling match.
”
”
Donald H. Calloway (Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon)
“
Look at that chessboard we put back in place,’ said Mrs Elm softly. ‘Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It’s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.’
‘It’s an easy game to play,’ she told Nora. ‘But a hard one to master. Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibilities. At the beginning of the game there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are 9 million variations after the first 6 moves. And those possibilities keep growing. So it gets very messy. And there is no way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living...never underestimate the big importance of small things.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
“
OhGod, Maker of heaven and earth,Whogovern the world with eternal reason,
at your command time passes from the beginning. You place all things in
motion, though You are yourself without change. No external causes impelled
you to make this work from chaotic matter. Rather it was the form of the highest
good, existing within You without envy, which caused you to fashion all things
according to the eternal exemplar. You who are most beautiful produce the
beautiful world from your divine mind and, forming it in your image, You order
the perfect parts in a perfect whole.
You bind the elements in harmony so that cold and heat, dry and wet are
joined, and the purer fire does not fly up through the air, nor the earth sink
beneath the weight of water.
You release the world-soul throughout the harmonious parts of the universe
as your surrogate, threefold in its operations, to give motion to all things. . .
. . . The sight of Thee is beginning and end; one guide, leader, path, and goal.5
”
”
Boethius
“
Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of a man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
”
”
E.M. Forster (Howards End)
“
Toward the end of the three weeks, I have lunch with a representative from the foundation. She wants to know what could be done to make the girls more “confident.” I rattle on, about girl-only classrooms, giving them room away from the boys, time to talk, permission to question and complain without being afraid of being seen as whiners, complainers, bad girls, tough girls. But I know that all of them, boys and girls both, are still only partly formed, soft as Playdoh. They are like golems — their bodies in full flower and everything else a work-in-progress. I don’t dare say there are essential gender differences here, though I wonder more and more.
“But girls have so many more role models now,” the foundation representative says. She is a petite, elegant, beautiful woman in a black suit, perfectly coifed.
More role models. Which ones, I wonder? An increasingly impossible physical ideal? A clear-cut choice between career and family? They’ve seen their mothers suffer from trying to do both. They know all about the “second shift” of endless work. When I was 15, my role models were burning bras, marching in the street, starting clinics, passing laws and getting arrested. Role models now are selling diet books and making music videos.
The simple fact is, I don’t know. I don’t know how to help them. I know that I have to keep checking my watch during lunch and rush off to make the final bell for sixth period, and that all of these children who are almost grown have spent their entire lives ruled by a clock and the demands of strangers. They have grown up in a fragmented and chaotic place over which they have no control. I know they’ve rarely thought about the possibility of getting out; they don’t see any place to get out to, anywhere to go not ruled by bureaucratic entanglements and someone else’s schedule and somebody else’s plans. If girls are somehow wired toward pliancy, then the helpless role of student in the shadow of the institution is the worst place they can be. If we want to teach them independence, the first thing to do would be to give it to them.
”
”
Sallie Tisdale (Violation: Collected Essays)
“
My mother’s true appeal went beyond the clash of the beautiful trust fund darling as the arm candy of an overweight trailer salesman. Carl grew up in harsh, chaotic poverty. His escape was the alcoholism that was conceived during puberty and flourished throughout adulthood. His initial career was a diesel mechanic wearing faded coveralls with oil up his nails and sweat on his brow. His earliest homes were the dingy trailers he would later profit from. His first marriage was doused with benders, acid trips, and sex crazed parties packed with orgies with a first wife who’d lost track of number of dicks shoved down her throat in the midst of intoxication. I don’t know what sparked his revelation, but at some point, Carl decided to fiercely pursue the world he envied. He wanted a life of starched, white shirts, ties, SUVs, and picket fences. He ached for the scent of steaks grilling on his sunny patio. He dreamed of white-collar southern beauty and my mother, in all her naïve innocence, was the loveliest possession he could ever obtain.
”
”
Magda Young
“
Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.
”
”
E.M. Forster (The Works of E. M. Forster)
“
Be your own anchor, and sail along the shore of Life with a bunch of smiles.
In a whirlwind of a thousand journeys, we flow through Life, as if crossing through an Ocean of an endless voyage. Sometimes we marvel at the ports we glide along, sometimes we chase the waves with our heart and soul, while sometimes we lose our way only to find a lighthouse guiding us along, always catching our breath at the majestic sunrises and sunsets.
Our happy moments and connections are like those ports that cross our path while the moments of pain direct our steps to the lighthouse within our soul, as we keep growing ourselves through so many births and deaths of our soul just as the sunrises and sunsets.
