Cadet Life Quotes

This is the best night of my life," Raffy says, crying. "Raffy, half our House has burnt down," I say wearily. "We don't have a kitchen." "Why do you always have to be so pessimistic?" she asks. "We can double up in our rooms and have a barbecue every night like the Cadets." Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life.

The head nerd of the Cadets is my partner and when it's over he asks me for my number. I'm very flattered and he looks a bit crestfallen when I say no. "It's because they don't have coverage out here," Griggs tells him. "No," I say, looking up at Griggs. "It's actually because my heart belongs to someone else." And if I could bottle the look on his face, I'd keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

Keeping everything very cool and professional, I see, Cadet,” remarked Commander Woodsinger as he went by. Elliot did not know why the two most important women in his life had to be deadpan snarkers.

And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life.

(T)he cadet was too young to believe in death after life.

You’re all cadets now.” Xaden’s voice carries out over the courtyard, stronger than the others. “Take a look at your squad. These are the only people guaranteed by Codex not to kill you. But just because they can’t end your life doesn’t mean others won’t. You want a dragon? Earn one.

and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breathe for the rest of my life

A life path may change because of important decisions or events. Those were what drove my current path. But sometimes the smallest event can also drive a turn. In the case of Eli Vanto, that force was a single, overheard word. Chiss. Where had Cadet Vanto heard that name? What did it mean to him? He had already spoken one reason, but there might well be others. Indeed, the full truth might have several layers. But what were they? On a ship as large as this, there was only one practical way to find out. Thus did my path take yet another turn. As, certainly, did his.

Entropy is the degree of randomness or disorder in a system, Doctor.” His eyes fix on Werner’s for a heartbeat, a glance both warm and chilling. “Disorder. You hear the commandant say it. You hear your bunk masters say it. There must be order. Life is chaos, gentlemen. And what we represent is an ordering to that chaos. Even down to the genes. We are ordering the evolution of the species. Winnowing out the inferior, the unruly, the chaff. This is the great project of the Reich, the greatest project human beings have ever embarked upon.” Hauptmann writes on the blackboard. The cadets inscribe the words into their composition books. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. Every process must by law decay.

Entropy is the degree of randomness or disorder in a system, Doctor.” His eyes fix on Werner’s for a heartbeat, a glance both warm and chilling. “Disorder. You hear the commandant say it. You hear your bunk masters say it. There must be order. Life is chaos, gentlemen. And what we represent is an ordering to that chaos. Even down to the genes. We are ordering the evolution of the species. Winnowing out the inferior, the unruly, the chaff. This is the great project of the Reich, the greatest project human beings have ever embarked upon.” Hauptmann writes on the blackboard. The cadets inscribe the words into their composition books. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. Every process must by law decay. The

A little kid’s life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with the dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery. Then—at some point in their lives—they don’t. What happens?

Cadets who are successful at West Point arrive at the school armed with habits of mental and physical discipline. Those assets, however, only carry you so far. To succeed, they need a keystone habit that creates a culture—such as a daily gathering of like-minded friends—to help find the strength to overcome obstacles. Keystone habits transform us by creating cultures that make clear the values that, in the heat of a difficult decision or a moment of uncertainty, we might otherwise forget.

He who does not possess the force to secure his Lebensraum in this world and, if necessary, to enlarge it, does not deserve to possess the necessities of life. He must step aside and allow stronger peoples to pass him by. This was so at all times. The world will not be an empty one because one Volk renounces its life. Rather the Lebensraum will be filled up by other peoples, other beings. There is no vacuum in nature. Speech at the annual rally of young officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast December 18, 1940

Once The Boo roamed this campus fierce, alert, and lion-voiced, and his wrath was a terrible thing. He could scream and rant and call us “bums” a thousand times, but he could not hide his clear and overwhelming love of the Corps. The Corps received that love, took it in, felt it in the deepest places, and now, tonight, we give it back at the school where we started out and we give it to The Boo, as a gift, because once, many years ago, The Boo loved us first, when we were cadets of boys and when we needed it the most.

