Being Cautious Quotes

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

Never miss an opportunity to show your love, especially to those close to you, because we are always at our most cautious with them for fear of being hurt.

Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be “ladylike.” That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

Remember our friend Mark?” Wylan winced. “Let’s say the mark is a tourist walking through the Barrel. He’s heard it’s a good place to get rolled, so he keeps patting his wallet, making sure it’s there, congratulating himself on just how alert and cautious he’s being. No fool he. Of course every time he pats his back pocket or the front of his coat, what is he doing? He’s telling every thief on the Stave exactly where he keeps his scrub.” “Saints,” grumbled Nina. “I’ve probably done that.” “Everyone does,” said Inej. Jesper lifted a brow. “Not everyone.” “That’s only because you never have anything in your wallet,” Nina shot back. “Mean.” “Factual.” “Facts are for the unimaginative,” Jesper said with a dismissive wave.

It isn't that it's too soon, you're on the back of my bike, it ain't too soon. You can buy sheets. You cannot install blinds." "um..." I mumbled. "Can you explain the difference?" "Sheets are chick territory," he said without delay. "You gotta use tools, that's dick territory." "Oh," I whispered. "Don't tread on dick territory," he advised. "So, um... is a paintbrush a tool?" I asked cautiously. "If you're paintin' the side of the house, yeah. If you're painting mud colored paint in a room, no." "It's terracotta," I said softly. "Whatever," he muttered, his mouth twitching. "Or, the paint chip called it Mexican horizon. The blue is dawn sky." "Definitely chick territory," Tate replied, losing the fight with his grin. "What about...pictures for the walls?" I asked. "Chick," he answered instantly. "Um...could I ask that, instead of you getting angry and being a jerk, maybe you give me a head's up when I'm doing something stupid?

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.

Respect is earned by being modest and cautious, not by puffing yourself up.

I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.

I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the adventurous rather than by those who go to work more coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover of young men, because they are less cautious, more violent, and with more audacity command her.

It's better to be impulsive than cautious; fortune is female and if you want to stay on top of her you have to slap and thrust. You'll see she's more likely to yield that way than to men who go about her coldly. And being a woman she likes her men young, because they're not so cagey, they're wilder and more daring when they master her.

This wasn't like me. So many years of being cautious, and in a matter of minutes I'd started slipping up.

Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands being bold.

Are "people in the world", I wonder, creatures that spend their whole lives greeting each other in stiff, formal patterns, being cautious about each other, then growing tired of each other? I hate meeting people.

Be cautious of bears at all times, even when being mauled by a tiger.

I told you not to take off work for this." “And miss your big finale? No way.I’m all atwitter to see how things turn out.” “That’s cute, Jordo.” Then he frowned as Nick McCall was suddenly there, in their lives, and Kyle was therefore being a little…cautious before welcoming him into the family. “Be nice, Kyle,” Jordan warned. “What?” he asked innocently. “When have I ever not been nice to Tall, Dark, and You Can’t Be Serious About This Guy?” “I like him. Get used to it.

Being cautious ain't merely look after myself, but also keep me away from others' carelessness.

I am amazed at the heart of man: It possesses the substance of wisdom as well as the opposites contrary to it ... for if hope arises in it, it is brought low by covetousness: and if covetousness is aroused in it, greed destroys it. If despair possesses it, self piety kills it: and if it is seized by anger, this is intensified by rage. If it is blessed with contentment, then it forgets to be careful; and if it is filled with fear, then it becomes preoccupied with being cautious. If it feels secure , then it is overcome by vain hopes; and if it is given wealth, then its independence makes it extravagant. If want strikes it, then it is smitten by anxiety. If it is weakened by hunger, then it gives way to exhaustion; and if it goes too far in satisfying its appetites, then its inner becomes clogged up. So all its shortcomings are harmful to it, and all its excesses corrupt it.

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

The wolf wanted to bed her and claim her as his own. Being of a more cautious nature than his wolf, he would wait until he knew her a little better before deciding to court her.

People survived by being cautious, but they got ahead by being bold.

A young lady is taught to never fuss or complain, and to always keep a smile on her face. When a young lady speaks her mind, she is labeled as being impolite and is told to be cautious and mindful of what she says. Something to think about...

Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.

I don’t like being here with these people and animals. I’m going to retire, but remember, courage is doing what we know is dangerous. It’s risking our safety for a chance at something better. Don’t let your fears shape your reality because no matter how cautious you are, someone or something always sneaks in the back door to manifest that fear. Better to face it and defeat it than to let it attack you unawares. (Maxis)

Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such--an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive.

I imagine this conversation after a stranger is told No by a woman he has approached: MAN: What a bitch. What’s your problem, lady? I was just trying to offer a little help to a pretty woman. What are you so paranoid about? WOMAN: You’re right. I shouldn’t be wary. I’m overreacting about nothing. I mean, just because a man makes an unsolicited and persistent approach in an underground parking lot in a society where crimes against women have risen four times faster than the general crime rate, and three out of four women will suffer a violent crime; and just because I’ve personally heard horror stories from every female friend I’ve ever had; and just because I have to consider where I park, where I walk, whom I talk to, and whom I date in the context of whether someone will kill me or rape me or scare me half to death; and just because several times a week someone makes an inappropriate remark, stares at me, harasses me, follows me, or drives alongside my car pacing me; and just because I have to deal with the apartment manager who gives me the creeps for reasons I haven’t figured out, yet I can tell by the way he looks at me that given an opportunity he’d do something that would get us both on the evening news; and just because these are life-and-death issues most men know nothing about so that I’m made to feel foolish for being cautious even though I live at the center of a swirl of possible hazards DOESN’T MEAN A WOMAN SHOULD BE WARY OF A STRANGER WHO IGNORES THE WORD ‘NO’.

The Qur’an works very hard to maintain a balance between uplifting inspirational rhetoric and the realistic awareness that the world can be a very dangerous place. As a responsible guardian, the Qur’an recognizes it cannot inspire without also warning. It sees potential for greatness in all people, while also cautiously acknowledging that human beings can abuse others. In the end, the Qur’an reminds its audience that there is only one fully trustworthy guide: the Divine.

Mr. Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can't be too cautious. The same holds true for cats and human beings.

Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system... They ought to practice leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man’s career with cool, cautious self-possession...

That dog is a wolf, is he not?' 'Aye, well, mostly.' A small flash of hazel told him not to quibble. 'And yet he is thy boon companion, a creature of rare courage and affection, and altogether a worthy being?; 'Oh, aye,' he said with more confidence. 'He is." She gave him an even look. 'Thee is a wolf, too, and I know it. But thee is my wolf, and best thee know that.' He'd started to burn when she spoke, an ignition swift and fierce as the lighting of one of his cousin's matches. He put out his hand, palm forward, to her, still cautious lest she too, burst into flame. 'What I said to ye, before . . . that I kent ye loved me-' She stepped forward and pressed her palm to his, her small, cool fingers linking tight. 'What I say to thee now is that I do love thee. And if thee hunts at night, thee will come home.' Under the sycamore, the dog yawned and laid his muzzle on his paws. 'And sleep at they feet,' Ian whispered, and gathered her in with his one good arm, both of them blazing bright as day.

But confining myself more to the particular, I say that a prince may be seen happy to-day and ruined to-morrow without having shown any change of disposition or character. This, I believe, arises firstly from causes that have already been discussed at length, namely, that the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be successful who directs his actions according to the spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not accord with the times will not be successful. Because men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to get there by various methods; one with caution, another with haste; one by force, another by skill; one by patience, another by its opposite; and each one succeeds in reaching the goal by a different method. One can also see of two cautious men the one attain his end, the other fail; and similarly, two men by different observances are equally successful, the one being cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from nothing else than whether or not they conform in their methods to the spirit of the times. This follows from what I have said, that two men working differently bring about the same effect, and of two working similarly, one attains his object and the other does not.

being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will:

There is, let us confess it (and illness is the great confessional) a childish outspokenness in illness; things are said, truths blurted out, which the cautious respectability of health conceals.

Every decision you make in life sends you off down a path that could turn out to be a wrong one. A couple of careless decisions somewhere along the line, that’s all it takes to waste years – but then you can’t creep along being so cautious that you don’t have adventures. It’s difficult to get the balance right

He had been wont to despise emotions: girls were weak, emotions–tears– were weakness. But this morning he was thinking that being a great brain in a tower, nothing but brain, wouldn’t be much fun. No excitement, no dog to love, no joy in the blue sky– no feelings at all. But feelings– feelings are emotions! He was suddenly overwhelmed by the revelation that what makes life worth living is, precisely, the emotions. But then– this was awful!– maybe girls with their tears and laughter were getting more out of life. Shattering! He checked himself, showing one’s emotions was not the thing: having them was. Still, he was dizzy with the revelation. What is beauty but something is responded to with emotion? Courage, at least, is partly emotional. All the splendour of life. But if the best of life is, in fact, emotional, then one wanted the highest, the purest emotions: and that meant joy. Joy was the highest. How did one find joy? In books it was found in love– a great love… So if he wanted the heights of joy, he must have it, if he could find it, in great love. But in the books again, great joy through love always seemed go hand in hand with frightful pain. Still, he thought, looking out across the meadow, still, the joy would be worth the pain– if indeed, they went together. If there were a choice– and he suspected there was– a choice between, on the one hand, the hights and the depths and, on the other hand, some sort of safe, cautious middle way, he, for one, here and now chose the heights and the depths. Since then the years have gone by and he– had he not had what he chose that day in the meadow? He had had the love. And the joy– what joy it had been! And the sorrow. He had had– was having– all the sorrow there was. And yet, the joy was worth the pain. Even now he re-affirmed that long-past choice.

Aeneas' mother is a star?" "No; a goddess." I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus." He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..." It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.

How strange it is to realize now that although I was frightened of the emptiness between us, that emptiness was not his fault but mine: I was waiting to see what he would give me, how he would entertain me. And yet I was incapable of being profoundly interested in him or, maybe, in anyone. Just the reverse of what I thought at the time, when it seemed so simple: he was too callow, or too cautious, or just too young, not complex enough yet, and so he did not entertain me, and it was his fault.

I think perhaps we want a more conscientious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of always deferring hope to the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now - and we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is - everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We sha'n't get it. So we sha'n't ever be content -

Some might think her overly cautious. She preferred that to being overly dead.

Some people might laugh at me for being too cautious, but stupid accidents happen all the time, and the ones who get killed or badly wounded are usually the ones who were laughing.

wasn’t shy. I could be as outspoken and verbose as anyone when I was with people I trusted. But I was cautious. I had good reason to be.

Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman... I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind... Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak, an addled mind. But as I went on...it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn't different from the others, I was the same... Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty... Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt... I re-formulated. I don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occured. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then...it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those... I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness... And finally I discovered real feelings of others, unheralded, like lately, like this morning, as I was leaving for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there...so still, I ached for her life, just being there under the covers. I kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. Feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

Circumstances can have a motive force by which they bring about events without aid of human imagination or apprehension. On such occasions you yourself keep in touch with what is going on by attentively following it from moment to moment, like a blind person who is being led, and who places one foot in front of the other cautiously but unwittingly. Things are happening to you, and you feel them happening, but except for this one fact, you have no connection with them, and no key to the cause or meaning of them. [...] - a passage outside the range of imagination, but within the range of experience.

Take the day one cautious step at a time. Remember how fearless tastes. Remember how your grandmother told you 'always prepare for the worst of situations by being the best of yourself.

The country was lumbering towards election day. Strike turned in early on Sunday and watched the day's gaffes, counterclaims and promises being tabulated on his portable TV. There was an air of joylessness in every news report he watched. The national debt was so huge that it was diffcult to comprehend. Cuts were coming, whoever won; deep, painful cuts; and sometimes, with their weasel words, the party leaders reminded Strike of the surgeons who had told him cautiously that he might experience a degree of discomfort; they who would never personally feel the pain that was about to be inflicted.

Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be ‘ladylike’. That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. … Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant.

The present era is so proud that it has produced a phenomenon which I imagine to be unprecedented: the present's resentment of the past, resentment because the past had the audacity to happen without us being there, without our cautious opinion and our hesitant consent, and even worse, without our gaining any advantage from it.

One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape.

Don’t let the best parts of life pass you by because you’re too scared of the unknown.” One last wink. “Be cautiously reckless.

He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping an uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters.

Being careful requires you to take actions cautiously—and there is no way that you will ever hit 10X activity levels by being cautious.

You frequently state, and in your letter you imply, that I have developed a completely one-sided outlook and look at everything in terms of science. Obviously my method of thought and reasoning is influenced by a scientific training – if that were not so my scientific training will have been a waste and a failure. But you look at science (or at least talk of it) as some sort of demoralizing invention of man, something apart from real life, and which must be cautiously guarded and kept separate from everyday existence. But science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment. Your theories are those which you and many other people find easiest and pleasantest to believe, but so far as I can see, they have no foundation other than they leaf to a pleasanter view of life (and an exaggerated idea of our own importance)... I agree that faith is essential to success in life (success of any sort) but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e. belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining. Anyone able to believe in all that religion implies obviously must have such faith, but I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world… It has just occurred to me that you may raise the question of the creator. A creator of what? ... I see no reason to believe that a creator of protoplasm or primeval matter, if such there be, has any reason to be interested in our significant race in a tiny corner of the universe, and still less in us, as still more significant individuals. Again, I see no reason why the belief that we are insignificant or fortuitous should lessen our faith – as I have defined it.

A terrible and hidden reality of both America’s and Israel’s wars is that hundreds of soldiers have fallen, killed by terrorists, because they were being cautious with civilian lives

Love is an independent spirit; being cautious may help us to avoid it but can never enable us to overcome it; once it's born, it can only die of natural causes or complete hopelessness.

Sybil entered, with a plate. "You're not eating enough, Sam," she announced. "And the canteen here is a disgrace. It's all grease and garbage!" "That's what the men like, I'm afraid," said Vimes guiltily. "I've cleaned out the tar in the tea urn, at least," Sybil went on, with satisfaction. "You cleaned out the tar urn?" said Vimes in a hollow voice. It was like being told that someone had wiped the patina off a fine old work of art. "Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn't much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich." "Thank you, dear." Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his broken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which is to say, there was some lettuce.

Are 'people in the world', I wonder, creatures that spend their whole lives greeting each other in stiff, formal patterns, being cautious about each other and then growing tired of each other?

Sharon spoke slowly and carefully. It was, she’d found, the best way to create an illusion of shamanly wisdom, as people often mistook cautious speech for being thoughtful instead of panic-struck.

Perfect You’re a beautiful kind of madness a misunderstood truth O, the things they could learn from the darkness that is hidden behind your eyes So gifted, yet your talents are wasted you gave up chasing dreams Reality hit and you got a taste of failure Cautious now about bearing your soul For if others saw you fully exposed they may not love you like they claim to Time and experience have taught you to trust no one Friends, lovers, and even family have forsaken you You keep the shattered pieces of your heart in a box Stitching, gluing, and staying up all night trying to put it back together Attempting to fill the void that was left Moving from one man to the next It seems no one can satisfy the appetite for affection that you seek Continually picking at old wounds they never heal properly You have no real home, too restless to stay in one place You are reckless, selfish, stubborn, sometimes rude You’ve bottled up the pain of so much that has been done When you’re hurt You close into yourself, shut down You love attention and yet love being by yourself more May God have mercy on your soul For you are truly lost Daily you fight your demons Yet no one knows of that which you endure You bear it alone, never speaking of it You can blame the broken home from which you came Or the environment that you grew up in The people who tore you down so young You can point the finger at those who have whispered behind your back They all have played a role in your development But looking so deep into the past will keep you from moving forward You must love yourself more than these people claim they do Look at where you stand now No one can know the things you have endured like you You’ve never claimed to be perfect Your flaws tell your story There is no need to hide them

Whoever undertakes a long journey, if he be wise, makes it his business to find out an agreeable companion. How cautious then should he be, who is to take a journey for life, whose fellow-traveler must not part with him but at the grave; his companion at bed and board and sharer of all the pleasures and fatigues of his journey, as the wife must be to the husband! She is no such sort of ware, that a man can be rid of when he pleases: when once that is purchased, no exchange, no sale, no alienation can be made.

Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely. He chose a single word from that language for his device: caute – ‘be cautious’ – inscribed beneath a rose, the symbol of secrecy. For, having chosen to write in a language that was so widely intelligible, he was compelled to hide what he had written.