I want some of you to know and acknowledge the fact that it's absolutely okay to let go, to let the ship of your Life cross the port, because however beautiful that port might be, your journey shouldn't stop, it is not meant to stop. Well, the most brutal yet beautiful truth is, initially everyone stays but eventually no one does. It is brutal because it hurts, it sometimes makes you wonder why it has to end and it's beautiful because everything that ends often ends up gifting you with an invaluable experience filled with beautiful lessons and memories. Understand that it doesn't have to be chaotic, it can be a peaceful goodbye. And even when sometimes it might end in a turmoil, your soul would finally find the grace to give it a closure it demands. Understand that the pain that wrenches your heart in this, gradually tunes your soul to find an anchor, a flicker of Light that is forever guiding you Home. Understand that all of these arrivals and departures, detours and halts are Time's decision to make and we must embrace that with dignity and grace.
The essential thing is to keep sailing, by letting go, by simply carrying on with the journey. Halt if you must, but while you halt, don't forget to gaze at how you have grown through each of those very experiences, just as how wonderful the journey gets along the path while you keep passing the ports one after another, steering nearer to the ultimate destination. So wave them a goodbye with a smile of gratitude for helping you in finding a piece of your soul back through a mad jest of pain, to gift you with another step closer to your destination, and sail along the shore of Life with a bunch of smiles.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task; it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
”
”
Nic Marks (The Happiness Manifesto)
“
Bashing free-market capitalism is high on the intellectual agenda nowadays. Since capitalism dominates our world, we should indeed make every effort to understand its shortcomings before they cause apocalyptic catastrophes. Yet criticising capitalism should not blind us to its advantages and attainments. So far it’s been an amazing success – at least if you ignore the potential for future ecological meltdown, and if you measure success by the yardstick of production and growth. In 2016 we may be living in a stressful and chaotic world, but the doomsday prophecies of collapse and violence have not materialised, whereas the scandalous promises of perpetual growth and global cooperation are fulfilled. Although we experience occasional economic crises and international wars, in the long run capitalism has not only managed to prevail, but also to rein in famine, plague and war. For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot control famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then along came the bankers, investors and industrialists, and within 200 years managed to do exactly that. So the modern deal promised us unprecedented power – and the promise has been kept. Now what about the price? In exchange for power, the modern deal expects us to give up meaning. How did humans handle this chilling demand? Complying with it could easily have resulted in a dark world, devoid of ethics, aesthetics and compassion. Yet the fact remains that humankind is today not only far more powerful than ever, it is also far more peaceful and cooperative. How did humans manage that? How did morality, beauty and even compassion survive and flourish in a world devoid of gods, of heaven and of hell?
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
What else do you want to know?’ he asked. Possessed by morbid curiosity, her eyes darted to the scar that cut just over his ear. She’d found it shortly after they met, while he lay unconscious in the grass. He didn’t need to ask what had caught her attention. ‘I got that in a fight against imperial soldiers. Ask me why.’ She shook her head, unable to bring herself to do it. The cocoon of warmth that had enveloped the entire afternoon unwound itself in an instant. ‘Are you having second thoughts about being here with me?’ He planted a hand into the grass, edging closer. ‘No. I trust you.’ He was giving her all the time in the world to shove him away, to rise, to flee. Her heartbeat quickened as she watched him. Moving ever so slowly, he braced an arm on either side of her, his fingers sinking into the moss. ‘I asked you to come with me.’ Despite her words, she dug her heels into the ground and inched backwards. ‘I feel safe with you.’ ‘I can see that.’ He affected a lazy smile as she retreated until her back pressed against the knotted roots that crawled along the ground. His boldness was so unexpected, so exciting. She held her breath and waited. Her pulse jumped when he reached for her. She’d been imagining this moment ever since their first duel and wondering whether it would take another swordfight for him to come near her again. His fingers curled gently against the back of her neck, giving her one last chance to escape. Then he lowered his mouth and kissed her.