Speech at the annual rally of young officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast December 18, 1940 If somebody characterizes the morale of a company as bad, then the company leader is responsible for this. If somebody characterizes the morale of a regiment as bad, then the regiment’s commander is responsible for this. A leader is always responsible for his followers. He passes his own spirit on to his followers. If he shows signs of weakness, then his followers will also become weak. If he shows signs of resistance and valor, then his followers will resist and will be valiant. If he shows signs of heroism, then his followers will die heroically. If he shows signs of cowardly capitulation, then his followers will capitulate. The leader of any organization is not only the bearer of its shield. He also fashions its character, its valor. And, in turn, in this sense, he is also responsible for its defeatism. You must hence pass on the faith and insights which you possess to your followers. They must believe in you. And you must always and at all times be the banner, the living banner, behind which they march, an example in all things to the soldier. If this idea continues to suffuse the entire Wehrmacht to the extent which we are already witnessing today to our great joy and pride-then this Wehrmacht will be invincible. And then this age in which we live will not only be a great age for all of us now, but it will also be regarded as an age of enlightenment by future generations. Just as we think with shame of the years 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, and so on, so posterity will think with pride and joy of the age we are fashioning at present. Then, we will have done our duty. A man cannot expect more from life. Everyone will die sooner or later. Thus, there is only one question: how did he live his life? Did he live decently? Did he live courageously? Did he live faithfully and did he fulfill his duties? Or did he live like a drone among his Volk? Did he live as one of those who go with the flow of lethargy or apathy? That is the question. And if there is one reason for living, then it is to be able to say in one’s old age: “For my part, I did my duty. I always was indifferent to what the others did.” When one day you look back to this age, I wish that you will be able to do one thing: to look back with a feeling of pride: “Back then, when the Greater German Reich was fighting for its destiny, I was a soldier. I was an officer back then and I did my duty for this eternal Germany!

The first movie star I met was Norma Shearer. I was eight years old at the time and going to school with Irving Thalberg Jr. His father, the longtime production chief at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, devoted a large part of his creative life to making Norma a star, and he succeeded splendidly. Unfortunately, Thalberg had died suddenly in 1936, and his wife's career had begun to slowly deflate. Just like kids everywhere else, Hollywood kids had playdates at each other's houses, and one day I went to the Thalberg house in Santa Monica, where Irving Sr. had died eighteen months before. Norma was in bed, where, I was given to understand, she spent quite a bit of time so that on those occasions when she worked or went out in public she would look as rested as possible. She was making Marie Antoinette at the time, and to see her in the flesh was overwhelming. She very kindly autographed a picture for me, which I still have: "To Cadet Wagner, with my very best wishes. Norma Shearer." Years later I would be with her and Martin Arrouge, her second husband, at Sun Valley. No matter who the nominal hostess was, Norma was always the queen, and no matter what time the party was to begin, Norma was always late, because she would sit for hours—hours!—to do her makeup, then make the grand entrance. She was always and forever the star. She had to be that way, really, because she became a star by force of will—hers and Thalberg's. Better-looking on the screen than in life, Norma Shearer was certainly not a beauty on the level of Paulette Goddard, who didn't need makeup, didn't need anything. Paulette could simply toss her hair and walk out the front door, and strong men grew weak in the knees. Norma found the perfect husband in Martin. He was a lovely man, a really fine athlete—Martin was a superb skier—and totally devoted to her. In the circles they moved in, there were always backbiting comments when a woman married a younger man—" the stud ski instructor," that sort of thing. But Martin, who was twelve years younger than Norma and was indeed a ski instructor, never acknowledged any of that and was a thorough gentleman all his life. He had a superficial facial resemblance to Irving Thalberg, but Thalberg had a rheumatic heart and was a thin, nonathletic kind of man—intellectually vital, but physically weak. Martin was just the opposite—strong and virile, with a high energy level. Coming after years of being married to Thalberg and having to worry about his health, Martin must have been a delicious change for Norma.