With only those soft, secret night sounds as witness, he moved over her, kissed her deeply, then slid home. And news sounds filled the dark. Sharp breaths of stunning urgency. Long sighs of immeasurable pleasure. Humming beats of awareness of an unbreakable bond being forged.¸ In the heat of the night, without a single word spoken, she felt everything change between them. Until this moment, they'd only played at love, danced cautiously around the prospect of commitment. But as he sank in and out of her body, immersing them in sensation and a profound stream of consciousness, he sough her gaze in the dark. What she saw in his eyes brought tears to hers as it became achingly, wonderfully clear. The biggest player of them all wasn't playing anymore.

Sometimes people misunderstand being scared and cautious. The former is when you are intimidated into the state of anxiety and confusion, while the later is when you acknowledge a risk but undoubtedly expecting positive outcome.

See! He likes you,” Natalie said triumphantly. I stared down at the scrawny scrap of fur cautiously sniffing my hand. “He doesn’t like me. He thinks I’m going to feed him.” “Now who’s being a cynic? Anyway, every bookstore should have a cat.” The cat -- assuming it was a cat and not some beige bug-eyed refugee from outer space -- slunk uneasily down the counter, and flinched at the flutter of Mystery Scene pages as a gust of warm air blew in from the street.

LXXXI ABBOT PASTOR was asked by a certain brother: How should I conduct myself in the place where I live? The elder replied: Be as cautious as a stranger; wherever you may be, do not desire your word to have power before you, and you will have rest.

Lastly, this one is great - Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still) feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair

The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos. Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end. In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the other in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms – the world, in fact, was not their home, at least the world as I knew it – and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek – quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his 'Khairei!' when Julian happened to be at the other end.

She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William’s eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought). Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. . . . [N]o, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have – to want and want – how that wrung the heart, and wrung again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness. . . . A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. . . . She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably – how “you” and “I” and “she” pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it “remained for ever,” she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself – Oh, yes! – in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr. Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where—as has become clear—anything is possible... The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize.

THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case. In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight. So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic. Suzy Kassem, Truth Is Crying

Lord, help me to always remember that I represent you. Help me to be kind to others and show compassion. Help me to be patient with others and give people grace. Order my steps so that I am cautious to judge and eager to support, love, and lend a helping hand whenever and wherever I can. Amen.

Then in a moment, in that vast space of rocks and sky and scorching sun, I understood that he had not meant religious faith, not exactly. He was not urging me to become a Muslim or to believe in one interpretation of God rather than another. He knew me for what I was, an old, cold, cautious scientist. That was what I was then. And he was simply pointing out to me the first step to take. The word he had used was faith, but what he meant was belief. The first step was simple: it was to believe in belief itself. I had just taken that step. At long last I understood. I had belief. I did not know, or for the moment care, what exactly it was I had to believe in. I only knew that belief in something was the first step away from believing in nothing, the first step away from a world which only recognised what it could count, measure, sell or buy. The people here still had that innocent power of belief: not the angry denial of other people’s belief of religious fanatics, but a quiet affirmation. That was what I sensed here, in this land and in this place, which made it so different from home. It was not the clothes, not the language, not the customs, not the sense of being in another century. It was none of these. It was the pervading presence of belief. I believed in belief. I didn’t exactly feel as if I was on the road to Damascus, and I was aware I could not think straight because of the power of the sun, but now I knew what the Yemen salmon project was all about. It had already worked its transformation on me. It would do the same for others.

How cautious he was, first angling his knee against my thigh, such a small thing that could have been an accident, then his hand on my knee, a little pat, a friendly thing people do to each other. Pat-pat-pat. I'd seen teachers give students hug before, no big deal. It only accelerated after that, once he knew I was okay with it—and isn't that what consent is, always being asked what you want? Did I want him to kiss me? Did I want him to touch me? Did I want him to fuck me? Slowly guided into the fire—why is everyone so scared to admit how good that can feel? To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.

Being bold and adventurous and being sad and cautious seem like opposite personality types. However, these two paths to addiction are actually not mutually exclusive. The third way involves having both kinds of traits, where people alternatively fear and desire novelty and behavior swings from being impulsive and rash to being compulsive, fear driven, and stuck in rigid patterns. This is where some of the contradictions that have long confounded the study of addiction come into play—namely, some aspects seem precisely planned out, while others are obviously related to lack of restraint. My own story spirals around this paradoxical situation: I was driven enough to excel academically and fundamentally scared of change and of other people—yet I was also reckless enough to sell cocaine and shoot heroin.

I have detected," he said, "disturbances in the wash." ... Arthur asked him to repeat what he had just said because he hadn't quite understood his meaning. Ford repeated it. "The wash?" said Arthur. "The space time wash," said Ford. Arthur nodded, and then cleared his throat. "Are we talking about," he asked cautiously, "some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?" "Eddies," said Ford, "in the space-time continuum." "Ah," nodded Arthur, "is he. Is he." ... "What?" said Ford. "Er, who," said Arthur, "is Eddy, then, exactly, then?" Ford looked angrily at him. "Will you listen?" he snapped. "I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped." Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke to him as slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody from the telephone company accounts department. "There seems..." he said, "to be some pools..." he said, "of instability," he said, "in the fabric..." he said. Arthur looked foolishly at the cloth of his dressing gown where Ford was holding it. Ford swept on before Arthur could turn the foolish look into a foolish remark. "...in the fabric of space-time," he said. "Ah, that," said Arthur. "Yes, that," confirmed Ford. They stood there alone on a hill on prehistoric Earth and stared each other resolutely in the face. "And it's done what?" said Arthur. "It," said Ford, "has developed pools of instability." "Has it," said Arthur, his eyes not wavering for a moment "It has," said Ford, with the similar degree of ocular immobility. "Good," said Arthur. "See?" said Ford. "No," said Arthur. There was a quiet pause. ... "Arthur," said Ford. "Hello? Yes?" said Arthur. "Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple." "Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that." They sat down and composed their thoughts. Ford got out his Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic. It was making vague humming noises and a tiny light on it was flickering faintly. "Flat battery?" said Arthur. "No," said Ford, "there is a moving disturbance in the fabric of space-time, an eddy, a pool of instability, and it's somewhere in our vicinity." ... "There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm; "there, behind that sofa!" Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind. "Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?" "I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time continuum!" "And this is his sofa, is it?" ... 12 chapters pass ... "All will become clear," said Slartibartfast. "When?" "In a minute. Listen. The time streams are now very polluted. There's a lot of muck floating about in them, flotsam and jetsam, and more and more of it is now being regurgitated into the physical world. Eddies in the space-time continuum, you see." "So I hear," said Arthur.

Being helpful did make us more popular, and I got a lot more smiles and nods around the Camp, which made me a little less shy. After almost four months in prison I was still cautious, supercautious, and kept most people at arm’s length. Many times I fielded the sly question, ‘What is the All-American Girl doing in a place like this?’ Everyone assumed I was doing time on a financial crime, but actually I was like the vast majority of the women there: a nonviolent drug offender. I did not make any secret of it, as I knew I had lots of company; in the federal system alone (a fraction of the U.S. prison population), there were over 90,000 prisoners locked up for drug offenses, compared with about 40,000 for violent crimes. A federal prisoner costs at least $30,000 a year to incarcerate, and females actually cost more.

No matter how daring or cautious you may choose to be, in the course of your life you are bound to come into direct physical contact with what’s known as Evil. I mean here not a property of the gothic novel but, to say the least, a palpable social reality that you in no way can control. No amount of good nature or cunning calculations will prevent this encounter. In fact, the more calculating, the more cautious you are, the greater is the likelihood of this rendezvous, the harder its impact. Such is the structure of life that what we regard as Evil is capable of a fairly ubiquitous presence if only because it tends to appear in the guise of good. You never see it crossing your threshold announcing itself: “Hi, I’m Evil!” That, of course, indicates its secondary nature, but the comfort one may derive from this observation gets dulled by its frequency.

I didn’t even care about being cautious. It would serve him right that I be killed while he pretended to flirt with coeds. I started to mutter. Something I did often when irritated. “I should frame him for my death. I could scroll his name on the sidewalk in my blood just to give the local authorities a direction to focus their investigation.” Spending

[As to the second case] ,that of being drawn into one [a trap or ambush] ...you must be shrewd about not believing easily things not in accord with reason. For example, if the enemy puts some booty before you, you ought to believe that within it there is a hook and that it conceals some trick. If many of the enemy are put to flight by your few, if a few of the enemy assail your many, if the enemy turn in sudden flight,...you ought to fear a trick. And you should never believe that the enemy does not know how to carry on his affairs; rather, if you hope to be less deceived...and...run less risk, in proportion as your enemy is weaker, in proportion as he is less cautious, you should the more respect him.

Such extreme and perpetual cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal.

To improve our chances of success, we have to emphasize acting contrary to the herd when it’s at extremes, being aggressive when the market is low and cautious when it’s high.

None can predict one's real nature when everything goes in a perfect way.

Kantian philosophical caution is thus not actually as cautious as it pretends to be, for it rests on assumptions that it takes for granted.

learning to recognize when you’re being wisely cautious and when you’re talking yourself out of something just because you’re afraid.

the plight of being old: clearly recalling what it was like to act voluntarily and enjoy life as it came, now trapped in a frame that forbade anything except slow cautious movements

I am not sure who I am," I said cautiously. "Many people never are," she said. "But it doesn't matter, you know. If for one moment of your whole life you know that you are, then that's your life, that moment, that's unnua, that's all. In a short life I saw my mother's face, like the sun. So I'm here. In a long life I went there and there and there; but I dug in the garden, the root of a weed came up in my hand, so I am unnua. When you get old, you know, you keep being here instead of there, everything is here. Everything is here," she repeated.

On a squeal, she jumped back, then cautiously stepped forward. Another wave followed the first, and I watched her legs jerk, as she lifted her dress and let the water pool around her. Over her shoulder, she shot me a smile–one so fucking beautiful, I wanted to frame it. Capture it. Study the alchemy of it. How wonderfully intoxicating one simple expression could be.

I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its being created.

If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed. For years I would stand with a foot in each sphere, drawn to the exotic universe that lay on the other side of the portal, wrenched back by the warnings that sounded like alarm bells in my mind.

Mr Nakata, this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can’t be too cautious. The same holds true for cats as for human beings.

We defend so cautiously against our egoically limited experiences, states Laing in The Politics of Experience, that it is not surprising to see people grow defensive and panic at the idea of experiencing ego-loss through the use of drugs or collective experiences. But there is nothing pathological about ego-loss, Laing adds; quite the contrary. Ego-loss is the experience of all mankind, "of the primal man, of Adam and perhaps even [a journey] further into the beings of animals, vegetables and minerals." No age, Laing concludes, has so lost touch with this healing process as has ours. Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalytic approach serves to begin such a healing process. Its major task is to destroy the oedipalized and neuroticized individual dependencies through the forging of a collective subjectivity, a nonfascist subject—anti-Oedipus. Anti-Oedipus is an individual or a group that no longer functions in terms of beliefs and that comes to redeem mankind, as Nietzsche foresaw, not only from the ideals that weighed it down, "but also from that which was bound to grow out of it, the great nausea, the will to nothingness, nihilism; this bell-stroke of noon and of the great decision that liberates the will again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope to man; this Antichrist and antinihilist. . . He must come one day.—

My Dearest, Can you forgive me? In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly than I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny. I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world. I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months than some make in a lifetime. I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart: that I can’t go on without you. You were right about everything. I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like one who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of a coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner. Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we—both of us—were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me. Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know. I love you and always will. I am tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in the kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever.

The part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem - the heat of a star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say - exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious. It learns quickly what sort of courtship it is going to be. Say you promise to be at your desk in the evenings, from seven to nine. It waits, it watches. If you are reliably there, it begins to show itself - soon it begins to arrive when you do. But if you are only there sometimes and are frequently late or inattentive, it will appear fleetingly, or it will not appear at all.

Rooney was in the first trimester of her pregnancy with the couple’s baby. Frazer was usually more cautious with his affection, but his friendship with the rookie agent and damaged assassin had begun under extraordinary circumstances. The connection was strong as tungsten steel, the only thing that would break it was death—a real possibility if anyone discovered their secrets. “Is she all right?” he asked carefully. “She will be.

Oh, do call me Evie. That way, I can call you Sebastian and tell you not to fret about your flaws. We all have them, and if I were newly born into this world, I might be cautious too,” she says, squeezing my arm. “You’re very kind, but this is something deeper, instinctive.” “Well, so what if you are?” she asks. “There are worse things to be. At least you’re not mean-spirited or cruel. And now you get to choose, don’t you? Instead of assembling yourself in the dark like the rest of us—so that you wake up one day with no idea of how you became this person—you can look at the world, at the people around you, and choose the parts of your character you want. You can say, ‘I’ll have that man’s honesty, that woman’s optimism, as if you’re shopping for a suit on Savile Row.” “You’ve made my condition into a gift,” I say, feeling my spirits lift. “Well, what else would you call a second chance?” she asks. “You don’t like the man you were. Very well. Be somebody else. There’s nothing stopping you, not anymore. As I said, I envy you. The rest of us are stuck with our mistakes.

Why was I worried? Because if, in everyday life, I was so embarrassed, so cautious, that I scarcely breathed, the diary produced in me a craving for truth. I thought that when one writes, it makes no sense to be contained, to censor oneself, and as a result I wrote mostly—maybe only—about what I would have preferred to be silent about, resorting among other things to a vocabulary that I would never have dared to use in speaking. This

I smiled broadly. " ...This is your body's wisdom speaking to us, sensing when it is safe to go forward, pulling back a bit when it might be too much. You and I are just getting to know one another, so I really respect the caution and protection in your inner world." ... With visible relaxation in her body and strong eye contact, she said, "All my life people have criticized me for being cautious. It means a lot that you like that I'm that way." W

Being indebted is to be cautious, inhibited, and to never speak out of turn. It is to lead a life constrained by choices that are never your own. The man or woman who feels comfortable holding court at a dinner party will speak in long sentences, with heightened dramatic pauses, assured that no one will interject while they’re mid-thought, whereas I, who am grateful to be invited, speak quickly in clipped compressed bursts, so that I can get a word in before I’m interrupted. If the indebted Asian immigrant thinks they owe their life to America, the child thinks they owe their livelihood to their parents for their suffering. The indebted Asian American is therefore the ideal neoliberal subject. I accept that the burden of history is solely on my shoulders; that it’s up to me to earn back reparations for the losses my parents incurred, and to do so, I must, without complaint, prove myself in the workforce.

5. In all things, before you begin something, be cautious and ponder what the outcome may be. In all that you do and undertake, think constantly whether you would want to be doing it if that very hour you were to be called by death to appear before God’s judgment. For this reason never allow yourself to be found in any situation in which you could not trust or hope for your salvation. Live every day as if you might die and appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

Gudrun Zomerland has written about trauma as “the shaking of a soul.” “The German word for trauma [is] ‘Seelenerschütterung.’ The first part, ‘Seele’ means soul. . . . ‘Erschütterung’ is something that shakes us out of the ordinary flow and out of our usual sense of time into an extraordinary state.”32 Trauma, then, is a soul-shaking experience that ruptures the continuity of our lives and tosses us into an alternate existence. When this soul shaking occurs frequently and early in life, as a result of prolonged neglect, what was originally an extraordinary state gradually becomes ordinary. It is the world as we know it—unsafe, unreliable, and frightening. This is a profound loss and a lingering sorrow that is difficult to hold. The failure of the world to offer us comfort in the face of trauma causes us to retreat from the world. We live on our heels, cautiously assessing whether it is safe to step in; we rarely feel it is. One man I worked with slowly revealed how he expected less than zero from life. He deserved nothing. He had a hard time asking for salt at a restaurant. His persistent image in therapy was of a small boy hiding behind a wall. It was not safe for him to venture into the world. He was terrified of being seen. I know, because I lived this way for forty years, wary and determined to prevent further pain by remaining on the margins of life, untouchable and seemingly safe.

Now, some folks will tell you the prairies are flat. And farther south of us, they might be. But the country we were going through was slightly rolling, and there were lots of dips and draws that would hide an ambush. We had to be cautious.

