Coffin Nails Quotes

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Silence had pounded a nail in the coffin of my marriage. But communication was key.

You've got some 'Star-Spangled' nails in your coffin, kid. That's what they've done for you, son.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

You know it don't take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?

Our wisdom is slavish prejudice, our customs consist in control, constraint, compulsion. Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.

I’d given up on the white picket fence after Kisten had died—finding out my kids would be demons was the nail in the coffin.

Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djan karet. We are the cavalry. We're here. Put away the pills. We'll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it'll be your turn to help us. "Eidolons" (1988)

Lo!" cried the demon. "I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!" He looked at Cabal. "Where's your dread rod?" "I left it at home," replied Cabal. "Didn't think I really needed it." "You can't summon me without a dread rod!" said Lucifuge, appalled. "You're here, aren't you?" "Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven't got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?" "I don't even know what Ematille is." Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. "Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?" "Don't be fatuous." "Half a bottle of brandy?" "I don't drink brandy." "It's not for you." "I have a hip flask," said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram. "Cheers," said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. "This really is a shambles," the demon added finally. "What did you summon me for, anyway?

coffin nails. Once Stan had left for

It had been torture. But every coffin needed its last nail, and that meeting was ours.

Everyday she loses a bit more of herself , every day another nail in her coffin house payments medical bills and middle aged isolation

She reached into an alabaster box and pulled out a violet cigarette that also exactly matched her eyes. Some people just don't know when to quit. She lit her colored coffin nail, set it into an ashtray, and promptly forgot about it. It smoldered into eternity silently begging for one more touch from her gorgeous lips.

You see, Marriage is like a Coffin, and each Kid is another Nail.

You’re home as long as you’re with me,

He gazed sadly at the threatening sky, at the burned-out remnants of a locust-plagued summer, and suddenly saw on the twig of an acacia, as in a vision, the progress of spring, summer, fall and winter, as if the whole of time were a frivolous interlude in the much greater spaces of eternity, a brilliant conjuring trick to produce something apparently orderly out of chaos, to establish a vantage point from which chance might begin to look like necessity . . . and he saw himself nailed to the cross of his own cradle and coffin, painfully trying to tear his body away, only, eventually, to deliver himself — utterly naked, without identifying mark, stripped down to essentials — into the care of the people whose duty it was to wash the corpses, people obeying an order snapped out in the dry air against a background loud with torturers and flayers of skin, where he was obliged to regard the human condition without a trace of pity, without a single possibility of any way back to life, because by then he would know for certain that all his life he had been playing with cheaters who had marked the cards and who would, in the end, strip him even of his last means of defense, of that hope of someday finding his way back home.

According to the CDC, cigarettes kill over 435,000 people a year in the United States. Most of us in Danbury were locked away for trading in illegal drugs. The annual death toll of illegal drug addicts, according to the same government study? Seventeen thousand. Heroin or coffin nails, you be the judge.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

I know, but with the monsters still after me, I need a beast, not an angel.

I am. I kill. I maim, I bleed. And I keep my boyfriend from being fucked hard.” Misha

I like cats. They don't care if you love Jesus.

The United States is baiting China and Russia, and the final nail in the coffin will be Iran, which is, of course, the main target of Israel. We have allowed China to increase their military strength and Russia to recover from Sovietization, to give them a false sense of bravado, this will create an all together faster demise for them. We’re like the sharp shooter daring the noob to pick up the gun, and when they try, it’s bang bang. The coming war will be so severe that only one superpower can win, and that’s us folks. This is why the EU is in such a hurry to form a complete superstate because they know what is coming, and to survive, Europe will have to be one whole cohesive state. Their urgency tells me that they know full well that the big showdown is upon us. O how I have dreamed of this delightful moment.

Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death, for there had never been a life.

All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins.

I came to the sobering realization that I was not making it out of here alive, no matter what. I was bruised and bloodied in mind and body, surrounded by the most literal interpretation of monsters, and a final nail in the coffin--I was in love with one of them. The love and loss alone would kill me, if not for the mythical creatures standing in front of me, ready to beat love and loss to the punch.-- Camille

fingers shaking, he zipped up his UPS jacket, the same jacket he had found hanging from a nail in Noah's barn the day of his funeral, having ridden his bike through mud-frosted roads to get there. Because Hai was not invited to see the coffin. Because to Noah's family he never existed. He was locked inside the head of the cold boy in the pine box.