And now, my young Comrades, you must understand one thing: in the year 1919, I took up a struggle which appeared nearly hopeless at the time. An unknown man who undertook to rid a world of resistance, to tear down walls of prejudice. Prejudice at times is worse than divine force. A man took a stand against all the bearers of public life back then, against the parties, against their press, against the whole system of capitalist fabrication of public opinion. I led this struggle until the final seizure of power. You must understand one thing: that at this moment I could have only one wish, namely, that if this war is indeed inevitable, that it still be fought during my lifetime, because I am the man who possesses the greatest authority with the German Volk. And moreover, because I believe that based on the experiences of my life, I am the most able to strengthen the nation in this battle and to lead it into this battle. Thus, once I became aware that England was determined to fight this battle, I did not capitulate, but in an instant determined to do everything to prepare Germany to hold its own in this most difficult struggle for its existence. And my appeal to the German nation was not in vain. I labored in these years to build up armament for the German Volk. I subordinated everything to the one thought: how can Germany be made strong? How can its armament be made powerful? I was determined to do nothing by half-measures, but to stake everything on one throw. I knew that this struggle would determine whether Germany will be or will not be. It is not a question of a system. It is a question of whether these 85 million people, in their national unity, can carry through on their right to life or not. If yes, then the future of Europe belongs to this Volk. If no, then this Volk shall perish, shall sink back, and it will no longer be worthwhile to live in this Volk. Faced with this alternative, I was determined to employ all means-down to the last-in this struggle. The nation understood this. Millions of men never spoke of it. Still all thought the same. And throughout this period, nobody ever reproached me for this enormous mobilization of public means for the one goal: national armament. I also wished that, if the hour was to come and come it would, the German soldier should not set out against the enemy as, regrettably, this has been the case far too often in Germany’s past. This phrase, “the best weapons for the best soldier in the world,” has profound meaning. The best soldier must and will despair once it dawns on him that, in spite of his valor, the effectiveness of his arms does not suffice to force the victory. Therefore, I was determined to do my utmost to secure for us the best arms. And, before German history, I may be faulted on many a thing, but on one topic assuredly not: that I had not done my utmost, what was humanly possible, to prepare the German Volk better for this struggle than, regrettably, it was prepared in the year 1914. In this, I found the support of countless people, men of the state, the Party, and in particular the Wehrmacht. They walked by my side. And thus we were able, in barely seven years, to make the German Wehrmacht once more the world’s best. And, for my person, I have always been convinced that for us Germans there are only two possibilities: either we are no soldiers or we are the world’s best. There is no in-between. Adolf Hitler - speech at the annual rally of young officer cadets at the Berlin Sportpalast December 18, 1940

As the bus headed into the night, I noticed that the bench seat in the back of the bus was vacant. So I took my blanket and pillow, made my way to the back and stretched out. Rumbling along I was vaguely aware of the stops we made, but the night passed quickly. Eventually it started getting light outside, but looking around I saw that most people were still sleeping, including a Negro woman wearing a Navy uniform. She was a WAVE and must have boarded the bus sometime during the night. I had no idea where we were, but it didn’t matter as long as we were heading west. Slowly the passengers woke up and looked around, including the young Negro lady. I never had a problem talking to people, so, striking up a conversation, I discovered that she was going home to Oklahoma City. I told her about being a cadet at Farragut and that I was now heading to California for the summer. Time always goes faster when there is someone to talk to and we had the entire back of the bus to ourselves. The first inkling that something was wrong came when we got off the bus for a rest stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. The driver told me that it wasn’t fitting to sit in the back of the bus with a Negro. I was dumbfounded, and coming from the North, I didn’t understand. I tried to explain that this woman was wearing the uniform of her country, but it didn’t make any difference. That’s just the way it was in the South! We ran into the same kind of bigotry in the diner at our next rest stop, but before I could make an issue out of it, she hushed me up and explained that she just wanted to go home and didn’t need any problems. The two of us sat in the section for “Negroes Only,” where they served her but not this white boy, which is what I was called, along with other derogatory remarks. Never mind, I shared her sandwich and I guess they were just glad to get rid of us when we boarded the bus again. Behind me, I heard someone say something about my being a “nigger lover”.... Big as life, I sat in the back again! This time no one said anything and everything seemed forgotten by the time she got off in Oklahoma City. Another driver came aboard and took over. Saying goodbye to my friend, I got up and moved back to the seat I had had originally -- the one over the big hump for the rear tires!