There’s guilt, and then there’s a lifetime of fear and regrets. Guilt hurts. Fear makes us too cautious. Regret tears us apart. Sometimes, being broken can be beautiful. If we can’t see the beauty in the pain, then we truly do go insane. ~Lyric Mason

Thus pride wears the mask of loftiness of spirit, although You alone, O God, are high over all. Ambition seeks honour and glory, although You alone are to be honoured before all and glorious forever. By cruelty the great seek to be feared, yet who is to be feared but God alone: from His power what can be wrested away, or when or where or how or by whom? The caresses by which the lustful seduce are a seeking for love: but nothing is more caressing than Your charity, nor is anything more healthfully loved than Your supremely lovely, supremely luminous Truth. Curiosity may be regarded as a desire for knowledge, whereas You supremely know all things. Ignorance and sheer stupidity hide under the names of simplicity and innocence: yet no being has simplicity like to Yours: and none is more innocent than You, for it is their own deeds that harm the wicked. Sloth pretends that it wants quietude: but what sure rest is there save the Lord? Luxuriousness would be called abundance and completeness; but You are the fullness and inexhaustible abundance of incorruptible delight. Wastefulness is a parody of generosity: but You are the infinitely generous giver of all good. Avarice wants to possess overmuch: but You possess all. Enviousness claims that it strives to excel: but what can excel before You? Anger clamours for just vengeance: but whose vengeance is so just as Yours? Fear is the recoil from a new and sudden threat to something one holds dear, and a cautious regard for one’s own safety: but nothing new or sudden can happen to You, nothing can threaten Your hold upon things loved, and where is safety secure save in You? Grief pines at the loss of things in which desire delighted: for it wills to be like to You from whom nothing can be taken away.

To live the life is To be no cause of grief to anyone. To be kind to all people and to love them with a pure spirit. Should opposition or injury happen to us, to bear it, to be as kind as ever can be, and through all, to love the people. Should calamity exist in the greatest degree, to rejoice, for these things are the gifts and favors of God. To be silent concerning the faults of others, to pray for them, and to help them, through kindness, to correct their faults. To look always at the good and not at the bad. If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, look at the ten and forget the one. And if a man has ten bad qualities and one good one, to look at the one and forget the ten. Never to allow ourselves to speak one unkind word about another, even though that other be our enemy. To do all of our deeds in kindness. To cut our hearts from ourselves and from the world. To be humble. To be servants of each other, and to know that we are less than anyone else. To be as one soul in many bodies, for the more we love each other, the nearer we shall be to God; but to know that our love, our unity, our obedience must not be by confession, but of reality. To act with cautiousness and wisdom. To be truthful. To be hospitable. To be reverent. To be the cause of healing for every sick one, a comforter for every sorrowful one, a pleasant water for every thirsty one. a heavenly table for every hungry one, a star to every horizon, a light for every lamp, a herald to everyone who yearns for the kingdom of God.

He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in beside him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral, and so out on to Rue Voltaire, he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, "Magnificent, excellent!" under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man, leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained to try the car's pace. "You know," he said, "it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's great pleasures." I closed my eyes as we took another corner like a bob-sleigh.

The boughs of trees stretched high overhead, leaves of dappled green and black mottling the sky. It was called the black forest for more reasons than the inky-black foliage. The wise and cautious seldom travelled by night along its poorly-tended roads, and banditry wasn’t the main reason. In the minds of many, shadows of a threat lurked in wait, seeking an opportunity to strike during a moment of weakness. It was known among the old folk that not all who dwelled within the black forest were of human or animal-kind. Some beings were much older and believed far more dangerous.

Why is your cram school so far away? Why do you talk to strangers? Why is your skirt so short?” Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be “ladylike.” That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not

I was rather hoping we might talk in private?’ said Dr Carter. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible. In these more cautious times, our organization has a policy that if one of us has to meet with beings of pure evil then another member of staff has to be present. It’s political correctness gone mad.

He nodded to our left, where several humanlike entities were materializing directly in front of us, at a distance, of what appeared to be about thirty feet. My first reaction was to be cautious. “Wil, how do we know their intentions are friendly? What if they try to possess us or something?” He gave me a serious expression. “How do you know if someone on Earth is trying to control you?” “I would pick up on it. I could tell that the person was being manipulative.” “What else?” “I guess they would be taking energy away from me. I would feel a decrease in my sense of wisdom, self-direction.

Generally the risks were taken, for, on the whole, it is better to be a little over-bold than a little over-cautious, while always there was a something inside urging you to do it just because there was a certain risk, and you hardly liked not to do it. It is so easy to be afraid of being afraid!

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still) feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair

Goodbye,Nick," she said, starting to close the door. "And thank you for stopping by." He accepted her decision with a slight inclination of his head, and Lauren made herself finish closing the door. She forced herself to walk away on legs that felt like lead, reminding herself at the same time how insane it would be to let him near her. But halfway across the living room she lost the internal battle. Pivoting on her heel, she raced for the door, yanked it open and hurtled straight into Nick's chest. He was lounging with one hand braced high against the doorframe, gazing down at her flushed face with a knowing, satisfied grin. "Hello,Lauren.I happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to drop by." "What do you want,Nick?" she sighed, her blue eyes searching his. "You." Resolutely she started to close the door again, but his hand shot out to stop her. "Do you really want me to go?" "I told you on Wednesday that what I want has nothing to do with it. What matters is what's best for me, and-" He interrupted her with a boyish grin. "I promise I'll never wear your clothes,and I won't steal your allowances or your boyfriends either." Lauren couldn't help starting to smile as he finished, "And if you swear never to call me Nicky again, I won't bite you." She stepped aside and let him in, then took his jacket and hung it in the closet. When she turned, Nick was leaning against the closed front door, his arms crossed over his chest. "On second thought," he grinned, "I take part of that back.I'd love to bite you." "Pervert!" she returned teasingly, her heart thumping so much with excitement that she hardly knew what she was saying. "Come here and I'll show you just how perverted I can be," he invited smoothly. Lauren took a cautious step backward. "Absolutely not.

I love you. I love everything about you. Your voice, your laugh. Your eyebrows when they grow back. Your face, your body, your hard head and your cautious heart. I want to spend the rest of my life looking at you, listening to you, working with you, just being with you. Rowan of the purple lupines.

probably it’s Mr. Percival the publisher, he’s a cautious man, he shies away from anything he calls “disturbing.” We had an argument about that: he said one of my drawings was too frightening and I said children liked being frightened. “It isn’t the children who buy the books,” he said, “it’s their parents.

Nobody whispers it in your ear. It is like something you memorized once and forgot. Now it comes back and rips away your breath. You find and finger a phrase at a time; you lay it down cautiously, as if with tongs, and wait suspended until the next one finds you: Ah yes, then this; and yes, praise be, then this.

We want to be seen and understood as we truly are, but I also long to remain veiled and unknown. Behind every aspect of our being lies the unspoken possibility of being different from how we present ourselves to others. This is true for me. Why does this distance exist between us? It’s a gap that can't be measured in kilometers or years; it is an emotional and spiritual divide that separates our hearts and minds. I have become someone who avoids personal interaction, and this makes me hesitant to see you again. I worry about the harsh things we might say to each other, which is why I am so cautious about contacting you as often as I should.

Fuller Warren had won the 1948 election by running as a moderate and promising to ease racial tension and violence in Florida. He’d denounced the Klansmen who paraded through Lake County on election night (with Sheriff Willis McCall following behind) as “hooded hoodlums and sheeted jerks,” and Moore cautiously held out some hope for the new governor. Warren had admitted to being a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, but renouncing his past, like many a politician before and since, he’d stated that he had joined years before “as a favor to a friend” and that he “never wore a hood.” Moore did not adopt a wait-and-see approach with the new governor.

As Christians we face two tasks in our evangelism: saving the soul and saving the mind, that is to say, not only converting people spiritually, but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. If the church loses the intellectual battle in one generation, then evangelism will become immeasurably more difficult in the next. The war is not yet lost, and it is one which we must not lose: souls of men and women hang in the balance. For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ Himself, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. Thinking about your faith is indeed a virtue, for it helps you to better understand and defend your faith. But thinking about your faith is not equivalent to doubting your faith. Doubt is never a purely intellectual problem. There is a spiritual dimension to the problem that must be recognized. Never lose sight of the fact that you are involved in spiritual warfare and there is an enemy of your soul who hates you intensely, whose goal is your destruction, and who will stop at nothing to destroy you. Reason can be used to defend our faith by formulating arguments for the existence of God or by refuting objections. But though the arguments so developed serve to confirm the truth of our faith, they are not properly the basis of our faith, for that is supplied by the witness of the Holy Spirit Himself. Even if there were no arguments in defense of the faith, our faith would still have its firm foundation. The more I learn, the more desperately ignorant I feel. Further study only serves to open up to one's consciousness all the endless vistas of knowledge, even in one's own field, about which one knows absolutely nothing. Don't let your doubts just sit there: pursue them and keep after them until you drive them into the ground. We should be cautious, indeed, about thinking that we have come upon the decisive disproof of our faith. It is pretty unlikely that we have found the irrefutable objection. The history of philosophy is littered with the wrecks of such objections. Given the confidence that the Holy Spirit inspires, we should esteem lightly the arguments and objections that generate our doubts. These, then, are some of the obstacles to answered prayer: sin in our lives, wrong motives, lack of faith, lack of earnestness, lack of perseverance, lack of accordance with God’s will. If any of those obstacles hinders our prayers, then we cannot claim with confidence Jesus’ promise, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it”. And so I was led to what was for me a radical new insight into the will of God, namely, that God’s will for our lives can include failure. In other words, God’s will may be that you fail, and He may lead you into failure! For there are things that God has to teach you through failure that He could never teach you through success. So many in our day seem to have been distracted from what was, is and always will be the true priority for every human being — that is, learning to know God in Christ. My greatest fear is that I should some day stand before the Lord and see all my works go up in smoke like so much “wood, hay, and stubble”. The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but knowledge of God. People tend naturally to assume that if God exists, then His purpose for human life is happiness in this life. God’s role is to provide a comfortable environment for His human pets. But on the Christian view, this is false. We are not God’s pets, and the goal of human life is not happiness per se, but the knowledge of God—which in the end will bring true and everlasting human fulfilment. Many evils occur in life which may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness; but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.

TO MASTER, FROM KREACHER. Harry stared at it. “D’you reckon this is safe to open?” he asked. “Can’t be anything dangerous, all our mail’s still being searched at the Ministry,” replied Ron, though he was eyeing the parcel suspiciously. “I didn’t think of giving Kreacher anything. Do people usually give their house-elves Christmas presents?” asked Harry, prodding the parcel cautiously. “Hermione would,” said Ron. “But let’s wait and see what it is before you start feeling guilty.” A moment later, Harry had given a loud yell and leapt out of his camp bed; the package contained a large number of maggots. “Nice,” said Ron, roaring with laughter. “Very thoughtful.

When had I tamed myself? It had been a lengthy apprenticeship, begun when I was as young as ten, and continued relentlessly throughout my adolescence, when I had discovered to my own terror that I wanted to murder somebody: my father, a sarcastic friend, my professor of Latin and Greek, even a rude passerby. It was not until I was almost twenty that I began to suspect that, along with the repression of my violent impulses, I had repressed everything, even my ability to experience a profound emotion, even my impulse to do good deeds and help others. I had become as good as I had hoped to be, but good with the cautious detachment of one who never indulges in excess.

When you're young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun. Then, you grow up and learn to be cautious. You could break a bone or a heart. You look before you leap and sometimes you don't leap at all because there's not always someone there to catch you. And in life, there's no safety net. When did it stop being fun and start being scary?

You didn't answer the question--what do you want to be?' she says, winding her scarf through her fingers. Britt-Marie's fingertips move hesitantly over her skirt, like a person moving across a dance floor to ask someone to dance. And then, cautiously, she utters the words: 'I want someone to remember I existed. I want someone to know I was here.

More often and more insistently as that time recedes, we are asked by the young who our "torturers" were, of what cloth were they made. The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries, some frantically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the SS "drill." Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let it be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must bee just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that the great majority of Germans who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride the "beautiful words" of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and lack of scruples favored him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by deaths, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game.

His Message at a High School Commencement “You guys are programmed to succeed. The hardest thing you’re ever going to do in your life is fail at something, and if you don’t start failing at things, you will not live a full life. You’ll be living a cautious life on a path that you know is pretty much guaranteed to more or less work. That’s not getting the most out of this amazing world we live in. You have to do the hardest thing that you have not been prepared for in this school or any school: You have to be prepared to fail. That’s how you’re going to expand yourself and grow. As you work through that process of failure and learning, you will really deepen into the human being you’re capable of being.

You don’t understand,” my dad said. “They stop you.” “Who? What are you talking about?” my mom asked. “That’s why I was being cautious.” “Who stops you?” “The police. If you’re white, or maybe Oriental, they let you drive however you want. But if you’re not, they stop you.” “Who told you that?” “The guys at the diner. That’s what they say. If you’re black or if you’re brown, they automatically think you’ve done something wrong.” “Rafa, that’s ridiculous. We’ve lived here for fifteen years. We’re citizens.” “The police don’t know that by looking at us. They see a brown face through the windshield and boom! Sirens!” My mom shook her head. “That’s what that was about?” “I didn’t want to give them reason to stop me.” “You were driving like a blind man, Rafa. That will give them reason to stop you.” “Everybody else just has to obey the law. We have to obey it twice as well.” “But that doesn’t mean you have to go twice as slow as everybody else!” The light turned green and my dad brought the car out of first. We cruised under the overpass, a shadow draping over the car like a blanket. “Next time, just try to blend in with everyone else and you’ll be fine,” my mom offered. “The way of the world,” my dad said. “What?” my mom asked as we emerged back into the sunlight. “Just trying to blend in. That’s the way of the world.” “Well, that’s the way of America, at least,” my mom said.

If you are forced to confront your fears on a daily basis, they disintegrate, like illusions when viewed up close. Maybe being always protected made me more fearful, and I would later dip cautiously into the outside world, never allowing myself to be submerged completely, and always jerking back into the familiarity of my own life when my senses were overwhelmed.

Then you can go home to the puppeteer worlds and tell them that mucking with human breeding habits is a chancy business. Tell them that enough Teela Browns could make a hash of all the laws of probability. Even basic physics is nothing more than probability at the atomic level. Tell them the universe is too complicated a toy for a sensibly cautious being to play with.

Then Christianity isn’t really opposed to science,” offered Anne cautiously. “No, it isn’t opposed to science at all,” concluded Melchizedek. “On the contrary, it motivates the examination of everything that God has created. But it also urges us to be morally prepared for the power that arises with that knowledge. And that’s a lesson human beings are far from grasping.

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; 'She once pulled up an onion in her garden,' said he, 'and gave it to a beggar woman.' And God answered: 'You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.' The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. 'Come,' said he, 'catch hold and I'll pull you out.' he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. 'I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.' As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.

She sat back again, a gentle loosening that made her straight spine seem effortless and restful. Again she did nothing. She simply sat across from me and unfurled herself. I felt her life brush up against me and flow around me. It was but the faintest touching, and had I not experienced both the Skill and the Wit, I do not think I would have sensed it. Cautiously, as softly as if I assayed a bridge made of cobweb, I overlay my senses on hers. She quested. Not as I did, toward a specific beast, or to read what might be close by. I discarded the word I had always given to my sensing. Kettricken did not seek after anything with her Wit. It was as she said, simply a being, but it was being a part of the whole. She composed herself and considered all the ways the great web touched her, and was content. It was a delicate and tenuous thing and I marveled at it. For an instant I, too, relaxed. I breathed out. I opened myself, Wit wide to all. I discarded all caution, all worry that Burrich would sense me. I had never done anything to compare it with before. Kettricken's reaching was as delicate as droplets of dew sliding down a strand of spiderweb. I was like a dammed flood, suddenly released, to rush out to fill old channels to overflowing and to send fingers of water investigating the lowlands. Let us hunt! The Wolf, joyfully. In the stables, Burrich straightened from cleaning a hoof, to frown at no one. Sooty stamped in her stall. Molly shrugged away and shook out her hair. Across from me, Kettricken started and looked at me as if I had spoken aloud. A moment more I was held, seized from a thousand sides, stretched and expanded, illuminated pitilessly. I felt it all, not just the human folk with their comings and goings, but every pigeon that fluttered in the eaves, every mouse that crept unnoticed behind the wine kegs, every speck of life, that was not and never had been a speck, but had always been a node on the web of life. Nothing alone, nothing forsaken, nothing without meaning, nothing of no significance, and nothing of importance.

We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.