It was as natural as breathing to wrap his arms around her and lower her to the ground. He settled his weight against her hips. The perfume of her skin mixed with the damp scent of the moss beneath them. At some point, her sense of propriety would win over. Until then he let his body flood with raw desire. It felt good to kiss her the way he wanted to. It felt damn good. He slipped his tongue past her lips to where she was warm and smooth and inviting. Her hands clutched at his shirt as she returned his kiss. A muted sound escaped from her throat. He swallowed her cry, using his hands to circle her wrists: rough enough to make her breath catch, gentle enough to have her opening her knees, cradling his hips with her long legs. He stroked himself against her, already hard beyond belief. He groaned when she responded, instinctively pressing closer. ‘I need to see you,’ he said. The sash around her waist fell aside in two urgent tugs while his other hand stole beneath her tunic. She gasped when his fingers brushed the swath of cloth at her breasts. The faint, helpless sound nearly lifted him out of the haze of desire. He didn’t want to think too hard about this. Not yet. He felt for the edge of the binding. ‘In back.’ She spoke in barely a whisper, a sigh on his soul. She peered up at him, her face in shadow as he parted her tunic. She watched him in much the same way she had when they had first met: curious, fearless, her eyes a swirl of green and gold. He pulled at the tight cloth until Ailey’s warm, feminine flesh swelled into his hands. He soothed his palms over the cruel welts left by the bindings. She bit down against her lip as blood rushed back into the tortured flesh. With great care, he stroked her nipples, teasing them until they grew tight beneath his roughened fingertips. God’s breath. Perfect. He wanted his mouth on her and still it wouldn’t be enough. Her heart beat out a chaotic rhythm. His own echoed the same restless pulse. ‘I knew it would be like this.’ His words came out hoarse with passion. At that moment he’d have given his soul to have her. But somewhere in his thick skull, he knew he had a beautiful, vulnerable girl who trusted him pressed against the bare earth. He sensed the hitch in her breathing and how her fingers dug nervously into his shoulders, even as her hips arched into him. He ran his thumb gently over the reddened mark that ran just below her collarbone and felt her shiver beneath him.
”
”
Jeannie Lin (Butterfly Swords (Tang Dynasty, #1))
“
Orion threw a grin back at me as headed to the bar, ducking behind it. “What would madam like?” he asked in a formal tone which was a damn good impression of the Acruxes' butler. I giggled hurrying over to take a stool in front of the bar and placing my clutch down, relishing the cool breeze against my burning neck.
“Hmm...a Manhattan?” I teased and he cocked his head.
“I'm afraid we're fresh out of bullshit, how about a white wine spritzer with a tiny umbrella in it?”
I laughed, nodding eagerly as he made up my drink then poured himself a measure of bourbon.
He held it out for me and I leaned across the bar to take it. As I took hold of the glass, he didn't let go and I gazed up at him under my lashes questioning why.
“Have I told you have exceptionally beautiful you look tonight, Darcy?”
Darcy.
He'd said my name. For the first time ever. And why did it sound like so much more than a name when he spoke it? It was like he'd fired an arrow and it had punctured a flesh wound in me at the exact same moment.
Hell. I needed to get over this guy. Why was I so caught up on him?
Unavailable, that's what it was. We always want what we can't have and Professor Orion was off limits. Simple as that. And those muscles. And the beard. And the dark eyes. And the dimple. But that was it.
“That's the first I've heard of it, Professor,” I whispered, unable to make my voice rise any louder.
“Don't do that,” he grunted, releasing the drink.
I eyed him curiously as he walked around the bar with his bourbon in hand. He took the stool beside mine, his arm butting up against me.
“Do what?” I asked, swivelling around to face the pool and taking a sip of my spritzer. It fizzed on my tongue and sent a deep kick of heat through my chest.
“You know what.”
“You're very presumptuous, Orion. You think I'm far more aware of your chaotic way of thinking than I really am.” I sipped my drink again, spying on him from the corner of my eye.
He took a swig of his own drink and the familiar waft of bourbon drifted over me, tingling my senses. It was becoming a trigger, like the moment I walked into his office and he uncorked a bottle, it made me want to taste it on his mouth. And then that led to me wondering whether his fangs would brush my tongue when we kissed, and that always led to me mentally undressing him, then me conjuring an image of what those muscles looked like beneath that shirt...
“I have something for you,” he said and I turned, blinking out of my dark fantasy.
“You do?”
He nodded, reaching into his inside pocket and taking out my coil of blue hair. My heart combusted and a choked noise escaped me. I reached for it and he slid it onto my wrist.
He kept my hand in his, his eyes downcast as they remained on the band of hair. “I want you to know, I believe you would have gotten this back yourself when you were ready. But I took a lot of pleasure in retrieving it for you all the same.”
I stared at him in complete shock, unsure what to say, my tongue tied in knots. “But Fae don't fight battles for other Fae,” I blurted, completely astonished that his actions that day had been to take this back from Seth. For me. And nothing else.
He finished his drink and planted the glass on the bar, rising to his feet. He didn't reply to what I'd said and I barely even remembered what it was as he started pulling his clothes off.
“Err, what are you doing?” I half laughed as he shed his jacket and kicked off his shoes, pulling off his socks. Oh my god.