The world is a beautiful place, babe,” he whispered. “More beautiful every day I’m in it with you.” “Together we have a chance to do this life right, and there’s no one I’d rather do it with than you. You’ve given me everything. You fill me up to the brim. I’m overflowing.” “I know, babe. I feel the same way.

and many tough life choices, Gwen must decide who or what she will become. Fleet Cadet or Civilian? Friend or lover? Average or extraordinary? Can she make new friends? Can she trust the old ones, such as Logan Sangre, her sexy high school crush and an Earth special operative? Time and time again, Gwen’s uncanny ability to come up with the best answer in a crisis saves her life and others. And now, her unique Logos voice makes her an extremely valuable commodity to the Atlanteans—so much so that her enigmatic commanding officer Aeson Kassiopei, who is also the Imperial Prince of Atlantis, has taken an increasingly personal interest in her. Before the end of the journey, Gwen must convince him that she has what it takes to compete in the deadly Games of the Atlantis Grail. It’s becoming apparent—the life of her family and all of Earth depends on it. COMPETE is the second book in The Atlantis Grail series. Don’t miss another book by Vera Nazarian! Subscribe to the mailing list to be notified when the next books by Vera Nazarian are available. We promise not to spam you or chit-chat, only make occasional book release announcements.

I knew that once I was sworn in, I would be a Midshipman in the United States Naval Reserve and a Cadet in the United States Maritime Service. That meant that I would be a low life “plebe” or “mugg” to the upperclassmen. Everyone on the bus had a good idea of what we were in for as muggs, and it was not good. The bus rolled through Bucksport and then passed through Orland, which could hardly be called a town, onto even narrower, bumpier roads, to what seemed to be the end of the Earth. By now, it was getting late and the shadows were getting longer, as the bus ground up a long incline and then turned right, past a small golf course on a barren hill. Finally, I saw the “Maine Maritime Academy” sign, indicating that we had arrived. I don’t know what I expected, but the few buildings on the side of this windblown hill wasn’t it! The buildings that I was looking at would be my home for the next three years. The bus took a final left hand turn and pulled up alongside a relatively large red brick building. I could see the upperclassmen through large windows, anxiously awaiting our arrival. Seeing us, they finally knew that they had graduated to the exalted position of “Lord and Master.” For the first time, I got that sickening feeling of total helplessness, mixed with apprehension and anxiety. There was nowhere to hide and I refused to show my feelings, so I compensated by getting off the bus with a swagger and a smug grin that would soon get me into trouble and be wiped from my face. If I wanted to survive, I had better be ready to play their game and put up with the countless acts of immaturity that would be bestowed upon poor me….

I never had a problem talking to people, so, striking up a conversation, I discovered that she was going home to Oklahoma City. I told her about being a cadet at Farragut and that I was now heading to California for the summer. Time always goes faster when there is someone to talk to and we had the entire back of the bus to ourselves. The first inkling that something was wrong came when we got off the bus for a rest stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. The driver told me that it wasn’t fitting to sit in the back of the bus with a Negro. I was dumbfounded, and coming from the North, I didn’t understand. I tried to explain that this woman was wearing the uniform of her country, but it didn’t make any difference. That’s just the way it was in the South! We ran into the same kind of bigotry in the diner at our next rest stop, but before I could make an issue out of it, she hushed me up and explained that she just wanted to go home and didn’t need any problems. The two of us sat in the section for “Negroes Only,” where they served her but not this white boy, which is what I was called, along with other derogatory remarks. Never mind, I shared her sandwich and I guess they were just glad to get rid of us when we boarded the bus again. Behind me, I heard someone say something about my being a “nigger lover”.... Big as life, I sat in the back again! This time no one said anything and everything seemed forgotten by the time she got off in Oklahoma City. Another driver came aboard and took over. Saying goodbye to my friend, I got up and moved back to the seat I had had originally -- the one over the big hump for the rear tires!