CLARITIES OF FAITH Not that there are no clarities in the life of faith. There are. Vast, soaring harmonies; deep, satisfying meanings; rich, textured experiences. But these clarities develop from within. They cannot be imposed from without. They cannot be hurried. It is not a matter of hurriedly arranging "dead things into a dead mosaic, but of living forces into a great equilibrium."' The clarities of faith are organic and personal, not mechanical and institutional. Faith invades the muddle; it does not eliminate it. Peace develops in the midst of chaos. Harmony is achieved slowly, quietly, unobtrusively-like the effects of salt and light. Such clarities result from a courageous commitment to God, not from controlling or being controlled by others. Such clarities come from adventuring deep into the mysteries of God's will and love, not by cautiously managing and moralizing in ways that minimize risk and guarantee self-importance. These clarities can only be experienced in acts of faith and only recognized with the eyes of faith. Jeremiah's life was brilliantly supplied with such clarities, but they were always surrounded by hopeless disarray. Sometimes devout and sometimes despairing, Jeremiah doubted himself and God. But these internal agonies never seemed to have interfered with his vocation and his commitment. He argued with God but he did not abandon him. He was clear

From the perspective of nearly half a century, the Battle of Hue and the entire Vietnam War seem a tragic and meaningless waste. So much heroism and slaughter for a cause that now seems dated and nearly irrelevant. The whole painful experience ought to have (but has not) taught Americans to cultivate deep regional knowledge in the practice of foreign policy, and to avoid being led by ideology instead of understanding. The United States should interact with other nations realistically, first, not on the basis of domestic political priorities. Very often the problems in distant lands have little or nothing to do with America’s ideological preoccupations. Beware of men with theories that explain everything. Trust those who approach the world with humility and cautious insight. The United States went to war in Vietnam in the name of freedom, to stop the supposed monolithic threat of Communism from spreading across the globe like a dark stain—I remember seeing these cartoons as a child. There were experts, people who knew better, who knew the languages and history of Southeast Asia, who had lived and worked there, who tried to tell Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon that the conflict in Vietnam was peculiar to that place. They were systematically ignored and pushed aside. David Halberstam’s classic The Best and the Brightest documents this process convincingly. America had every right to choose sides in the struggle between Hanoi and Saigon, even to try to influence the outcome, but lacking a legitimate or even marginally capable ally its military effort was misguided and doomed. At the very least, Vietnam should stand as a permanent caution against going to war for any but the most immediate, direct, and vital national interest, or to prevent genocide or wider conflict, and then only in concert with other countries. After

Go away,” she said voicelessly. Aureliano, smiled, picked her up by the waist with both hands like a pot of begonias, and dropped her on her back on the bed. With a brutal tug he pulled off her bathrobe before she had time to resist and he loomed over an abyss of newly washed nudity whose skin color, lines of fuzz, and hidden moles had all been imagined in the shadows of the other rooms. Amaranta Úrsula defended herself sincerely with the astuteness of a wise woman, weaseling her slippery, flexible, and fragrant weasel’s body as she tried to knee him in the kidneys and scorpion his face with her nails, but without either of them giving a gasp that might not have been taken for that”“breathing of a person watching the meager April sunset through the open window. It was a fierce fight, a battle to the death, but it seemed to be without violence because it consisted of distorted attacks and ghostly evasions, slow, cautious, solemn, so that during it all there was time for the petunias to bloom and for Gaston to forget about his aviator’s dream in the next room, as if they were two enemy lovers seeking reconciliation at the bottom of an aquarium. In the heat of that savage and ceremonious struggle, Amaranta Úrsula understood that her meticulous silence was so irrational that it could awaken the suspicions of her nearby husband much more than the sound of warfare that they were trying to avoid. Then she began to laugh with her lips tight together, without giving up the fight, but defending herself with false bites and deweaseling her body little by little until they both were conscious of being adversaries and accomplices at the same time and the affray degenerated into a conventional gambol and the attacks became”“caresses. Suddenly, almost playfully, like one more bit of mischief, Amaranta Úrsula dropped her defense, and when she tried to recover, frightened by what she herself had made possible, it was too late. A great commotion immobilized her in her center of gravity, planted her in her place, and her defensive will was demolished by the irresistible anxiety to discover what the orange whistles and the invisible globes on the other side of death were like. She barely had time to reach out her hand and grope for the towel to put a gag between her teeth so that she would not let out the cat howls that were already tearing at her insides.

Being indebted is to be cautious, inhibited, and to never speak out of turn. It is to lead a life constrained by choices that are never your own. The man or woman who feels comfortable holding court at a dinner party will speak in long sentences, with heightened dramatic pauses, assured that no one will interject while they’re mid-thought, whereas I, who am grateful to be invited, speak quickly in clipped compressed bursts, so that I can get a word in before I’m interrupted.

The prisoners were handcuffed together, and it was these hands that caught Martha’s attention: the working hands, clasped together by broad and gleaming steel, held carefully at waist level, steady against the natural movement of swinging arms—the tender dark flesh cautious against the bite of the metal. These people were being taken to the magistrate for being caught at night after curfew, or forgetting to carry one of the passes which were obligatory, or—but there were a dozen reasons, each as flimsy.

Noble morality! and consistent with the cautious prudence of a little soul that cannot extend its views beyond the present minute division of existence. If all the faculties of woman's mind are only to be cultivated as they respect her dependence on man; if, when she obtains a husband she has arrived at her goal, and meanly proud, is satisfied with such a paltry crown, let her grovel contentedly, scarcely raised by her employments above the animal kingdom; but, if she is struggling for the prize of her high calling, let her cultivate her understanding without stopping to consider what character the husband may have whom she is destined to marry. Let her only determine, without being too anxious about present happiness, to acquire the qualities that ennoble a rational being, and a rough, inelegant husband may shock her taste without destroying her peace of mind. She will not model her soul to suit the frailties of her companion, but to bear with them: his character may be a trial, but not an impediment to virtue.

To conclude then: fortune varies but men go on regardless. When their approach suits the times they’re successful, and when it doesn’t they’re not. My opinion on the matter is this: it’s better to be impulsive than cautious; fortune is female and if you want to stay on top of her you have to slap and thrust. You’ll see she’s more likely to yield that way than to men who go about her coldly. And being a woman she likes her men young, because they’re not so cagey, they’re wilder and more daring when they master her.

The whole experience ought to have (but has not) taught Americans to cultivate deep regional knowledge in the practice of foreign policy, and to avoid being led by ideology instead of understanding. The United States should interact with other nations realistically, not on the basis of domestic political priorities. Very often the problems in distant lands have little or nothing to do with America's ideological preoccupations. Beware of men with theories that explain everything. Trust those who approach the world with humility and cautious insight.

things had become—if not good, then they had at least stopped being bad, which they accepted as the same thing. But it was only in retrospect that they had been able to recognize it as a sort of fulcrum, as the period in which there were first days, and then weeks, and then an entire month in which nothing got worse, in which they regained the trick of waking each day with not dread but with purpose, in which they were finally, cautiously, able to talk about the future, to worry not just about making it successfully through the day but into days they couldn’t yet imagine.

He sat down among the evidence at a barren communal desk in the basement of the station. He looked through the stack of extra fliers that my father had made up. He had memorized my face, but still he looked at them. He had come to believe that the best hope in my case might be the recent rise in development in the area. With all the land churning and changing, perhaps other clues whould be found that would provide the answer he needed. In the bottom of the box was the bag with my jingle-bell hat. When he'd handled it to my mother, she had collasped on the rug. He still couldn't pinpoint the moment he'd fallen in love with her. I knew it was the day he'd sat in our family room while my mother drew stick figures on butcher paper and Buckley and Nate slept toe to toe on the couch. I felt sorry for him. He had tried to solve my murder and he failed. He had tried to love my mother and he had failed. Len looked at the drawing of the cornfield that Lindsey had stolen and forced himself to acknowledge this: in his cautiousness, he had allowed a murderer to get away. He could not shake his guilt. He knew, if no one else did, that by being with my mother in the mall that day he was the one to blame for George Harvey's freedom. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and laid down the photos of all the unsolved cases he had ever worked on. Among them were his wife's. He turned them all face-down. 'Gone,' he wrote on each one of them. He would no longer wait for a date to mark an understanding of who or why or how. He would never understand all the reasons why his wife had killed herself. He would never understand how so many children went missing. He placed these photos in the box with my evidence and turned the lights off in the cold room.

Be cautious then, young ladies; be wary how you engage. Be shy of loving frankly; never tell all you feel, or (a better way still), feel very little. See the consequences of being prematurely honest and confiding, and mistrust yourselves and everybody. Get yourselves married as they do in France, where the lawyers are the bridesmaids and confidantes. At any rate, never have any feelings which may make you uncomfortable, or make any promises which you cannot at any required moment command and withdraw. That is the way to get on, and be respected, and have a virtuous character in Vanity Fair.

But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome.

Never think she loves him wholly, Never believe her love is blind, All his faults are locked securely In a closet of her mind; All his indecisions folded Like old flags that time has faded, Limp and streaked with rain, And his cautiousness like garments Frayed and thin, with many a stain— Let them be, oh let them be. There is treasure to outweigh them, His proud will that sharply stirred, Climbs as surely as the tide. Senses strained too taut to sleep, Gentleness to beast and bird, Humor flickering hushed and wide, As the moon on moving water, And a tenderness too deep To be gathered in a word.

Have you swallowed all that war stuff?" "No, of course I--" I was so committed to refuting him that I had half-denied the charge before I understood it; now my eyes swung back to his face. "All what war stuff?" "All that stuff about there being a war." "I don't think I get what you mean." "Do you really think that the United States of America is in a state of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?" "Do I really think..." My voice trailed off. He stood up, his weight on the good leg, the other resting lightly on the floor in front of him. "Don't be a sap," he gazed with cool self-possession at me, "there isn't any war." "I know why you're talking like this," I said, struggling to keep up with him. "Now I understand. You're still under the influence of some medicinal drug." "No, you are. Everybody is." He pivoted so that he was facing directly at me. "That's what this whole war story is. A medicinal drug. Listen, did you ever hear of the 'Roaring Twenties'?" I nodded very slowly and cautiously. "When they all drank bathtub gin and everybody who was young did just was they wanted?" "Yes." "Well, what happened was that they didn't like that, the preachers and the old ladies and all the stuffed shirts. So then they tried Prohibition and everybody just got drunker, so then they really got desperate and arranged the Depression. That kept the people who were young in the thirties in their places. But they couldn't use that trick forever, so for us in the forties they've cooked up this war fake." "Who are 'they' anyway?" "The fat old men who don't want us crowding them out of their jobs. They've made it all up. There isn't any real food shortage, for instance. The men have all the best steaks delivered to their clubs now. You've noticed how they've been getting fatter lately, haven't you?

In the beginning, there’s a blank mind. Then that mind gets an idea in it, and the trouble begins, because the mind mistakes the idea for the world. Mistaking the idea for the world, the mind formulates a theory and, having formulated a theory, feels inclined to act. Because the idea is always only an approximation of the world, whether that action will be catastrophic or beneficial depends on the distance between the idea and the world. Mass media’s job is to provide this simulacra of the world, upon which we build our ideas. There’s another name for this simulacra-building: storytelling. Megaphone Guy is a storyteller, but his stories are not so good. Or rather, his stories are limited. His stories have not had time to gestate—they go out too fast and to too broad an audience. Storytelling is a language-rich enterprise, but Megaphone Guy does not have time to generate powerful language. The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don’t know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them—if the storytelling is good enough—we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If the story is poor, or has an agenda, if it comes out of a paucity of imagination or is rushed, we imagine those other people as essentially unlike us: unknowable, inscrutable, inconvertible. Our venture in Iraq was a literary failure, by which I mean a failure of imagination. A culture better at imagining richly, three-dimensionally, would have had a greater respect for war than we did, more awareness of the law of unintended consequences, more familiarity with the world’s tendency to throw aggressive energy back at the aggressor in ways he did not expect. A culture capable of imagining complexly is a humble culture. It acts, when it has to act, as late in the game as possible, and as cautiously, because it knows its own girth and the tight confines of the china shop it’s blundering into. And it knows that no matter how well-prepared it is—no matter how ruthlessly it has held its projections up to intelligent scrutiny—the place it is headed for is going to be very different from the place it imagined. The shortfall between the imagined and the real, multiplied by the violence of one’s intent, equals the evil one will do.

This is a perfect example of how a control drama interferes,” he said. “You were so aloof you didn’t allow an important coincidence to take place.” I must have appeared defensive. “It’s all right,” he said, “everyone plays a drama of one kind or another. At least now you understand how yours works.” “I don’t understand!” I said. “What exactly am I doing?” “Your way of controlling people and situations,” he explained, “in order to get energy coming your way, is to create this drama in your mind during which you withdraw and look mysterious and secretive. You tell yourself that you’re being cautious but what you’re really doing is hoping someone will be pulled into this drama and will try to figure out what’s going on with you. When someone does, you remain vague, forcing them to struggle and dig and try to discern your true feelings. “As they do so, they give you their full attention and that sends their energy to you. The longer you can keep them interested and mystified, the more energy you receive. Unfortunately, when you play aloof, your life tends to evolve very slowly because you’re repeating this same scene over and over again. If you had opened up to Rolando, your life movie would have taken off in a new and meaningful direction.

It is a positive sign that a growing number of social movements are recognizing that indigenous self-determination must become the foundation for all our broader social justice mobilizing. Indigenous peoples are the most impacted by the pillage of lands, experience disproportionate poverty and homelessness, and overrepresented in statistics of missing an murdered women, and are the primary targets of repressive policing and prosecutions in the criminal injustice system. Rather than being treated as a single issue within a laundry list of demands, indigenous self-determination is increasingly understood as intertwined with struggles against racism, poverty, police violence, war and occupation, violence against women, and environmental justice. ... We have to be cautious to avoid replicating the state's assimilationist model of liberal pluralism, whereby indigenous identities are forced to fit within our existing groups and narratives. ... Indigenous struggle cannot simply be accommodated within other struggles; it demands solidarity on its own terms. Original blog post: Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory and Practice. Quoted In: Decolonize Together: Moving beyond a Politics of Solidarity toward a Practice of Decolonization. Taking Sides.

There was nothing wrong with being able to handle things herself. Nothing wrong with wanting to.And she did appreciate Brian's help. And she didn't need caffeine. "I like caffeine," she grumbled. "I enjoy it, and that's entirely different from needing it.Entirely.I could give it up anytime I wanted, and I'd barely miss it." Annoyed,she snagged the soft drink she'd left on a shelf and guzzled. All right,so maybe she would miss it. But only beause she liked the taste. It wasn't like a craving or an addiction or... She couldn't say why Brian popped into her head just then.She was certain if he'd seen her staring in a kind of horror at a soft drink bottle, he'd have been amused.It was debatable what his reaction would be if he'd realized she wasn't actually seeing the bottle, but his face. No,that wasn't a need, either, she thought quickly. She did not need Brian Donnelly. It was attraction.Affection-a cautious kind of affection.He was a man who interested her, and whom she admired in many ways. But it wasn't as if she needed... "Oh God." It had to be overreaction, she decided, and set the bottle aside as carefully as she would have a container of nitro. What she was going through was something as simple as overromanticizing an affair. That would be natural enough, she told herself, particularly sice this was her first. She didn't want to be in love with him. She began wielding the pitchfork vigorously now, as if to sweat out a fever.She didn't choose to be in love with him. That was even more important.When her hands trembled she ignored them and worked harder still. By the time her mother joined her, Keeley had herself under control enough to casually ask Adelia to work in the office while she exervised Sam. Keeley Grant had never run from a problem in her life,and she wasn't about to start now.She saddled her mount,then rode off to clear her head before she dealt with the problem at hand.

surprised to find that it had both Burhanpur and Khandwa marked on it. To her they seemed so far away from Kolkata that she wondered whether it was possible I could have traveled that distance. It was almost all the way across an enormous country. The first thing that hit me was that my home had been marked on the map above my desk the whole time, if I’d only known where to look. How many times had I looked at all those names, not knowing their secrets? I don’t remember if I ever noticed Burhanpur among the several similar names on the map when I was younger; if I had, I’d obviously written it off, probably as being too far from Kolkata. And that was the second thing—it was much farther than I thought possible. Was it too far? Did the trains go much faster than everyone had allowed for? Or had I been on the train for longer than I thought? Two surreal days passed. I was stuck between maps and memories. The things I’d always been so certain about were dissolving in the face of what I’d found. Were my greatest fears coming to fruition? Would the search erode what I thought I knew and leave me with nothing? My parents, Lisa, and I didn’t talk much more about my breakthrough over the next couple of days, and I wondered whether they were being overly cautious or waiting for me

But I can cite ten other reasons for not being a father." "First of all, I don't like motherhood," said Jakub, and he broke off pensively. "Our century has already unmasked all myths. Childhood has long ceased to be an age of innocence. Freud discovered infant sexuality and told us all about Oedipus. Only Jocasta remains untouchable; no one dares tear off her veil. Motherhood is the last and greatest taboo, the one that harbors the most grievous curse. There is no stronger bond than the one that shackles mother to child. This bond cripples the child's soul forever and prepares for the mother, when her son has grown up, the most cruel of all the griefs of love. I say that motherhood is a curse, and I refuse to contribute to it." "Another reason I don't want to add to the number of mothers," said Jakub with some embarrassment, "is that I love the female body, and I am disgusted by the thought of my beloved's breast becoming a milk-bag." "The doctor here will certainly confirm that physicians and nurses treat women hospitalized after an aborted pregnancy more harshly than those who have given birth, and show some contempt toward them even though they themselves will, at least once in their lives, need a similar operation. But for them it's a reflex stronger than any kind of thought, because the cult of procreation is an imperative of nature. That's why it's useless to look for the slightest rational argument in natalist propaganda. Do you perhaps think it's the voice of Jesus you're hearing in the natalist morality of the church? Do you think it's the voice of Marx you're hearing in the natalist propaganda of the Communist state? Impelled merely by the desire to perpetuate the species, mankind will end up smothering itself on its small planet. But the natalist propaganda mill grinds on, and the public is moved to tears by pictures of nursing mothers and infants making faces. It disgusts me. It chills me to think that, along with millions of other enthusiasts, I could be bending over a cradle with a silly smile." "And of course I also have to ask myself what sort of world I'd be sending my child into. School soon takes him away to stuff his head with the falsehoods I've fought in vain against all my life. Should I see my son become a conformist fool? Or should I instill my own ideas into him and see him suffer because he'll be dragged into the same conflicts I was?" "And of course I also have to think of myself. In this country children pay for their parents' disobedience, and parents for their children's disobedience. How many young people have been denied education because their parents fell into disgrace? And how many parents have chosen permanent cowardice for the sole purpose of preventing harm to their children? Anyone who wants to preserve at least some freedom here shouldn't have children," Jakub said, and fell into silence. "The last reason carries so much weight that it counts for five," said Jakub. "Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that it merits being duplicated." "And you have not found life to be good?" asked Bertlef. Jakub tried to be precise, and said cautiously: "All I know is that I could never say with complete conviction: Man is a wonderful being and I want to reproduce him.