I don't do epilogues. I hate epilogues. It's like nailing the coffin shut on the story, allowing for no further growth and leaving no room for the readers' imaginations.

She wrote she heard them hammering nails all day long and that it was like living next to a coffin maker after a plague. When

idea that the Vedic Aryans came from outside of ancient India and entered the region to start what became the Vedic civilization is a foreign idea.

Though our loved ones may push us towards success, it is often our enemies who drive us to secure the final nail in the coffin of our accomplishments.

I had heard the nails being driven into the nails of her coffin, but I couldn't adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.

Our loved ones may be nailed in a coffin but their epitaph is nailed in our hearts. Death cannot kill love.

with the yellow fingers from the coffin nails they smoked,

He took a battered pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and held it out to Devona. "Want one?"   Devona shook her head. "No thanks."   I noticed the brand: Coffin Nails.

He’d put the nail in his own coffin. Rider and the Souls treated loyalty as sacred. If there was no loyalty among the members, then Rider didn’t want that man around. By doing the only thing he thought right at the time, he’d fucked himself into losing what meant most to him and being banished back to a life he hated living. No one would understand why he did what he did. To the Souls, the rules were black and white. It was club first. Always the club came first, no matter what. Hindsight was a bitch because he did regret every decision he’d made.

As explained by David Frawley, “Dravidian history does not contradict Vedic history either. It credits the invention of the Tamil language, the oldest Dravidian tongue, to the rishi Agastya, one of the most prominent sages in the Rig Veda. Dravidian kings historically have called themselves Aryans and trace their descent through Manu (who in the Matsya Purana is regarded as originally a south Indian king). Apart from language, moreover, both north and south India share a common religion and culture.” 2

A recent landmark global study in population genetics by a team of internationally reputed scientists (as reported in The History and Geography of Human Genes, by Luca CavalliSforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberta Piazzo, Princeton University Press) reveals that the people who inhabited the Indian subcontinent, including Europe, concludes that all belong to one single race of Caucasian type. This confirms once again that there really is no racial difference between north Indians and south Indian Dravidians.

All our wisdom consists in servile prejudices. All our practices are only subjection, impediment, and constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth he is sewed in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed in a coffin. So long as he keeps his human shape, he is enchained by our institutions.

Things change, flesh rots, houses decay and fall into disrepair—there’s no point complaining. But the lost creativity makes you want to scream and pound on the inside of your coffin lid as it’s being nailed into place.

I'd swallow some whiskey and listen to the waves while I thought about Naoko. It was too strange to think that she was dead and no longer part of this world. I couldn't absorb the truth of it. I couldn't believe it. I had heard the nails being driven into the lid of her coffin, but I still couldn't adjust to the fact that she had returned to nothingness.

There was never any record, either historical, textual or archeological, that supports this premise for an Aryan invasion. There also is no record of who would have been the invaders. The fact is that it is a theory that came from mere linguistic speculation which happened during the nineteenth century when very little archeological excavation had yet been done around India.

With apologies to Judy Garland and Cole Porter, all the world does NOT love a clown. John Wayne Gacy might have been the final nail in the coffin in terms of anyone associating clowns with funny (if a bunch of clowns die, do they all fit into one coffin?)

So, you still a Satanist?” Luci asked to change the topic. “Oh, your mother told you?” Dad sighed and shrugged. “I don’t really worship the devil if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s more of a philosophy. Why, you’re Christian, or something?” “I don’t think God would approve of my lifestyle, so I was looking the other way. Maybe it’s something I could get into, the Satanist thing.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand--miles of them--leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither? Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

For him life was all full of opportunities, and I don’t think that was necessarily a bad thing, but I think he wanted to grab them for all the wrong reasons. He wasn’t passionate about art, he didn’t care about lawyers helping people, he didn’t even care about my singing voice. It was all for more money. And so I suppose it was fitting that it was the loss of all his money that killed him in the end. The pills and the whiskey were just the nails in the coffin.

Four tall stories were stacked haphazardly on top of each other, cresting in a black roofline against the cobalt night sky that made no sense, but leapt whimsically from flat to dangerously steep and back again. Trees with skeletal limbs, badly in need of a trim, scraped against slate, like oaken nails on the lid of a coffin.