The year wears away—the last year it is too—and I find myself near graduation, with every prospect of success. And from the beginning to the close my life has been one not of trouble, persecution, or punishment, but one of isolation only.

THE cadets came to their feet and the stadium erupted in a cheer that must have been heard all the way to Denver. Day marched the POWs to the center of the field, where they halted, pivoted, and faced the cadets. Risner ordered, “Present arms,” and the POWs saluted the cadets. The cadets popped to attention and returned the salute. In that frozen moment, nothing was said. But much was understood. Cadets barely in their twenties and long-retired officers in their seventies were joined across a half century.

Everything that mattered in Hank Reed’s life, outside of his family, revolved around horses. Starting with his days as a cadet, he had lived in a world that could measure everything—honor, kindliness, discipline, sporting spirit, diligence, and, most of all, courage—in equestrian terms. His brain was crammed with the nomenclature of horses: cantle, withers, curb chain, bran mash, fetlock, stock tie, near side, picket line. He knew the aids for a flying lead change, the correct attire for a foxhunt, the thunder of charging by platoon, and the serenity of riding alone on a quiet path, with only his mount’s breaths and cadenced footsteps for company. The rhythm of a horse’s strides was like music to him—the walk a ballad in four/four time, the trot a rousing two-beat march, the canter a smooth three-beat waltz. Reed knew the scent of fresh straw in the stable, the tickle of a horse’s whiskers as it nuzzled up a carrot. He knew that endless moment when a fall was inevitable and then the sudden breathless smack of landing hard on packed dirt. He knew what the end of a day on horseback felt like, salty with sweat, dirt under his fingernails, and a mind whitewashed from all worry. More than anything, Hank Reed understood what was unspoken among all of these horse soldiers. Sunburned, brusque, tough, accustomed to giving and taking orders, they knew that if you live, eat, sleep, and breathe horses for long enough, they become part of you, and your soul is forever altered.

Adam Walinsky was a big-ideas guy with a special interest in the criminal-justice system. A young New York lawyer and Marine Corps reservist who worked as an aide to Robert F. Kennedy, he’d grown convinced that America’s police departments needed to be dragged into the modern age. A big part of the problem, he decided, was that the undereducated civil servants were too suspicious of new ideas. Early on, it was Irish immigrants who gravitated toward police work because they could already speak English. The ethnic makeup had broadened over the years, but the closed-minded attitudes hadn’t. Or so Walinsky believed. He wanted to convince bright young college students to consider police work as a professional career. From the work of Walinsky and others grew something called the Police Cadet Corps, a program like ROTC for policing.

Richard saw a lot of flaws in the girl’s logic, but he latched onto one in particular. “I thought zombies were created by some virus,” Richard said. “You know, that infects a person’s brain and brings them back to life after they die.” “Yeah,” said Dren a little sarcastically, “I saw that video too.

Physical brutality and verbal abuse were tolerated, even encouraged. Hazing was a part of freshman life, with upperclassmen pummeling new cadets with broom handles or forcing them to stand fully dressed in their uniforms atop radiators or in steam-filled showers until they passed out. Michael Scadron, a close Trump friend at the academy, said his own hazing culminated with upperclassmen requiring him to kiss the school’s mascot—a donkey—“on the ass.”   •