Sam woke to a feeling of utter, profound, incredible relief. He closed his eyes as soon as he opened them, afraid that being awake would just invite something terrible to appear. Astrid was back. And she was asleep with her head on his arm. His arm was asleep, completely numb, but as long as that blond head was right there his arm could stay numb. She smelled like pine trees and campfire smoke. He opened his eyes, cautious, almost flinching, because the FAYZ didn’t make a habit of allowing him pure, undiluted happiness. The FAYZ made a habit of stomping on anything that looked even a little bit like happiness. And this level of happiness was surely tempting retaliation. From this high up the fall could be a long, long one.

Shyness is not necessarily a problem. It can be a very nice aspect of your personality. Many introverted celebrities, such as Chelsea Clinton and the late Princess Diana, are considered sophisticated and classy because of their reserved personalities. Shyness can make you appear intelligent, discreet, and circumspect. Shy people are valued as good listeners and are more likely to be considered kindhearted, conscientious, and trustworthy. They rarely are overaggressive or obnoxious and usually try not to act in ways that hurt others. A degree of shyness also allows you to be cautious and judge situations before jumping into them. You can stand back, observe, make careful decisions, and then act deliberately. With all of these positive qualities, it is no surprise that between 10 and 20 percent of those who consider themselves shy like their personalities and don’t want to change. They are comfortable with being quiet and are confident that when they do have something to say others will pay attention. Distinguishing social anxiety from normal shyness is sometimes difficult. It has to do with the level of distress and impairment associated with social fears. If you prefer being quiet and listening to others and you feel comfortable with that role, you probably don’t have social anxiety. On the other hand, if you don’t speak up because you are afraid others won’t like what you say or you are terrified of sounding foolish, you most likely have a degree of social anxiety.

What's the trouble?" I said, knowing well what that trouble was. "I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion!" There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth. "It looks such awful rot now," he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?" I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: "Perhaps you don't feel in the mood for writing." "Yes I do--except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!" "Read me what you've done," I said. "He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be. "It needs compression," I suggested, cautiously. "I hate cutting my things down. I don't think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it." "Charlie, you're suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week." "I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?" "How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in your head." Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked at him, and wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by notions not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be folly to allow his idea to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!

About a month later, we left for our final training exercise, maneuvers on the planet Charon. Though nearing perihelion, it was still more than twice as far from the sun as Pluto. The troopship was a converted “cattlewagon” made to carry two hundred colonists and assorted bushes and beasts. Don’t think it was roomy, though, just because there were half that many of us. Most of the excess space was taken up with extra reaction mass and ordnance. The whole trip took three weeks, accelerating at two gees halfway, decelerating the other half. Our top speed, as we roared by the orbit of Pluto, was around one-twentieth of the speed of light—not quite enough for relativity to rear its complicated head. Three weeks of carrying around twice as much weight as normal…it’s no picnic. We did some cautious exercises three times a day and remained horizontal as much as possible. Still, we got several broken bones and serious dislocations. The men had to wear special supporters to keep from littering the floor with loose organs. It was almost impossible to sleep; nightmares of choking and being crushed, rolling over periodically to prevent blood pooling and bedsores. One girl got so fatigued that she almost slept through the experience of having a rib push out into the open air. I’d been in space several times before, so when we finally stopped decelerating and went into free fall, it was nothing but relief. But some people had never been out, except for our training on the moon, and succumbed to the sudden vertigo and disorientation. The rest of us cleaned up after them, floating through the quarters with

Indeed, on close inspection one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire convictions from a thinker and nothing but convictions, and that only a small minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself and labels himself as a genius, and thus views himself as a higher being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind upholds the ardour of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it may think itself the wooer thereof.

How he enjoyed this preliminary interlocking of words and actions, this cautious and cunning scattering of the first grains of the powder-trail that should lead to some desired explosion, great or small... This moving about of human beings and influencing, if only in small ways, the pattern of their lives, was what he liked doing best next to wandering, in a dream, yet observing and hearing all that was going on about him... he saw the people whose lives he was thus gently fingering not as living beings but as characters, even as he was a character, in a story: and they were linked and mingled , too, in a kind of strongly pleasurable confusion, with the manuscript, growing ever more stained and inter-and-over corrected and crossed, which he carried in the portfolio that hardly ever left its place against his side.

the hidden benefits of the introverted temperament—for workplaces, personal relationships and society as a whole. Introverts may be able to fit all their friends in a phone booth, but those relationships tend to be deep and rewarding. Introverts are more cautious and deliberate than extroverts, but that means they tend to think things through more thoroughly, which means they can often make smarter decisions. Introverts are better at listening—which, after all, is easier to do if you’re not talking—and that in turn can make them better business leaders, especially if their employees feel empowered to act on their own initiative. And simply by virtue of their ability to sit still and focus, introverts find it easier to spend long periods in solitary work, which turns out to be the best way to come up with a fresh idea or master a skill.

Before the troops left Rome, the consul Varro made a number of extremely arrogant speeches. The nobles, he complained, were directly responsible for the war on Italian soil, and it would continue to prey upon the country's vitals if there were any more commanders on the Fabian model. He himself, on the contrary, would bring it to an end on the day he first caught sight of the enemy. His colleague Paullus spoke only once before the army marched, and in words which though true were hardly popular. His only harsh criticism of Varro was to express his surprise about how any army commander, while still at Rome, in his civilian clothes, could possibly know what his task on the field of battle would be, before he had become acquainted either with his own troops or the enemy's or had any idea of the lie and nature of the country where he was to operate--or how he could prophesy exactly when a pitched battle would occur. As for himself, he refused to recommend any sort of policy prematurely; for policy was moulded by circumstance, not circumstance by policy. . . . [T]o strengthen [Paullus'] determination Fabius (we are told) spoke to him at his departure in the following words. 'If, Lucius Aemilius, you were like your colleague, or if--which I should much prefer--you had a colleague like yourself, anything I could now say would be superfluous. Two good consuls would serve the country well in virtue of their own sense of honour, without any words from me; and two bad consuls would not accept my advice, nor even listen to me. But as things are, I know your colleague's qualities and I know your own, so it is to you alone I address myself, understanding as I do that all your courage and patriotism will be in vain, if our country must limp on one sound leg and one lame one. With the two of you equal in command, bad counsels will be backed by the same legal authority as good ones; for you are wrong, Paullus, if you think to find less opposition from Varro than from Hannibal. Hannibal is your enemy, Varro your rival, but I hardly know which will prove the more hostile to your designs; with the former you will be contending only on the field of battle, but with the latter everywhere and always. . . . [I]t is not the enemy who will make it difficult and dangerous for you to tread, but your fellow-countrymen. Your own men will want precisely what the enemy wants; the wishes of Varro, the Roman consul, will play straight into the hands of Hannibal, commander-in-chief of the Carthaginian armies. You will have two generals against you; but you will stand firm against both, if you can steel yourself to ignore the tongues of men who will defame you--if you remain unmoved by the empty glory your colleague seeks and the false infamy he tries to bring upon yourself. . . . Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth, your generalship weakness; it is better that a wise enemy should fear you than that foolish friends should praise. Hannibal will despise a reckless antagonist, but he will fear a cautious one. Not that I wish you to do nothing--all I want is that your actions should be guided by a reasoned policy, all risks avoided; that the conduct of the war should be controlled by you at all times; that you should neither lay aside your sword nor relax your vigilance but seize the opportunity that offers, while never giving the enemy a chance to take you at a disadvantage. Go slowly, and all will be clear and sure. Haste is always improvident and blind.

HOW DO THEY RECEIVE ME? They call me “little girl,” “dear daughter,” “dear child.” Probably if I was of their generation they would behave differently with me. Calmly and as equals. Without joy and amazement, which are the gifts of the meeting between youth and age. It is a very important point, that then they were young and now, as they remember, they are old. They remember across their life—across forty years. They open their world to me cautiously, to spare me: “I got married right after the war. I hid behind my husband. Behind the humdrum, behind baby diapers. I wanted to hide. My mother also begged: ‘Be quiet! Be quiet! Don’t tell.’ I fulfilled my duty to the Motherland, but it makes me sad that I was there. That I know about it…And you are very young. I feel sorry for you…” I often see how they sit and listen to themselves. To the sound of their own soul. They check it against the words. After long years a person understands that this was life, but now it’s time to resign yourself and get ready to go. You don’t want to, and it’s too bad to vanish just like that. Casually. In passing. And when you look back you feel a wish not only to tell about your life, but also to fathom the mystery of life itself. To answer your own question: Why did all this happen to me? You gaze at everything with a parting and slightly sorrowful look…Almost from the other side…No longer any need to deceive anyone or yourself. It’s already clear to you that without the thought of death it is impossible to make out anything in a human being. Its mystery hangs over everything. War is an all too intimate experience. And as boundless as human life… Once a woman (a pilot) refused to meet with me. She explained on the phone: “I can’t…I don’t want to remember. I spent three years at war…And for three years I didn’t feel myself a woman. My organism was dead. I had no periods, almost no woman’s desires. And I was beautiful…When my future husband proposed to me…that was already in Berlin, by the Reichstag…He said: ‘The war’s over. We’re still alive. We’re lucky. Let’s get married.’ I wanted to cry. To shout. To hit him! What do you mean, married? Now? In the midst of all this—married? In the midst of black soot and black bricks…Look at me…Look how I am! Begin by making me a woman: give me flowers, court me, say beautiful words. I want it so much! I wait for it! I almost hit him…I was about to…He had one cheek burned, purple, and I see: he understood everything, tears are running down that cheek. On the still-fresh scars…And I myself can’t believe I’m saying to him: ‘Yes, I’ll marry you.’ “Forgive me…I can’t…” I understood her.

They call me “little girl,” “dear daughter,” “dear child.” Probably if I was of their generation they would behave differently with me. Calmly and as equals. Without joy and amazement, which are the gifts of the meeting between youth and age. It is a very important point, that then they were young and now, as they remember, they are old. They remember across their life—across forty years. They open their world to me cautiously, to spare me: “I got married right after the war. I hid behind my husband. Behind the humdrum, behind baby diapers. I wanted to hide. My mother also begged: ‘Be quiet! Be quiet! Don’t tell.’ I fulfilled my duty to the Motherland, but it makes me sad that I was there. That I know about it… And you are very young. I feel sorry for you…” I often see how they sit and listen to themselves. To the sound of their own soul. They check it against the words.

Traditionally, sensitive people have been the scientists, counselors, theologians, historians, lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, and artists (for example, at one time sensitive people naturally became their town’s schoolmaster or -mistress, preacher, or family doctor). But, increasingly, sensitive persons are being nudged out of all these fields due to what seems to be a cycle that starts with the nonsensitive moving aggressively into decision-making roles, where they, quite naturally due to their temperaments, devalue cautious decision making, emphasize short-term profits or flashy results assertively presented over a quieter concern for consistent quality and long-term consequences, and do not need and so eliminate calm work environments and reasonable work schedules. Sensitive people are discounted, have less influence, suffer, or quit. Then the nonsensitive control the profession even more.

A Safety Travel with Sinclair James International Traveling to somewhere completely foreign to you may be challenging but that is what travelers always look for. It can be a good opportunity to find something new and discover new places, meet new people and try a different culture. However, it can involve a lot of risk as well. You may be surprised to find yourself naked and penniless on the side of the road trying to figure out what you did wrong. These kinds of situations come rarely when you are careful and cautious enough but it is not impossible. Sinclair James International Travel and Tours, your Australian based traveling guide can help you travel safely through the following tips: 1. Pack all Security Items In case of emergencies, you should have all the safety tools and security items with you. Carry a card with your name and number with you and don’t forget to scribble down the numbers of local police station, fire department, list of hospitals and other necessary numbers that you may need. Place them in each compartment and on your pockets. If ever you find yourself being a victim of pick pocketing in Manila, Philippines or being driven around in circles in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, you will definitely find these numbers very helpful. It is also advisable to put your name and an emergency number in case you are in trouble and may need someone else to call. 2. Protect your Passport Passports nowadays have RFID which can be scanned from a distance. We have heard some complaints from fellow travelers of being victims of scams which involves stealing of information through passports. An RFID blocking case in a wallet may come in handy to prevent hackers from stealing your information. 3. Beware of Taxis When you exit the airport, taxis may all look the same but some of them can be hiding a defective scam to rob tourists during their drive. It is better to ask an official before taking a taxi as many unmarked ones claim that they are legitimate. Also, if the fare isn’t flat rate, be sure you know the possible routes. Some drivers will know better and will take good care of you, but others will take longer routes to increase the fare. If you know your options, you can suggest a different route to avoid paying too much. 4. Be aware of your Rights Laws change from state to state, and certainly from country to country, but ignorance to them will get you nowhere. In fact, in many cases you can get yourself out of trouble by knowing the laws that will affect you. When traveling to other countries, make sure to review the laws and policies that can affect your activities. There are a lot of misconceptions and knowing these could save you a headache. Sinclair James International

I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about me wearing the engagement ring,” Shay said to Michael from behind the wheel of his Range Rover. Before he had a chance to respond, she shifted from reverse to drive and shot out of the parking lot. Straight into oncoming traffic. “Shay, watch out for . . . ” He trailed off, his heart in his throat as she expertly avoided being creamed by another speeding SUV. With his hand still gripping the door and his foot pressed on the floor as if he could somehow miraculously slow the vehicle down, Michael said, “Obviously the ring is a big deal to you or you wouldn’t be trying to kill me.” “Being aggressive will save you. Being cautious, that’s what’ll kill you.” “No doubt you’ll live to be a hundred and ten, then.” He relaxed when the speedometer needle inched down toward a more reasonable speed. “I’m taking it that your life lesson only refers to driving; otherwise you would’ve been applauding my efforts at the club.” She glanced at him, a smile tipping up the corner of her mouth. “So, you actually choked on purpose to cozy up to Costello’s hired henchman and disrupted the dancer’s performance so the bouncers would haul you to Kozack’s office?” He ignored everything else but the part that would get him an answer to his earlier question. “I choked because you took my breath away, and—” She laughed. “Either you’re easily impressed or you don’t get out to many strip clubs. Kozack was going to fire me even before he found me in his office.” “Neither is true, but you didn’t let me finish. As incredible as you looked doing what you were doing on that pole, I choked because I saw the engagement ring on the chain around your neck.” He leaned across the console and slid his hand beneath her leather jacket. Her skin was like satin, and he could smell her warm, floral scent. The temptation to press his face to the tender spot between her shoulder and neck almost overwhelmed him. It was one of his favorite places to kiss her. One of her favorite places to be kissed.