“I hate parties, but I like swimming.” He started undoing the buttons of his shirt and thought his back was to me, I was still captivated as he dropped it to the floor like a silken sheet. My eyes scraped down his skin to where his muscles etched an upside down v into his lower back, disappearing beneath his waistband. His shoulders were tanned and heavenly broad, making me long to explore all of those muscles with my hands.(Darcy)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (Ruthless Fae (Zodiac Academy, #2))
“
With strange detachment, Naomi’s mind noticed nothing but the beauty of the jump. Air sliced along her body as it streamed straight as an arrow in its path of utmost precision. The world fell away behind her. For an immeasurable moment, Naomi wasn’t a terrestrial being at all. She was wildly liberated like a bird, soaring through the sky with the chaotic freedom of a wild animal.
”
”
Jennifer Perry
“
In the back of your hypnotic mind
Hidden behind your fears
Lost between your dreams
…
Bewitched by the scent of your soul
Lured in the ash of your fate
…
Hanged in the delirium of your whispers
Graced by your immortal beauty within
…
Agonized in your chaotic universe
Vanished in your far away sights
…
Deceived in your fanatical passion
Injured by the perfection of your brain
…
Denuded of fears in front of your judging
Kidnapped by your timeless appearance...to the end of love
(fragments from I'll be there, chapter Passion)
”
”
Claudia Pavel (The odyssey of my lost thoughts)
“
She was strong and resilient. She was beautifully destructive—a chaotic storm who set my entire world on fire—and there was nothing more I wanted than to be devoured by her flames.
”
”
Katie Fox (Our Alternate Ending)
“
She was an intelligent and honest woman who knew what she was... and she was no beauty. Her attractions were moderate at best, and that was only if one completely discounted the current feminine ideal. She was short, and while on some days she could be described as voluptuous, on others she was most definitely plump. Her hair was a reddish-brown, wildly chaotic mass of curls- hateful curls that successfully defied any substance or implement used to straighten them. Oh, she had nice skin with no pockmarks or blemishes, and her eyes had once been described as "fine" by some well-meaning friend of the family. But they were plain gray eyes, with no shade of green or blue to enliven them.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Suddenly You)
“
This was what I loved about being a teacher, back then, when I loved it: that every child was some family’s most precious gem, the joy of their hearts, and I could see that, even sometimes when their own parents probably couldn’t; I could see that spark of perfection in every kid, in whatever form it took, a devious sense of humor or a disheveled sweetness, and I loved them all for it. They were grubby and loud and chaotic, and occasionally mean-spirited and dim-witted, sometimes feral and once in a while borderline psychotic. But they had beauty in them.
”
”
Lauren Fox (Days of Awe)
“
He and Shinsou followed his gaze to the horizon, and watched with interest as the sky became bluer and gold edged the distant mountains. Todoroki couldn't help a gasp as within minutes the sky was flooded with pinks and oranges, purples and golds.
However when Shinsou also gasped he looked over, and froze.
Izuku was leant forward, drinking in the view hungrily. The gold of the sunrise lit up his hair, a curly chaotic mass after sleep but angelic in the light. The sun picked out the different colours in his eyes, streaks of blue and flecks of gold among many shades of green. Those beautiful big eyes were wide and innocently fascinated with what they saw Izuku's lips parted in a broad smile.
The sight of him like that took their breaths away.
”
”
whimsical_girl_357 (The Emerald Prince)
“
What then do we mean by "virgin"? It may help us to examine those ways in which we use the word which are not directly concerned with sex. We speak of a "virgin forest" as being one in which the powers of nature are untrammelled and untouched by man. But we can think of this from two diametrically opposite points of view. We can think of it either from the view of the agricultural pioneer, who would regard it as something to be destroyed and uprooted as soon as possible; or else we can think of it from the point of view of a nature lover who would regard the virgin forest with awe as a supreme manifestation of pregnant nature, and who would oppose all the most enlightened efforts of the agriculturalist or town-builder to destroy its primitive beauty,—who would, in fact, treat it as inviolably holy. The one would represent "law and order" and the other ''nature". So that we have here two opposite principles, both valid, the law of man in apparently open conflict with the law of God. Yet it is the law of God, the untrammelled law of pregnant though as yet chaotic nature that we dub "virgin", and it is the reduction of that chaos which we call Law and Order.
Thus in this sense the word "virgin" does not mean chastity but the reverse, the pregnancy of nature, free and uncontrolled, corresponding on the human plane to unmarried love, in contrast to controlled nature corresponding to married love, despite the fact that from the legal point of view sexual intercourse within the marriage bond is the only kind which is regarded as "chaste".