Cultures grow out of the keystone habits in every organization, whether leaders are aware of them or not. For instance, when researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as “grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”4.26,4.27 What’s most interesting about grit is how it emerges. It grows out of a culture that cadets create for themselves, and that culture often emerges because of keystone habits they adopt at West Point. “There’s so much about this school that’s hard,” one cadet told me. “They call the first summer ‘Beast Barracks,’ because they want to grind you down. Tons of people quit before the school year starts. “But I found this group of guys in the first couple of days here, and we started this thing where, every morning, we get together to make sure everyone is feeling strong. I go to them if I’m feeling worried or down, and I know they’ll pump me back up. There’s only nine of us, and we call ourselves the musketeers. Without them, I don’t think I would have lasted a month here.” Cadets who are successful at West Point arrive at the school armed with habits of mental and physical discipline. Those assets, however, only carry you so far. To succeed, they need a keystone habit that creates a culture—such as a daily gathering of like-minded friends—to help find the strength to overcome obstacles. Keystone habits transform us by creating cultures that make clear the values that, in the heat of a difficult decision or a moment of uncertainty, we might otherwise forget.

Since Spirit’s around me so much, I’m not gonna lie--a few times I’ve used it to my advantage. Oh, come on, wouldn’t you? As a mom, being a medium always worked well with keeping my kids in line. I never really knew what was going on with them, but I’d tell them that I’d send my guides with them when they went out so they’d stay out of trouble! Victoria and my son, Larry, never thought about doing anything bad because they probably thought Spirit would rat them out. I even called them up a few times to find out if they were okay, and said my Spirit guides told me to. But I was just being a nervous mom--Spirit hadn’t told me anything! Now that they’re older, I don’t do this. I don’t even think Spirit would help me spy on Victoria at school, or on my son when he’s at a bar with his friends. Spirit probably thinks there’s a lot that I’m better off not knowing. I’ve also asked my angels to help me find a parking spot at the mall or items I’ve lost around the house. I spend most of my day searching for stuff I’ve misplaced because I’m such a space cadet, so if I didn’t ask for Spirit’s help with this, I’d get nothing done. To enlist their aid, I calmly sit down, relax, and pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost articles, that he guide me to where I put the item. You can try this, too. My husband, Larry, always says I can talk to souls across many dimensions, but I can’t find the keys in my own damn pocketbook.

Life is strewn with choices that can’t be bypassed. Haven’t you learned that yet? It’s through our choices that we are known.

The death of a cadet is an inevitable yet acceptable tragedy. This process thins the herd, leaving only the strongest riders, and as long as the cause of death does not break the Codex, any rider involved in extinguishing another’s life shall not be punished.

The breath of life of the six and the one combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron flame. —THE JOURNAL OF WARRICK OF LUCERAS —TRANSLATED BY CADETS VIOLET SORRENGAIL AND DAIN AETOS

Your Grace should know that I am burdened by the greatest misfortune a human being can suffer,” he said with disarming humility. “I no longer believe.” “We know, my son,” the Bishop answered without surprise. “How could we not know!” He said this with a certain joy, for he too, as a King’s Cadet in Morocco, had lost his faith at the age of twenty, surrounded by the din of battle. “It was the thundering certainty that God had ceased to exist,” he said. In terror he had dedicated himself to a life of prayer and penitence. “Until God took pity on me and showed me the path of my vocation,” he concluded. “What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you. And regarding that there can be no doubt, for it is He in His infinite diligence who has enlightened us so that we may offer you this consolation.

The biggest predictor of cadets’ career success was how dominant their faces appeared. Having a face that people judged as looking dominant increased the odds of a colonel becoming a brigadier general, a brigadier general becoming a major general, and a major general becoming a lieutenant general.

The cadets wake up each morning and check on the way each group member is feeling. They fire up the ones who are tired or discouraged. They give their units and themselves nicknames as a way of creating unit cohesion. To the outside world, a cadet might be Joe Smith. But within the unit, he’s Badger, and Badger is a tough kid who takes whatever the army can dish out and never quits.

Over lunch, Csikszentmihalyi and I talked about children. A little kid’s life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with the dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery. Then—at some point in their lives—they don’t. What happens? “You start to get ashamed that what you’re doing is childish,” Csikszentmihalyi explained. What a mistake. Perhaps you and I—and all the other adults in charge of things—are the ones who are immature. It goes back to Csikszentmihalyi’s experience on the train, wondering how grown-ups could have gotten things so wrong. Our circumstances may be less dire, but the observation is no less acute. Left to their own devices, Csikszentmihalyi says, children seek out flow with the inevitability of a natural law. So should we all.