However magnificent a dawn lighted up your life, you would yet in the end be nailed up in a coffin and thrown into a hole.

succubus,” chuckled Tooth, petting the warm flesh

The problem of pain is not a nail in the coffin of Christianity; it is a crowbar that jerks the lid off the coffin and allows all who are willing to climb out of their sleep.

I’m going be that n-n-nail in your coffin

Neil was already in his coffin. He might as well nail it shut. "Yeah, I understand you're a complete asshole.

I can see with my own two eyes that Luke is exactly my type, and the LEGO set is the final nail in the coffin.

Civilised man is born and dies a slave. The infant is bound up in swaddling clothes, the corpse is nailed down in his coffin. All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.

That’s when I realized: When it comes to the final nail in your coffin it doesn’t matter if it’s dull or sharp, it’ll still hold, because a lifetime of prior nails have helped seal that coffin shut.

Cash I made it on the bevel. 1. There is more surface for the nails to grip. 2. There is twice the gripping-surface to each seam. 3. The water will have to seep into it on a slant. Water moves easiest up and down or straight across. 4. In a house people are upright two thirds of the time. So the seams and joints are made up-and-down. Because the stress is up-and-down. 5. In a bed where people lie down all the time, the joints and seams are made sideways, because the stress is sideways. 6. Except. 7. A body is not square like a crosstie. 8. Animal magnetism. 9. The animal magnetism of a dead body makes the stress come slanting, so the seams and joints of a coffin are made on the bevel. 10. You can see by an old grave that the earth sinks down on the bevel. 11. While in a natural hole it sinks by the center, the stress being up-and- down. 12. So I made it on the bevel. 13. It makes a neater job.

The whole city seemed to be pinned down, fascinated by the glassy stare of the Lubyanka. Krymov had thought about various people he knew. Their distance from him was something that couldn't even be measured in space -they existed in another dimension. No power on earth or in heaven could bridge this abyss, an abyss as profound as death itself. But these people weren't yet lying under a nailed-down coffin-lid – they were here beside him, alive and breathing, thinking, weeping.

O wind, songs have ye in her name? Plucked her did ye from midnight blasted millyard winds and made her renown ring in stone and brick and ice? Hard implacable bridges of iron cross her milk of brows? God bent from his steel arc welded her a hammer of honey and of balm? The rutted mud of hardrock Time . . . was it wetted, springified, greened, blossomied for me to grow in nameless bloodied lutey naming of her? Wood on cold trees would her coffin bare? Keys of stone rippled by icy streaks would ope my needy warm interiors and make her eat the soft sin of me? No iron bend or melt to make my rocky travail ease--I was all alone, my fate was banged behind an iron door, I'd come like butter looking for Hot Metals to love, I'd raise my feeble orgone bones and let them be rove and split the half and goop the big sad eyes to see it and say nothing. The laurel wreath is made of iron, and thorns of nails; acid spit, impossible mountains, and incomprehensible satires of blank humanity--congeal, cark, sink and seal my blood--

I might be stupid,” I gritted out, forcing the coffin nail into the creature. “And I might be selfish. I might be royally fucked up. And I am certainly the world’s worst boyfriend. But do you know what my superpower is?” I thrust again with the nail. And again. Every time the iron went home, the fifolet shrieked. It was as clear as water now, with only glimmers of light to suggest my face or shape. The hand on my arm had dissolved. I kept stabbing with the iron as I spoke, my voice rising into a scream. “My superpower, motherfucker, is that I really don’t like myself.

Lifting a sabre-saw, feeling the heft of it, Mickelsson recognized his hand as his father's hand. They were the same size and shape and had much the same freckled redness; the only real difference was that his father's hand had always been barked, scabbed, cracked, and calloused, always at least one fingernail discolored by some mishap. He remembered a chest his uncle and father had let him help them make when he was seven or so, a pine chest longer and deeper than a coffin, no nails or screws, just wooden pegs, locust. It had served as a windowseat through most of his childhood; later they'd used it to hold cow-feed. In the bright, pleasant-smelling hardware store, the discovery that his father and uncle, all those years, had been playing, enjoying themselves—making art, in a way—came over Mickelsson like an awakening. He felt an extravagant inclination to pity himself. What foolishness his life was, in comparison to theirs! But the likeness of his hand to his father's hand distracted him, made him feel, almost unwillingly, a surge of joy.