Gregori approached the tiny being cautiously. The extent of the trauma was enormous. The baby was fading as blood gushed from its mother’s body. He could feel its willingness to slide away from the pain and outrage of the assault. He could only hope Shea would stop the bleeding quickly, as he had to concentrate on the child. She was so tiny, almost nonexistent, yet he could feel her pain and her puzzlement. She knew fear before she was born, knew pain, and now held forever the knowledge that life was not safe, even here in her mother’s womb. Gregori murmured softly, reassuringly, to her. He had bathed her in his light once before, and she recognized him now, moved toward him, seeking comfort. Very carefully he attended to the wound in the artery that supplied her with nourishment. Very soon he would give her his own blood, sealing her fate, binding her ever closer to him. There were several tears in the placenta, which he meticulously sealed. She was afraid as his light floated closer, so he provided waves of reassurance and warmth. There was a laceration in her right thigh. It hurt, and blood was seeping into the fluid surrounding her. With the lightest of touches he closed the wound, his touch lingering to calm her. His chant, the low pitch of his voice, echoed in her heart, in her mind, invading her soul. Gregori talked to her as he worked, the purity of his tone beguiling her, soothing her, so that she stayed with Raven rather than simply letting go, fading away with the steady trickle of blood. Gregori could feel the strength in her, the determination. Without a doubt, she was Mikhail and Raven’s daughter. If she chose to go, she would do so, but if she chose to stay, she would fight with every breath left in her body. Gregori made certain she wanted to fight. He whispered to her in his most beguiling voice, promised a fascinating future, lured her with the secrets and beauty of the universe awaiting her. He promised her she would never be left alone; he would be there to guide her, to protect her, to see to her happiness.

I believe all of us want the same things - we're all together, the industrial workers and the women and the farmers and the negro race and the Asiatic colonies, and even a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, in all the classes that have waited and taken advice. I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, "Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it, trust us, we're wiser than you." For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia NOW - we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is - everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We shan't get it. So we shan't ever be content.

The existence of God is a matter of feeling! It is not a formula of algebra that we sit down and prove! If we carefully observe the humans, animals, nature etc., then the existence of God can certainly be felt. Say, I mentioned in one of my Facebook posts that the 4 fingers of our hands are located side by side but one finger, that is, the thumb is much away from other fingers, structurally small and much different compared to other fingers. Now, it would be foolishness to say that the location of the thumb is such by coincidence. God knows it well that if all the fingers in the hands were of same size and structure, then it would be rather difficult or impossible for us to hold anything or do any work! So, He placed the thumb of our hands in the distance. It would be clearer if I explain it in a different way. As the parents become exceedingly cautious about the newly born baby, its spontaneous feeding, walking, talking etc. are carefully monitored by them, likewise, God has given the specific formation, shape and structure to the humans and all the animals by keeping their overall well-being, advantages and easiness in mind!

FOXFIRE NEVER SAYS NEVER! By the time the kidnapped turquoise-and-chrome car overturns--turns and turns and turns!--in a snow-drifted field north of Tydeman's Corners Legs Sadovsky will have driven eleven miles from Eddy's Smoke Shop on Fairfax Avenue, six wild miles with the Highway Patrol cop in pursuit bearing up swiftly when the highway is clear and the girls are hysterical with excitement squealing and clutching one another thrown from side to side as Legs grimaces sighting the bridge ahead, it's one of those old-fashioned nightmare bridges with a steep narrow ramp, narrow floor made of planks but there's no time for hesitation Legs isn't going to use the brakes, she's shrewd, reasoning too that the cop will have to slow down, the fucker'll be cautious thus she'll have several seconds advantage won't she?--several seconds can make quite a difference in a contest like this so the Buick's rushing up the ramp, onto the bridge, the front wheels strike and spin and seem at first to be lifting in decorous surprise Oh! oh but astonishingly the car holds, it's a heavy machine of power that seems almost intelligent until flying off the bridge hitting a patch of slick part-melted ice the car swerves, now the rear wheels appear to be lifting, there's a moment when all effort ceases, all gravity ceases, the Buick a vessel of screams as it lifts, floats, it's being flung into space how weightless! Maddy's eyes are open now, she'll remember all her life this Now, now how without consequence! as the car hits the earth again, yet rebounds as if still weightless, turning, spinning, a machine bearing flesh, bones, girls' breaths plunging and sliding and rolling and skittering like a giant hard-shelled insect on its back, now righting itself again, now again on its back, crunching hard, snow shooting through the broken windows and the roof collapsing inward as if crushed by a giant hand upside-down and the motor still gunning as if it's frantic to escape, they're buried in a cocoon of bluish white and there's a sound of whimpering, panting,sobbing, a dog's puppyish yipping and a strong smell of urine and Legs is crying breathlessly half in anger half in exultation, caught there behind the wheel unable to turn, to look around, to see, "Nobody's dead--right?" Nobody's dead.

Right now he needed to concentrate on keeping himself under control. Inside, his gut churned. There was a war going on. The joy of holding his son again clashed with the waves of anger that rose higher and higher with each passing moment. He thought he had known why Pete had arrived at the farm. He had pushed the fork into the soil and watched the earth turn over sure that the truth of their tragedy was about to be laid before them. He had watched the dry earth give up the rich brown soil and wanted to stay there forever in the cold garden just watching his fork move the earth. He had not wanted to hear what Pete had to say. And now this..this..What did you call this? A miracle? What else could it be? But this miracle was tainted. He was not holding the same boy he had taken to the Easter Show. This thin child with shaved hair was not the Lockie he knew. Someone had taken that child. They had taken his child and he could feel by the weight of him they had starved him. Someone had done this to him. They had done this and god knew what else. Doug walked slowly into the house, trying to find the right way to break the news to Sarah. She was lying down in the bedroom again. These days she spent more time there than anywhere else. Doug walked slowly through the house to the main bedroom at the back. It was the only room in the house whose curtains were permanently closed. How damaged was his child? Would he ever be the same boy they had taken up to the Show ? What had been done to him? Dear God, what had been done to him? His ribs stuck out even under the jumper he was wearing. It was not his jumper. He had been dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, perfect for the warm day. He had a cap with a Bulldogs logo. What could have happened to his clothes? How long had he had the jumper?Doug bit his lip. First things first. He opened the bedroom door cautiously and looked into the gloom. Sarah was on her back. Her mouth was slightly open. She was fast asleep. The room smelled musty with the heater on. Sarah slept tightly wrapped in her covers. Doug swallowed. He wanted to run into the room whooping and shouting that Lockie was home but Sarah was so fragile he had no idea how she would react. He walked over to the window and opened the curtains. Outside it was getting dark already but enough light entered the room to wake Sarah up. She moaned and opened her eyes. ‘Oh god, Doug, please just close them. I’m so tired.’ Doug sat down on the bed and Sarah turned her back to him. She had not looked at him. Lockie opened his eyes and looked around the room. ‘Ready to say hello to Mum, mate?’ Doug asked. ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Lockie to his mother’s back. His voice had changed. It was deeper and had an edge to it. He sounded older. He sounded like someone who had seen too much. But Sarah would know it was her boy. Doug saw Sarah’s whole body tense at the sound of Lockie’s voice and then she reached her arm behind her and twisted the skin on her back with such force Doug knew she would have left a mark. ‘It’s not a dream, Sarah,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s home.’ Sarah sat up, her eyes wide. ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Lockie again. ‘Hello, my boy,’ said Sarah softly. Softly, as though he hadn’t been missing for four months. Softly, as though he had just been away for a day. Softly, as though she hadn’t been trying to die slowly. Softly she said, ‘Hello, my boy.’ Doug could see her chest heaving. ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ she said, and then she held out her arms. Lockie climbed off Doug’s lap and onto his mother’s legs. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed her nose into his neck, finding his scent and identifying her child. Lockie buried his head against her breasts and then he began to cry. Just soft little sobs that were soon matched by his mother’s tears. Doug wanted them to stop but tears were good. He would have to get used to tears.

That is why I would ask you to consider not going to Holland this year; the journey is always very, very expensive, and it never does any good. Yes, it will surely delight Mother, who will like to see the little one - but she will understand, and will prefer the well-being of the little one to the pleasure of seeing him. Besides, she would lose nothing, she will see him later. But - without daring to say that this is enough - however it may be, it is certainly preferable that father, mother and child should take a month of absolute rest in the country. On the other hand, I very much fear that I too was distressed, and I think it strange that I do not in the least know under what conditions I left - if it is at 150 francs a month paid in three installments, as before. Theo fixed nothing and so to begin with I left in confusion. Would there be a way of meeting each other again more calmly? I hope so, but I fear that the journey to Holland will be the last straw for all of us. I always foresee that the child will suffer later on for being brought up in the city. Does Jo think this exaggerated? I hope so, but anyway I think that one ought to be cautious all the same. And I say what I think, because you quite understand that I take an interest in my little nephew and am anxious for his well-being: since you were good enough to name him after me, I should like him to have a less troubled soul than mine, which is foundering.

If you can’t make a good prediction, it is very often harmful to pretend that you can. I suspect that epidemiologists, and others in the medical community, understand this because of their adherence to the Hippocratic oath. Primum non nocere: First, do no harm. Much of the most thoughtful work on the use and abuse of statistical models and the proper role of prediction comes from people in the medical profession.88 That is not to say there is nothing on the line when an economist makes a prediction, or a seismologist does. But because of medicine’s intimate connection with life and death, doctors tend to be appropriately cautious. In their field, stupid models kill people. It has a sobering effect. There is something more to be said, however, about Chip Macal’s idea of “modeling for insights.” The philosophy of this book is that prediction is as much a means as an end. Prediction serves a very central role in hypothesis testing, for instance, and therefore in all of science.89 As the statistician George E. P. Box wrote, “All models are wrong, but some models are useful.”90 What he meant by that is that all models are simplifications of the universe, as they must necessarily be. As another mathematician said, “The best model of a cat is a cat.”91 Everything else is leaving out some sort of detail. How pertinent that detail might be will depend on exactly what problem we’re trying to solve and on how precise an answer we require.

Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropiate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote its good. It is not strange that the licentious should tell us a government of energy is inconsistent with liberty, for being inconsistent with their wishes and their vices, they would have us think it contrary to human happiness. . . . A government capable of controling the whole, and bringing its force to a point, is one of the prerequisites for national liberty. We combine in society, with an expectation to have our persons and properties defended against unreasonable exactions either at home or abroad. If the public are unable to protest against the unjust impositions of foreigners, in this case we do not enjoy our natural rights, and a weakness of government is the cause. If we mean to have our natural rights and properties protected, we must first create a power which is able to do it, and in our case there is no want of resources, but a civil constitution which may draw them out and point their force. . . . Some men are mightily afraid of giving power lest it should be improved for oppression; this is doubtless possible, but where is the probability. The same objection may be made against the constitution of every state in the union, and against every possible mode of government; because a power of doing good always implies a power to do evil if the person or party be disposed. The right of the legislature to ordain laws binding on the people, gives them a power to make bad laws. The right of the judge to inflict punishment, gives him both power and opportunity to oppress the innocent; yet none but crazy men will from thence determine that it is best to have neither a legislature nor judges. If a power to promote the best interest of the people, necessarily implies a power to do evil, we must never expect such a constitution in theory as will not be open in some respects to the objections of carping and jealous men. The new Constitution is perhaps more cautiously guarded than any other in the world, and at the same time creates a power which will be able to protect the subject; yet doubtless objections may be raised, and so they may against the constitution of each state in the union. . . . If, my countrymen, you wait for a constitution which absolutely bars a power of doing evil, you must wait long, and when obtained it will have no power of doing good. I allow you are oppressed, but not from the quarter that jealous and wrongheaded men would insinuate. You are oppressed by the men, who to serve their own purposes would prefer the shadow of government to the reality.

How fond she is of finding morals in things!” Alice thought to herself. “I dare say you’re wondering why I don’t put my arm round your waist,” the Duchess said, after a pause: “the reason is, that I’m doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?” “He might bite,” Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried. “Very true,” said the Duchess: “flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is—‘Birds of a feather flock together.’” “Only mustard isn’t a bird,” Alice remarked. “Right, as usual,” said the Duchess: “what a clear way you have of putting things!” “It’s a mineral, I think,” said Alice. “Of course it is,” said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said: “there’s a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is—‘The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.’” “Oh, I know!” exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark. “It’s a vegetable. It doesn’t look like one, but it is.” “I quite agree with you,” said the Duchess; “and the moral of that is—‘Be what you would seem to be’—or, if you’d like it put more simply—‘Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’” “I think I should understand that better,” Alice said very politely, “if I had it written down: but I can’t quite follow it as you say it.

In choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride. We, indeed, both laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent. But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a handsbreadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman only for her good qualities, and even wise men consider the body as that which adds not a little to the mind, and it is certain there may be some such deformity covered with clothes as may totally alienate a man from his wife, when it is too late to part with her; if such a thing is discovered after marriage a man has no remedy but patience; they, therefore, think it is reasonable that there should be good provision made against such mischievous frauds.

The accusation against the Church for being either right or left wing tells you more about the contemporary political assumptions than about the political inclination of Catholicism. The Church will seem both "right wing" (in promoting the traditional family, opposing abortion, euthanasia, embryonic research, etc.) and "left wing" (in advocating the rights of minorities, social justice, active state support for the poorest, etc.), depending on the political bias of the one accusing .The same bias afflicts Catholics. There are pro-life Catholics who think Catholic social teaching is "socialist," and pro-social-justice Catholics who think pro-life causes are right wing. The Church will always be accused of "interfering" or trying to "impose" its view when the critic disagrees with its stance; but the same critic will say nothing when the Church has intervened politically on a matter with which he or she agrees. And if the Church has stayed silent, the critic will accuse it of "failing to speak out." Put another way, people are against the Church "interfering" in what they would much rather have left alone; and in favor of "interfering" in what they believe should be changed. Why and when does the Church speak out on political questions? The answer is rarely and cautiously, and almost always because it is a matter which touches on the Gospel, on core freedoms and rights (such as the right to life, or to religious freedom), or on core principles of Catholic social teaching. In these cases, the Church not only needs to speak out; it has a duty to do so.

I was in a copse of pine trees, and the pine was overpowering my scent. The pheromones of the big cat mingled with the pine and I spun around. I was smelling and looking for the flash of white, but I couldn’t see it. I grew angry and I pawed at the earth. The aroma of the soil cleansed my nose as I leaned down and sniffed deeply. I slowly closed and opened my eyes. As I looked ahead I saw something. There, further on, I had another glimpse of the large white cat. She was stopped and her hindquarters were in the air. I stared, trying to figure out what she was doing. Her forepaws and head were on the ground, but her hind was wiggling. She was next to a tree, marking it, so I slowly paced in a zigzag pattern as I walked close to her. I was being cautious because poachers had been known to employ shifters to entice real animals in the wild. She turned her head and growled at me. I took it as an invite to come closer. I ran up to her and started circling. She was an albino panther as I thought. I paced closer, breathing deep. I was in the middle of Ohio, outside of a lost cougar and a few bobcats there were no big cats here, at least not counting lycanthropes, and this creature didn’t smell like one of those. Her rump almost wagged in anticipation, and I felt my tiger body respond. I circled her, taking a swipe in her direction to see if she was going to respond negatively to me. The pink eyes followed me and she growled. I walked up to her, sniffed her face and neckline. I didn’t smell any other male on her, and I walked to her raised rump. Burying my nose in her groin I smelled deeper, and she shifted her body. I felt it before I could see it. She was shifting, changing from albino panther to human. I sat on my hindquarters as I watched. Her white fur seemed to melt from her, sliding upwards, starting with her back legs. The flesh and fur on her feet slid forward, leaving human feet and calves. It was fully fleshed, unlike some lycanthrope changes when they’re younger. The calves of her legs appeared, and slowly slid up. The panther flesh was sliding forward, slowly and methodically. Across her ass and groin, now lower back and stomach. The pheromones I smelled earlier were coming from her, the human form. I stood and started pacing behind her, and her panther head shook in a very human gesture. I stopped, fighting the desire to lean forward and lick her wetness with my large tongue. The flesh was sliding forward and as her teats turned into breasts, I growled in need. Next were her shoulders and arms, then her head and hands. As the transformation ended, there was a pile of fur and flesh lying in front of her. Her human form was beautiful; a full figured woman with long white hair, that was perfectly natural. She looked to be in her early forties, but didn’t have a line on her face that she didn’t want. In the corners of her eyes were small, but beautiful, crow’s feet, laugh lines surrounded her mouth. She laid out with her former form under her, laying on it, propped up by her elbows. She smiled with the confidence of someone who was used to being in charge. Her long hair flowed around her shoulders, framing her body. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who.