Perhaps the magnetic pull of West Point ultimately wasn’t rational but emotional. The history-laden rhythm of a military parade reverberated like the incense-scented rituals of Catholic mass. Walking around West Point, I was swept up in its call to “Duty, Honor, Country.” Self-sacrifice, integrity, and leadership echoed between the larger-than-life statues of Eisenhower and MacArthur. Cadets discussed courage and duty without a note of irony. They spoke without slouching, oozing confidence, projecting their chins, eyes fixed straight ahead. Around them my own spine stiffened with resolve. Whatever they had, I wanted. West Point offered more than an academic education. It offered an almost religious quest for perfection. I wanted to graduate a better man.

The line between the Rebel and Union element in Georgetown was so marked that it led to divisions even in the churches. There were churches in that part of Ohio where treason was preached regularly, and where, to secure membership, hostility to the government, to the war and to the liberation of the slaves, was far more essential than a belief in the authenticity or credibility of the Bible. There were men in Georgetown who filled all the requirements for membership in these churches. Yet this far-off western village, with a population, including old and young, male and female, of about one thousand—about enough for the organization of a single regiment if all had been men capable of bearing arms—furnished the Union army four general officers and one colonel, West Point graduates, and nine generals and field officers of Volunteers, that I can think of. Of the graduates from West Point, all had citizenship elsewhere at the breaking out of the rebellion, except possibly General A. V. Kautz, who had remained in the army from his graduation. Two of the colonels also entered the service from other localities. The other seven, General McGroierty, Colonels White, Fyffe, Loudon and Marshall, Majors King and Bailey, were all residents of Georgetown when the war broke out, and all of them, who were alive at the close, returned there. Major Bailey was the cadet who had preceded me at West Point. He was killed in West Virginia, in his first engagement. As far as I know, every boy who has entered West Point from that village since my time has been graduated.

For instance, when researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as “grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.

The breath of life of the six and the one combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron flame. —The Journal of Warrick of Luceras —Translated by Cadets Violet Sorrengail and Dain Aetos

Acting from instinct he angled his body so it would shield Lydia's, sweeping her back into the recession of a doorway that, while closed, would give her shelter. Pressing close, he wrapped himself around her so the blows would strike him first. They did. Repeatedly. A clump of mud and small stones that had missed its target struck and shattered on the doorframe and he felt her jump and start to tremble, so he bent his head and murmured words of reassurance, low and calm over the wailing of the injured man, and all the ugly shouts of his tormentors. Fear, he knew, was mostly in the mind, and he would spare her that. He'd long since learned to channel his own fear to action, so it was surprising to him now to feel it twist within his chest- a fear not for himself, his safety, but for hers. It lingered even when the mob had passed them by, the angry tumult growing fainter down the street, and there was no more danger. Stepping back, he gave them both the space to breathe. Her face was pale, and she appeared to still be shaking but she only drew her cloak a little tighter as though wanting him to think it was the cold, and he had seen enough cadets who did not wish to show him weakness that he recognized her brave attempt to seem more strong in front of him, and though he was not fooled by it he understood her need to make the effort. Having satisfied himself she was unharmed, he wanted for her to collect herself sufficiently to leave the sheltered doorway, then he offered her his arm again, and once again she took it, holding tighter to him this time, and they crossed the street in silence. But the feeling, strange and new, stayed firmly lodged beneath his ribs, as though once having taken hold it was now part of him, and he had no idea what to do with it. We always fear what we don't know, he'd told the young de Joncourt boy. And walking now with Lydia's gloved hand upon his arm, her warmth beside him, Jean-Philippe admitted there was truth in what he'd said. Because in all his twenty-seven years, with all that life had dealt him, he had not known anything like this.