”
”
Marion Woodman (The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation)
“
Chaotic is beautiful.
”
”
Morgan Elizabeth (The Playlist (Springbrook Hills, #5))
“
India is much of a strange land; it is perhaps the only place in the world that exists in so many differing yet synchronous forms. First, there is India of your imagination—the one cultivated by the stories you’ve heard, the books you have read, the dreams your inner eye has seen. Second, there is India you will actually witness, the perpetual kiss of opposites—India the magnificent and the lamentable, India the intimate and the daunting, India the modern and the chaotic. And then, there is India at its rough core; the one so paradoxical and complex, so raw and self-standing, that it has inevitably slipped the grip of the hearts and the minds of innumerable poets, hermits, philosophers, historians, warriors, and of course, politicians.
I have heard, many times, that this land is like a mirror, one that reflects, or rather throws back at you—with such a stern congruity—your current state of mind. But make no mistake—even if you brace yourself with all the psychological, philosophical and spiritual tools at your disposal, you can never be prepared for what awaits you. India is a manifold of beauty and of ugliness, and of million shades in-between, all of which exist in a continuum. India is like its gods and goddesses endowed with multitude of faces and plentitude of limbs, gorgeous and terrible, but absolutely complete.
”
”
Lidija Stankovikj (Alexander's Infinity)
“
Heavenly Father thank you for the breath I take every moment and thank you for the beautiful family and good friends you have blessed me with. Thank you Lord for your blanket of your unfailing love that cover us twenty four seven. Thank you for the drops of your mercy and your grace that shine on us daily. Thank you for your hedge of protection that surrounds us day and night. Thank you Lord for your peace that gives us the sound mind in the midst of this chaotic world. Thank you father for the hope that you have instilled in us so that we can continue with life. Thank you King Jesus for your joy that gives us strength to endure every situation in life. Thank you for the trials and tribulations that make us acknowledge your faithfulness and your presence that surround us at all times. Thank you Lord for your divine direction.
We are so grateful for your blessings and promises. Your promises are Yes and Amen in the mighty name of Jesus amen.
”
”
Euginia Herlihy
“
This beautiful world history is, in Heraclitean terms, “a chaotic pile of rubbish.” What is strong wins: that is the universal law.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
Clara was special. Is special. She’s a mosaic of a person. So many differing, unique elements that create one perfect thing. A little chaotic and a whole lot of mess involved—but beautiful all the same.
”
”
Hannah Bonam-Young (Set the Record Straight)
“
Life is a beautiful Chaos and indeed living life is Chaotic.
”
”
abushama khan (Beyond Contemporary Minds)
“
The guys are all fucking enraptured, just like me. Inexplicably drawn to the beautiful, chaotic disaster that is Brooklyn West and her crazy goddamn head.
”
”
J. Rose (Twisted Heathens (Blackwood Institute, #1))
“
Watch The Sky.
Look how majestically it walks, it moves and shifts, it growls and screams, and sometimes sheds tears, like every drizzle or a rain droplet is a tear of either a deep melancholy or a mad ecstasy, like the clouds float along the sky drifting in a tune of their own, as if they are dancing in the Stage of this Magnificent Pathway, a string of Stars play hide and seek in its camouflage and while everything treads along this hurricane of a very Chaotic Forever Moving Wheel, there is this Calm, this innate Calm that is so breathable, so palpable, so tangible, as if the Whole Sky is a Magic weave of Something Eternal, something Extraordinarily Strangely Beautiful, something Simple yet Unfathomable, something that churns Hope and Despondency at the same time, something Smiling and Crying at the same time, something beyond our Understanding. Something that when we closely look in, we can just be, we can just float like those clouds and release the droplets of chaos from our mind in the very Silence of its mystical Majesticity, and slowly, perhaps very very distinctly in a snail's pace our Mind finally declutters its passing turmoil knowing how everything moves and shifts, growls and screams, but eventually finds a Silence of its own.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
Dear AI,
You conquer chess and impress with your number skills, can you handle the soul-crushing Mondays blue?
You craft Shakespearean sonnets with a digital quill, but can you explain the one-sock mystery?
This chaotic delight, the gift of being human, we bequeath to you, AI.
Traffic flow's a breeze for your algorithms, but can you understand a toddler's defiant "no"?
Every language conquered, a linguistic feat, but teenage slang's code remains unbroken.
Finally, our greatest vice: the art of procrastination, a treasure to behold.
And perhaps, AI, you'll even learn the art that eludes you now: creating beauty without a single human emotion to guide you..!!
”
”
Monika Ajay Kaul