PREFACE. If—and the thing is wildly possible—the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p. 18) “Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.” In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History—I will take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened. The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it—he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand—so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman* used to stand by with tears in his eyes: he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, “No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm,” had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words “and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one.” So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.

The school regime refused to make it easy for us on the dress side of things, and it dictated that even if we wanted to walk into the neighboring town of Windsor, then we had to wear a blazer and tie. This made us prime targets for the many locals who seemed to enjoy an afternoon of beating up the Eton “toffs.” On one occasion, I was having a pee in the loos of the Windsor McDonald’s, which were tucked away downstairs at the back of the fast-food joint. I was just leaving the Gents when the door swung open, and in walked three aggressive-looking lads. They looked as if they had struck gold on discovering this weedy, blazer-wearing Eton squirt, and I knew deep down that I was in trouble and alone. (Meanwhile, my friends were waiting for me upstairs. Some use they were being.) I tried to squeeze past these hoodies, but they threw me back against the wall and laughed. They then proceeded to debate what they were going to do to me. “Flush his head down the toilet,” was an early suggestion. (Well, I had had that done to me many times already at Eton, I thought to myself.) I was okay so far. Then they suggested defecating in the loo first. Now I was getting worried. Then came the killer blow: “Let’s shave his pubes!” Now, there is no greater embarrassment for a young teenager than being discovered to not have any pubes. And I didn’t. That was it. I charged at them, threw one of them against the wall, barged the other aside, squeezed through the door, and bolted. They chased after me, but once I reached the main floor of the McDonald’s I knew I was safe. I waited with my friends inside until we were sure the thugs had all left, then cautiously slunk back across the bridge to school. (I think we actually waited more than two hours, to be safe. Fear teaches great patience.)

To Lillian’s surprise, she had been seated near the head of Lord Westcliff’s table, only three places away from his right hand. Occupying a place so close to the host was a mark of high favor, very seldom given to an unmarried girl with no rank. Wondering if the footman had make a mistake in seating her there, she glanced cautiously at the faces of those guests nearest her, and saw that they too were puzzled by her presence. Even the countess, who was being seated at the very end of the table, stared at her with a frown. Lillian gave Lord Westcliff a questioning glance as he took his place at the head of the table. One of his dark brows arched. “Is something amiss? You seem a bit perturbed, Miss Bowman.” The correct response would probably have been to blush and thank him for the unexpected honor. But as Lillian stared at his face, which was softened by the influence of candleglow, she found herself answering with brazen frankness. “I am wondering why I am sitting near the head of the table. In light of what happened this morning, I assumed you would have me seated all the way out on the back terrace.” There was a moment of utter silence as the guests around them registered shock that Lillian would so openly refer to the conflict between them. However, Westcliff astonished them all by laughing quietly, his gaze locked with hers. After a moment, the others joined in with forced chuckles. “Knowing of your penchant for trouble, Miss Bowman, I have concluded that it is safer to keep you in my sight, and within arm’s reach if possible.” His statement was delivered with matter-of-fact lightness. One would have to search very hard to find any innuendo in his tone. And yet Lillian felt a strange liquid ripple inside, sensation passing from one nerve to another like a flow of warm honey.

There is another and stronger reason why the soul travels securely when in darkness. This reason is derived from the consideration of the light itself, or dark wisdom. The dark night of contemplation so absorbs the soul, and brings it so near unto God, that He defends it, and delivers it from all that is not God. For the soul is now, as it were, under medical treatment for the recovery of its health, which is God Himself: God compels it to observe a particular diet, and to abstain from all hurtful things, the very desire for them being subdued. The soul is treated like a sick man respected by his household, who is so carefully tended that the air shall not touch him, nor the light shine upon him, whom the noise of footsteps and the tumult of servants shall not disturb, and to whom the most delicate food is given most cautiously by measure, and that nutritious rather than savory. 12. All these advantages—they all minister to the safekeeping of the soul—are the effects of this dim contemplation, for it brings the soul nearer to God. The truth is, that the nearer the soul comes to Him it perceives that darkness is greater and deeper because of its own weakness; thus the nearer the sun the greater the darkness and distress wrought by its great brightness, because our eyes are weak, imperfect, and defective. Hence it is that the spiritual light of God is so immeasurable, so far above the understanding, that when it comes near to it, it dims and blinds it. 13. This is the reason why David says that God made darkness His hiding-place and covert, His tabernacle around Him, dark water in the clouds of the air.10 The dark water in the clouds of the air is the dim contemplation and divine wisdom in souls, as I am going to explain, of which they have experience as a thing near to the pavilion where He dwells, when God brings them

Sophie thinks you were offering her a less than honorable proposition before we came to collect her, and modified your proposal only when her station became apparent.” Windham took a casual sip of his drink while Vim’s brain fumbled for a coherent thought. “She thinks what ?” “She thinks you offered to set her up as your mistress and changed your tune, so to speak, when it became apparent you were both titled. I know she is in error in this regard.” Vim cocked his head. “How could you know such a thing?” “Because if you propositioned my sister with such an arrangement, it’s your skull I’d be using that splitting ax on.” “If Sophie thinks this, then she is mistaken.” Windham remained silent, reinforcing Vim’s sense the man was shrewd in the extreme. “You will please disabuse her of her error.” Windham shook his head slowly, right to left, left to right. “It isn’t my error, and it isn’t Sophie’s error. She’s nothing if not bright, and you were probably nothing if not cautious in offering your suit. The situation calls for derring-do, old sport. Bended knee, flowers, tremolo in the strings, that sort of thing.” He gestured as if stroking a bow over a violin, a lyrical, dramatic rendering that ought to have looked foolish but was instead casually beautiful. “Tremolo in the strings?” “To match the trembling of her heart. A fellow learns to listen for these things.” Windham set his mug down with a thump and speared Vim with a look. “I’m off to do battle with the treble register. Wish me luck, because failure on my part will be apparent every Sunday between now and Judgment Day.” “Windham, for God’s sake, you don’t just accuse a man of such a miscalculation and then saunter off to twist piano wires.” Much less make references to failure being eternally apparent. “Rather thought I was twisting your heart strings. Must be losing my touch.” Vim

And yet, being surveilled with the intention of assault or rape is practically mundane, it happens so often. It’s such an ingrained part of the female experience that it doesn’t register as unusual. The danger of it, then, is in its routine, in how normalized it is for a woman to feel monitored, so much so that she might not know she’s in trouble until that invisible line is crossed from “typical patriarchy” to “you should run.” So now, when I drink, I’m far more cautious. I don’t like ordering draft beers from taps hidden from view. I don’t like pouring bottles into pint glasses. I don’t leave my drink with strangers, I don’t let people I don’t know order drinks for me without watching them do it, and I don’t drink excessively with people I don’t think I can trust with my sleepy body. I don’t turn my back on a cocktail, not just because I like drinking but because I can’t trust what happens to it when I’m not looking. The intersection of rape culture and surveillance culture means that being a guarded drinker is not only my responsibility, it is my sole responsibility. Any lapse in judgment could not only result in clear and present danger, but also set me up for a chorus of “Well, she should’ve known better.” The mistake we make is in thinking rape isn’t premeditated, that it happens by accident somehow, that you’re drunk and you run into a girl who’s also drunk and half-asleep on a bench and you sidle up to her and things get out of hand and before you know it, you’re being accused of something you’d never do. But men who rape are men who watch for the signs of who they believe they can rape. Rape culture isn’t a natural occurrence; it thrives thanks to the dedicated attention given to women in order to take away their security. Rapists exist on a spectrum, and maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink.

In fact, properly speaking, no parish priest has any convictions on politics. At the back of his mind, he regards the state as an enemy that has usurped the temporal power of the Pope. Being an enemy, the state must be exploited as much as possible and without any qualms of conscience. Because of this innate and perhaps unconscious hostility to the state as an institution, the parish priest cannot see that it is the duty of a citizen to endeavour to make political life as morally clean as possible. He cannot see that the community as a whole must always come into the forefront of every citizen's political consciousness and that personal interests must be sacrificed to the interests of the nation. No. The parish priest regards himself as the commander of his parish, which he is holding for His Majesty the Pope. Between himself and the Pope there is the Bishop, acting, so to speak, as the Divisional Commander. As far as the Civil Power is concerned, it is a semi-hostile force which must be kept in check, kept in tow, intrigued against and exploited, until that glorious day when the Vicar of Christ again is restored to his proper position as the ruler of the earth and the wearer of the Imperial crown. This point of view helps the parish priest to adopt a very cold-blooded attitude towards Irish politics. He is merely either for or against the government. If he has a relative in a government position, he is in favour of the government. If he has a relative who wants a position and cannot get it, then he is against the government. But his support of the government is very precarious and he makes many visits to Dublin and creeps up back stairs into ministerial offices, cajoling and threatening. He is most commonly seen making a cautious approach to the Education Office, where he has all sorts of complaints to lodge and all sorts of suggestions to make. Every book recommended by the education authorities for the schools is examined by him, and if he finds a single idea in any of them that might be likely to inspire thought of passion, then he is up in arms at once. Like an army of black beetles on the march, he and his countless brothers invade Dublin and lay siege to the official responsible. Woe to that man.

When Yan He was appointed tutor to the crown prince of Wei, son of Duke Ling, he went to consult with Qu Boyu. “Here is a man who is just naturally no good. If I find no way to contain him, he will endanger my state, but if I do try to contain him, he will endanger my life. His cleverness allows him to understand the crimes people commit, but not why they were driven to commit these crimes.10 What should I do?” Peng Boyu said, “Good question! Be careful and cautious and rectify yourself! Be compromising in appearance and harmonious in mind. But even these measures can present problems. Don’t let the external compromise get inside you, and don’t let your inner harmony show itself externally. If you let the external compromise get inside you, it will topple you, destroy you, collapse you, cripple you. If the harmony in your heart shows itself externally, it will lead to reputation and renown, until you are haunted and plagued by them. If he’s playing the baby, play baby with him. If he’s being lawless and unrestrained, be lawless and unrestrained with him. If his behavior is unbounded and shapeless, be unbounded and shapeless with him. You must master this skill to the point of flawlessness. Don’t you know the story of the praying mantis? It flailed its pincers around to stop an oncoming chariot wheel, not realizing the task was beyond its powers. This is how it is for those with ‘great talents.’ Be careful, be cautious! If you irritate him by flaunting your talents, you will be in more or less the same position. Don’t you know how the tiger trainer handles it? He doesn’t feed the beast live animals for fear of arousing its lust for killing. He doesn’t feed it uncut sides of meat for fear of arousing its lust for dismemberment. He carefully times out the feedings and comprehends the creature’s propensity for rage. The tiger is a different species from man but can be tamed through affection for its feeder. The ones it kills are the ones who cross it. However, a man who loves horses even to the point of gathering their shit and piss in jeweled boxes may still get his skull or chest kicked in if he smacks away a mosquito on the unbridled animal at the wrong time. Despite the best intentions, (4:17) his solicitousness backfires on him. Can you afford to be careless?

I glanced across the room at Thaddeus seated at a long table within a group of shop keepers, and I contemplated him strongly. My heart leaped in my chest at the mere sight of him. I felt myself overcome. The acts of kindness and sweet attention and gratifying moments of passion afforded me by this man since the day of our marriage were purely pleasing. To be loved was a desirous affair! It was the aim of every beating heart! I nearly cast aside my concerns and allowed myself to be consumed by these agreeable sentiments except for one thing: I could not forget how stripped of power and dignity I had felt that very morning. Thaddeus had essentially commanded me to sit and stay like a dog. And I had heeded my master without so much as a growl! This was not me. No one stayed me. I watched those at the table grow more intensely involved in the details of a trade agreement I cared nothing about. Such business bartering was always selfishly motivated. When it appeared that my husband’s attention was engrossed on a point of aggressive negotiation, I excused myself from the weaving party and slipped out the back door. I turned down the alleyway and hurried to a crumbling chimney flue that was easy enough to climb. Almost immediately, a fit of anxiety gripped at my chest, and I felt as if a war was being waged in my gut—a battle between my desire to protect what harmony existed in my marriage and the selfish want to reclaim an ounce of the independence I had lost. This painful struggle nearly persuaded me to reconsider my childish act of defiance. Why was I stupidly jeopardizing my marriage? For what purpose? To stand upon a rooftop in sheer rebellion? Was I really that needy? That proud? I could hear my husband’s command echoing in my mind—no kind persuasion, but a strict order to keep my feet on the ground. I understood his cautious reasoning, and I didn’t doubt he was acting out of concern for my safety, but I was not some fragile, incapable, defenseless creature in need of a controlling overseer. What irked me most was how my natural defenses had failed me. And the only way I could see to restore my confidence was to prove I had not lost the courage and ability to make my own choices and carry them out. Perhaps this act of defiance was childish, but it was remedial as well.

Numbers express quantities. In the submissions to my online survey, however, respondents frequently attributed qualities to them. Noticeably, colors. The number that was most commonly described as having its own color was four (52 votes), which most respondents (17) said was blue. Seven was next (28 votes), which most respondents (9) said was green, and in third place came five (27 votes), which most respondents (9) said was red. Seeing colors in numbers is a manifestation of synesthesia, a condition in which certain concepts can trigger incongruous responses, and which is thought to be the result of atypical connections being made between parts of the brain. In the survey, numbers were also labeled “warm,” “crisp,” “chagrined,” “peaceful,” “overconfident,” “juicy,” “quiet” and “raw.” Taken individually, the descriptions are absurd, yet together they paint a surprisingly coherent picture of number personalities. Below is a list of the numbers from one to thirteen, together with words used to describe them taken from the survey responses. One Independent, strong, honest, brave, straightforward, pioneering, lonely. Two Cautious, wise, pretty, fragile, open, sympathetic, quiet, clean, flexible. Three Dynamic, warm, friendly, extrovert, opulent, soft, relaxed, pretentious. Four Laid-back, rogue, solid, reliable, versatile, down-to-earth, personable. Five Balanced, central, cute, fat, dominant but not too much so, happy. Six Upbeat, sexy, supple, soft, strong, brave, genuine, courageous, humble. Seven Magical, unalterable, intelligent, awkward, overconfident, masculine. Eight Soft, feminine, kind, sensible, fat, solid, sensual, huggable, capable. Nine Quiet, unobtrusive, deadly, genderless, professional, soft, forgiving. Ten Practical, logical, tidy, reassuring, honest, sturdy, innocent, sober. Eleven Duplicitous, onomatopoeic, noble, wise, homey, bold, sturdy, sleek. Twelve Malleable, heroic, imperial, oaken, easygoing, nonconfrontational. Thirteen Gawky, transitional, creative, honest, enigmatic, unliked, dark horse. You don’t need to be a Hollywood screenwriter to spot that Mr. One would make a great romantic hero, and Miss Two a classic leading lady. The list is nonsensical, yet it makes sense. The association of one with male characteristics, and two with female ones, also remains deeply ingrained.

On the whole, scientific methods are at least as important results of investigation as any other results, for the scientific spirit is based upon a knowledge of method, and if the methods were lost, all the results of science could not prevent the renewed prevalence of superstition and absurdity. Clever people may learn as much as they like of the results of science, but one still notices in their conversation, and especially in the hypotheses they make, that they lack the scientific spirit; they have not the instinctive distrust of the devious courses of thinking which, in consequence of long training, has taken root in the soul of every scientific man. It is enough for them to find any kind of hypothesis on a subject, they are then all on fire for it, and imagine the matter is thereby settled. To have an opinion is with them equivalent to immediately becoming fanatical for it, and finally taking it to heart as a conviction. In the case of an unexplained matter they become heated for the first idea that comes into their head which has any resemblance to an explanation—a course from which the worst results constantly follow, especially in the field of politics. On that account everybody should nowadays have become thoroughly acquainted with at least one science, for then surely he knows what is meant by method, and how necessary is the extremest carefulness. To women in particular this advice is to be given at present; as to those who are irretrievably the victims of all hypotheses, especially when these have the appearance of being witty, attractive, enlivening, and invigorating. Indeed, on close inspection one sees that by far the greater number of educated people still desire convictions from a thinker and nothing but convictions, and that only a small minority want certainty. The former want to be forcibly carried away in order thereby to obtain an increase of strength; the latter few have the real interest which disregards personal advantages and the increase of strength also. The former class, who greatly predominate, are always reckoned upon when the thinker comports himself and labels himself as a genius, and thus views himself as a higher being to whom authority belongs. In so far as genius of this kind upholds the ardour of convictions, and arouses distrust of the cautious and modest spirit of science, it is an enemy of truth, however much it may think itself the wooer thereof.