Sometimes these guns were actually audible, or we fancied they were; every weekday there was a rush to the newspapers, every Sunday a batch of names read out to stilled listeners. The careful assessments of schoolmasters were blotted out by larger and wilder markings; a boy who had been expelled returned as a hero with medals; those whose inability to conjugate avoir and être seemed likely in 1913 to imperil a career were to conquer France’s enemies better than they did her language; offenders gated for cigarette-smoking in January were dropping bombs from the sky in December. It was a frantic world; and we knew it even if we did not talk about it. Slowly, inch by inch, the tide of war lapped to the gates of our seclusion; playing-fields were ploughed up for trenches and drill-grounds; cadet-corps duties took precedence over classroom studies; the school that had prepared so many beloved generations for life was preparing this one, equally beloved, for death.

What is the real issue then, according to you?' Scholscher was on the point of replying that men needed another company than their own kind, that they craved it desperately, like an almost physical presence, and that nothing on earth seemed big enough to satisfy that urge, those roots of heaven, as Islam called them, which were forever gripping and torturing man's heart, but he felt that this sort of talk, and indeed of thinking, ill became the Army uniform he was wearing. The feeling dated probably from the time when, as a young cadet at Saint-Cyr, the thin stripe of a sub-lieutenant had been all the horizon to which he aspired. He smiled faintly at the memory of his youth. For a long time the Army uniform had remained for him the very symbol of what he had most fervently desired from the first metaphysical stirrings of adolescence: fidelity to a rule. This forbade certain attitudes, certain states of mind. So he kept his reflections to himself — all the more so since, these last years, he felt less and less need to exchange ideas with other men, because essentially they no longer came to him as questions, but as certainties. He had thus nothing left but minor curiosities. Sucking at his pipe, he gave the Dutchman a very friendly glance. 'What is the issue, according to you, if it isn't elephants?' Haas repeated, in a slightly menacing tone. 'Loneliness, I suppose,' said Scholscher vaguely.

Stories from Beyond the Sea – “I could not believe my good luck!” from Page 31 “Not only was she stunningly beautiful but she was also witty, flirtatious and at the same time understanding and loving, I couldn’t believe my good fortune and did all I could to convince her to stay with me in the United States. After getting married to my young wife Ursula, in a small town in upstate New York, and thinking that the US Navy would be a better option than returning to a life at sea on merchant ships, I took the navy exam to become a student pilot. As a commissioned officer with the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJR) I enjoyed many benefits that the aviation cadets didn’t get, including having basic living quarters. Having had some prior experience flying the right hand seat in a DC-3 when I was in Liberia, I took to aviation, my new endeavor, like a duck to water.

Fewer dragons are choosing to bond, but the number of riders entering the quadrant has remained steady. My mind whirls. Attacks at the eastern borders are increasing, according to every Battle Brief, and yet there are fewer dragons willing to bond in order to defend Navarre. “Will they tell you why they won’t bond?” another first-year asks. “No, jackass,” Jack scoffs, his icy-blue gaze narrowing on the cadet. “Dragons only talk to their bonded riders, just like they only give their full name to their bonded rider. You should know that by now.” Professor Kaori sends Jack a look that shuts the first-year’s mouth but doesn’t stop him from sneering at the other cadet. “They don’t share their reasons,” our instructor says. “And anyone who respects their life won’t ask a question they’re not willing to answer.

The blood of life of the six and the one combined and set the stone ablaze in an iron rain. —The Journal of Warrick of Luceras —Translated by Cadet Violet Sorrengail

An officer who graduated in 1841 wrote that the Military Academy “taught that he belongs no longer to section or party but, in his life and all his faculties, to his country.”28 Another West Point graduate wrote that the academy taught all cadets the “doctrine of perpetual nationality.

When this is over, we should take as much leave as they’ll give us and spend it all in Aretia. We can figure out what life is supposed to look like without the daily threat of death. You can govern the province you love during the day, then slide into bed with me at night. Or I can always join you in the Assembly chamber. You do some of your best work on that throne. —Recovered Correspondence of Cadet Violet Sorrengail to His Grace, Lieutenant Xaden Riorson, Sixteenth Duke of Tyrrendor