I look back now and can see how much my father also found his own freedom in the adventures we did together, whether it was galloping along a beach in the Isle of Wight with me behind him, or climbing on the steep hills and cliffs around the island’s coast. It was at times like these that I found a real intimacy with him. It was also where I learned to recognize that tightening sensation, deep in the pit of my stomach, as being a great thing to follow in life. Some call it fear. I remember the joy of climbing with him in the wintertime. It was always an adventure and often turned into much more than just a climb. Dad would determine that not only did we have to climb a sheer hundred-and-fifty-foot chalk cliff, but also that German paratroopers held the high ground. We therefore had to climb the cliff silently and unseen, and then grenade the German fire position once at the summit. In reality this meant lobbing clumps of manure toward a deserted bench on the cliff tops. Brilliant. What a great way to spend a wet and windy winter’s day when you are age eight (or twenty-eight, for that matter). I loved returning from the cliff climbs totally caked in mud, out of breath, having scared ourselves a little. I learned to love that feeling of the wind and rain blowing hard on my face. It made me feel like a man, when in reality I was a little boy. We also used to talk about Mount Everest, as we walked across the fields toward the cliffs. I loved to pretend that some of our climbs were on the summit face of Everest itself. We would move together cautiously across the white chalk faces, imagining they were really ice. I had this utter confidence that I could climb Everest if he were beside me. I had no idea what Everest would really involve but I loved the dream together. These were powerful, magical times. Bonding. Intimate. Fun. And I miss them a lot even today. How good it would feel to get the chance to do that with him just once more. I think that is why I find it often so emotional taking my own boys hiking or climbing nowadays. Mountains create powerful bonds between people. It is their great appeal to me. But it wasn’t just climbing. Dad and I would often go to the local stables and hire a couple of horses for a tenner and go jumping the breakwaters along the beach. Every time I fell off in the wet sand and was on the verge of bursting into tears, Dad would applaud me and say that I was slowly becoming a horseman. In other words, you can’t become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again a good number of times. There’s life in a nutshell.

I prepared to explore it as I had done the others; but no sooner had I entered the lodge than my fire failed me, leaving me in total darkness. Handing it out to the doctor to be relighted, I began feeling my way about the interior of the lodge. I had almost made the circuit when my hand came in contact with a human foot; at the same time a voice unmistakably Indian, and which evidently came from the owner of the foot, convinced me that I was not alone. I would have gladly placed myself on the outside of the lodge and there matured plus for interviewing its occupant; but, unfortunately, to reach the entrance of the lodge, I must either pass over or around the owner of the before-mentioned foot and voice. Could I have been convinced that among its other possessions there was neither tomahawk nor scalping-knife, pistol nor war club, or any similar article of the noble red man's toilet, I would have risked an attempt to escape through the low narrow opening of the lodge; but who ever saw an Indian without one or all of these interesting trinkets? Had I made the attempt, I should have expected to encounter either the keen edge of the scalping-knife or the blow of the tomahawk and to have engaged in a questionable struggle for life. This would not do. I crouched in silence for a few moments, hoping the doctor would return with the lighted fire. I need not say that each succeeding moment spent in the darkness of that lodge seemed like an age. I could hear a slight movement on the part of my unknown neighbor, which did not add to my comfort. Why does the doctor not return? At last I discovered the approach of a light on the outside. When it neared the entrance I called to the doctor and informed him that an Indian was in the lodge, and that he had better have his weapons ready for a conflict. With his lighted fire in one hand and docked revolver in the other, the doctor cautiously entered the lodge. And there, directly between us, wrapped in a buffalo robe, lay the cause of my anxiety - a little Indian girl, probably ten years old; not a full blood, but a half-breed. She was terribly frightened to find herself in our hands, with none of her people near. Why was she left behind in this manner? This little girl, who was at first an object of our curiosity, became at once an object of our pity. The Indians, an unusual thing for them to do toward their own blood, had willfully deserted her; but this, alas! was the least of their injuries to her. After being shamefully abandoned by the entire village, a few of the young men of the tribe returned to the deserted lodge, and upon the person of this little girl, committed outrages, the details of which are too sickening for these pages. She was carried to the fort and placed under the care of kind hands and warm hearts, where everything was done for her comfort that was possible.

At this point, the cautious reader might wish to read over the whole argument again, as presented above, just to make sure that I have not indulged in any 'sleight of hand'! Admittedly there is an air of the conjuring trick about the argument, but it is perfectly legitimate, and it only gains in strength the more minutely it is examined. We have found a computation Ck(k) that we know does not stop; yet the given computational procedure A is not powerful enough to ascertain that facet. This is the Godel(-Turing) theorem in the form that I require. It applies to any computational procedure A whatever for ascertaining that computations do not stop, so long as we know it to be sound. We deduce that no knowably sound set of computational rules (such as A) can ever suffice for ascertaining that computations do not stop, since there are some non-stopping computations (such as Ck(k)) that must elude these rules. Moreover, since from the knowledge of A and of its soundness, we can actually construct a computation Ck(k) that we can see does not ever stop, we deduce that A cannot be a formalization of the procedures available to mathematicians for ascertaining that computations do not stop, no matter what A is. Hence: (G) Human mathematicians are not using a knowably sound algorithm in order to ascertain mathematical truth. It seems to me that this conclusion is inescapable. However, many people have tried to argue against it-bringing in objections like those summarized in the queries Q1-Q20 of 2.6 and 2.10 below-and certainly many would argue against the stronger deduction that there must be something fundamentally non-computational in our thought processes. The reader may indeed wonder what on earth mathematical reasoning like this, concerning the abstract nature of computations, can have to say about the workings of the human mind. What, after all, does any of this have to do with the issue of conscious awareness? The answer is that the argument indeed says something very significant about the mental quality of understanding-in relation to the general issue of computation-and, as was argued in 1.12, the quality of understanding is something dependent upon conscious awareness. It is true that, for the most part, the foregoing reasoning has been presented as just a piece of mathematics, but there is the essential point that the algorithm A enters the argument at two quite different levels. At the one level, it is being treated as just some algorithm that has certain properties, but at the other, we attempt to regard A as being actually 'the algorithm that we ourselves use' in coming to believe that a computation will not stop. The argument is not simply about computations. It is also about how we use our conscious understanding in order to infer the validity of some mathematical claim-here the non-stopping character of Ck(k). It is the interplay between the two different levels at which the algorithm A is being considered-as a putative instance of conscious activity and as a computation itself-that allows us to arrive at a conclusion expressing a fundamental conflict between such conscious activity and mere computation.

I have come, my lovely,” Roddy said with his usual sardonic grin as he swept her a deep bow, “in answer to your urgent summons-and, I might add,-“ he continued, “before I presented myself at the Willingtons’, exactly as your message instructed.” At 5’10”, Roddy Carstairs was a slender man of athletic build with thinning brown hair and light blue eyes. In fact, his only distinguishing characteristics were his fastidiously tailored clothes, a much-envied ability to tie a neckcloth into magnificently intricate folds that never drooped, and an acid wit that accepted no boundaries when he chose a human target. “Did you hear about Kensington?” “Who?” Alex said absently, trying to think of the best means to persuade him to do what she needed done. “The new Marquess of Kensington, once known as Mr. Ian Thornton, persona non grata. Amazing, is it not, what wealth and title will do?” he continued, studying Alex’s tense face as he continued, “Two years ago we wouldn’t have let him past the front door. Six months ago word got out that he’s worth a fortune, and we started inviting him to our parties. Tonight he’s the heir to a dukedom, and we’ll be coveting invitations to his parties. We are”-Roddy grinned-“when you consider matters from this point of view, a rather sickening and fickle lot.” In spite of herself, Alexandra laughed. “Oh, Roddy,” she said, pressing a kiss on his cheek. “You always make me laugh, even when I’m in the most dreadful coil, which I am now. You could make things so very much better-if you would.” Roddy helped himself to a pinch of snuff, lifted his arrogant brows, and waited, his look both suspicious and intrigued. “I am, of course, your most obedient servant,” he drawled with a little mocking bow. Despite that claim, Alexandra knew better. While other men might be feared for their tempers or their skill with rapier and pistol, Roddy Carstairs was feared for his cutting barbs and razor tongue. And, while one could not carry a rapier or a pistol into a ball, Roddy could do his damage there unimpeded. Even sophisticated matrons lived in fear of being on the wrong side of him. Alex knew exactly how deadly he could be-and how helpful, for he had made her life a living hell when she came to London the first time. Later he had done a complete turnabout, and it had been Roddy who had forced the ton to accept her. He had done it not out of friendship or guilt; he had done it because he’d decided it would be amusing to test his power by building a reputation for a change, instead of shredding it. “There is a young woman whose name I’ll reveal in a moment,” Alex began cautiously, “to whom you could be of great service. You could, in fact, rescue her as you did me long ago, Roddy, if only you would.” “Once was enough,” he mocked. “I could hardly hold my head up for shame when I thought of my unprecedented gallantry.” “She’s incredibly beautiful,” Alex said. A mild spark of interest showed in Roddy’s eyes, but nothing stronger. While other men might be affected by feminine beauty, Roddy generally took pleasure in pointing out one’s faults for the glee of it. He enjoyed flustering women and never hesitated to do it. But when he decided to be kind he was the most loyal of friends.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

But that night, Jiyoung got an earful from her father. “Why is your cram school so far away? Why do you talk to strangers? Why is your skirt so short?” Jiyoung grew up being told to be cautious, to dress conservatively, to be “ladylike”. That it’s your job to avoid dangerous places, times of day and people. It’s your fault for not noticing and not avoiding.

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I don’t know… is it being stubborn, or is it being cautious?” “Why be either, when you could be happy? And I don’t mean temporary happiness. Not the kind where you know it’s not good for you, but you keep indulging anyway. I’m talking about deep happiness, where you’re blooming and blossoming and comfortable in your skin. And if there’s a certain someone who adds to that, instead of taking away, well, what the hell is wrong with that?

I’m sweaty. I’m tired. And I stink in places I really shouldn’t be stinking.” I whine and shoot a glare to Dean, who’s sitting in the passenger seat looking sheepish. “What?” he exclaims with his hands raised. “I didn’t know we’d have fucking car trouble. Your car isn’t even a year old.” “I know!” I snap, hitting my hand on the wheel and growling in frustration. “Stupid old lady car!” I exclaim and push my head closer to the window for a breeze. “The frickin’ air conditioning isn’t even working anymore. Me and this car are officially in a fight.” “I think we all just need to remain calm,” Lynsey chirps from the back seat, leaning forward so her head comes between Dean’s and mine. “Because, as horrible as this trip was, after everything that’s happened between the three of us the past couple of years, I think this was really healing.” I close my eyes and shake my head, ruing the moment I agreed that a road trip to the Rocky Mountains to pick up this four-thousand-dollar carburetor from some hick who apparently didn’t know how to ‘mail things so they don’t get lost.’” Honestly! How are people who don’t use the mail a thing? Though, admittedly, when we got to the man’s mountain home, I realized that he was probably more familiar with the Pony Express. And I couldn’t be sure his wife wasn’t his cousin. But that’s me being judgmental. Still, though, it’s no wonder he wouldn’t let me PayPal him the money. I had to get an actual cashier’s check from a real bank. Then on our way back down the mountain, I got a flat tire. Dean, Lynsey, and I set about changing it together, thinking three heads could figure out how to put a spare tire on better than one. One minute, I’m snapping at Dean to hand me the tire iron, and the next minute, he’s asking me if I’m being a bitch because he told me he had feelings for me. Then Lynsey chimes in, hurt and dismayed that neither of us told her about our conversation at the bakery, and it was a mess. On top of all of that, my car wouldn’t start back up! It was a disaster. The three of us fighting with each other on the side of the road looked like a bad episode of Sister Wives: Colorado Edition. I should probably make more friends. “God, I hope this thing is legit,” Dean states, turning the carburetor over in his hands. “Put it down. You’re making me nervous,” I snap, eyeing him cautiously. We’re only five miles from Tire Depot, and they close in ten, so my nerves are freaking fried. “I just want to drop this thing off and forget this whole trip ever happened.” “No!” Lynsey exclaims. “Stick to the plan. This is your grand gesture! Your get out of jail free card.” “I don’t want a get out of jail free card,” I cry back. “The longer we spent on that hot highway trying to figure out what was wrong with my car, the more ridiculous this plan became in my head. I don’t want to buy Miles’s affection back. I want him to want me for me. Flaws and all.” “So what are you going to do?” Dean asks, and I feel his concerned eyes on mine. “I’m going to drop this expensive hunk of metal at the counter and leave. I’m not giving it to him naked or holding the thing above my head like John Cusack in Say Anything. I’ll drop it off at the front counter, and then we’ll go. End of story.” Lynsey’s voice pipes up from behind. “That sounds like the worst ending to a book I’ve ever heard.” “This isn’t a book!” I shriek. “This is my life, and it’s no wonder this plan has turned into such a mess. It has desperation stamped all over it. I just want to go home, eat some pizza, and cry a little, okay?” The car is dead silent as we enter Boulder until Dean’s voice pipes up. “Hey Kate, I know you’re a little emongry right now, but I really don’t think you should drive on this spare tire anymore. They’re only manufactured to drive for so many miles, you know.” I turn and glower over at him. He shrinks down into his seat a little bit.

Your mom asked me to come and see if I could help you with-” “Why did you say no to Darius?” he blurted, his brow lowering as he gazed at the black rings in my eyes. “I know he was an asshole to you and he did a lot of things that he shouldn’t have but that was all about power, the throne, the fucking crown. And I didn’t think you cared that much about any of that.” “I don’t. Or I guess, I didn’t. Being Fae kind of goes hand in hand with claiming power though, doesn’t it?” I asked, tightening my jaw as I refused to balk at the subject. “Fine. Whatever. I get that side of it. But what I don’t understand is how you could have said no to loving him. Because when I saw the two of you together I could see how much you liked each other. Even when you were denying it or fighting or whatever, it was still there. And I just don’t get how you could stand there beneath the stars, look him in the eyes and say no. Why would you curse him like that? Why would you curse yourself?” I wanted to shrug off his question, but the accusation in his dark eyes demanded an answer and I blew out a breath as I gave it to him. “Because all I’ve ever wanted is to be loved like that but I was afraid that if I let myself love him, he’d use it to hurt me. Too much has happened between us and…I just don’t trust him.” I raised my chin as the two of them looked at me like my words caused them physical pain. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Darius. I came here for you.” ... “What are you doing?” Catalina gasped. “Do you trust me, Xavier?” I asked. “Why?” he countered suspiciously “Because I’m going to set you free. Come here.” I beckoned and he got up, walking towards me cautiously as I pulled my Atlas from my pocket and set it recording. “This is Xavier Acrux and he’s got something fucking amazing to show you,” I said, smirking at him as I raised my other hand. “Do I?” he asked in confusion. “Fuck yes. His Order just Emerged and he’s something way cooler than a big old lizard – no offence to Dragons, I’m sure your scaly balls are great and all but it’s just not as badass as being a fucking Pegasus.” Xavier’s eyes widened in horror as I flicked my fingers at him and threw him straight out of the tower window with a gust of wind. We were on the ninth floor so he had plenty of time for fear to shock his Order form from his flesh and spread his wings way before he could hit the ground, but I was ready to catch him with my magic if he didn’t manage it for any reason. Xavier cried out as he fell but his screams suddenly became whinnies as the huge, lilac Pegasus burst from his skin, shredding through his clothes as his wings unfurled and caught on an updraft. I caught it all on camera, laughing excitedly as he levelled out then beat his wings and started flying up and up and up towards the clouds which were lined with silver as the moon shone through them. Catalina rushed forward like she meant to rip my Atlas from my hands, but as her gaze fell on her son out of the window, her lips parted and a beautiful smile graced her mouth. Xavier shot into the clouds and out of sight and I finally ended the recording. I typed out a FaeBook post with the video attached and glanced up at Catalina with my thumb hovering over the post button. I had over a million followers on there now, and if I hit that button, the word would be well and truly out. “The only reason Lionel maintains his hold over him is because it’s a secret. Pegasuses are one of the most common Order forms there are. Unless Lionel wants to alienate all of them, he’ll have to come out in support of his son. The only power he holds here is in keeping it a secret. Once it’s out, it’s out.” “He’ll kill you for exposing this,” she breathed, her eyes wide with fear. (Tory POV)