He was in love with her. Of all the foolish, horrific things he'd ever accomplished, falling in love with a woman he so completely didn't deserve made the top of his list. But he did love her. It wasn't a question or even a sudden realization. Hed known, hadn't he? He'd known from the moment shed called him pretty. It was like a tether between them, wrapped directly around his heart, that she had the power to push and pull at her leisure. Evangelina Celia Sage was woven into his being; in the blink of his eyes, in the crinkle of his smile, in his rusty unused laughter, she was there. From the moment he'd met her, he thought of her like the sun. Bright and vibrant, untouchable. But he was wrong. She wasn't light; she was color. Every single one, dancing otherworldly and bright over his unworthy eyes. She was the explosion of the vivid gleams and glows of the world around him, like a constant rainbow, shining not after the rain, but during. She was everything he never deserved but longed for anyway. He remembered the blood on her clothes, the employer who had hurt her before, the unjust way shed been treated, and the final nail in the proverbial coffin was that echoing, agonizing word. He was ruined. But he loved her anyway.

The premise of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was used as a perfect tool, especially by the British, to divide the Hindu society and the state of India. The North Indian “Aryans” were then pit against the South Indian “Dravidians,” along with high-caste against low-caste, mainstream Hindus against tribals, Vedic orthodoxy against the indigenous orthodox sects, and later to neutralize Hindu criticism of the forced Islamic occupation of India, since “Hindus themselves entered India in the same way as Muslims did.” Even today, the theory has still been used as the basis for the growth of secularist and even Marxist forces. The problem with all of this is that people of Indian descent, especially the youth, when they hear all of this Aryan Invasion theory nonsense, they begin to lose faith in their own country, culture and history, and especially in the Vedic tradition and epics. They think it is all just stories, fiction, or even a lie. But that is not the case at all, which is why it is important to show where this theory came from, what its purpose was, and why we should throw it away and take a second and much deeper look at what the Vedic tradition has to offer, and how it was actually the source of much of the world’s advancement in so many areas.

The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style...

I nodded. I didn’t like talking about it, but Rachel knew. Unlike most mortals, she could see through the Mist—the magic veil that distorts human vision. She’d seen monsters. She’d met some of the other demigods who were fighting the Titans and their allies. She’d even been there last summer when the chopped-up Lord Kronos rose out of his coffin in a terrible new form, and she’d earned my permanent respect by nailing him in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.

Why do we bury our dead?” His nose was dented in at the bridge like a sphinx; the cause of which I could only imagine had been a freak archaeological accident. I thought about my parents. They had requested in their will that they be buried side by side in a tiny cemetery a few miles from our house. “Because it’s respectful?” He shook his head. “That’s true, but that’s not the reason we do it.” But that was the reason we buried people, wasn’t it? After gazing at him in confusion, I raised my hand, determined to get the right answer. “Because leaving people out in the open is unsanitary.” Mr. B. shook his head and scratched the stubble on his neck. I glared at him, annoyed at his ignorance and certain that my responses were correct. “Because it’s the best way to dispose of a body?” Mr. B. laughed. “Oh, but that’s not true. Think of all the creative ways mass murderers have dealt with body disposal. Surely eating someone would be more practical than the coffin, the ceremony, the tombstone.” Eleanor grimaced at the morbid image, and the mention of mass murderers seemed to wake the rest of the class up. Still, no one had an answer. I’d heard Mr. B. was a quack, but this was just insulting. How dare he presume that I didn’t know what burials meant? I’d watched them bury my parents, hadn’t I? “Because that’s just what we do,” I blurted out. “We bury people when they die. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?” “Exactly!” Mr. B. grabbed the pencil from behind his ear and began gesticulating with it. “We’ve forgotten why we bury people. “Imagine you’re living in ancient times. Your father dies. Would you randomly decide to put him inside a six-sided wooden box, nail it shut, then bury it six feet below the earth? These decisions aren’t arbitrary, people. Why a six-sided box? And why six feet below the earth? And why a box in the first place? And why did every society throughout history create a specific, ritualistic way of disposing of their dead?” No one answered. But just as Mr. B. was about to continue, there was a knock on the door. Everyone turned to see Mrs. Lynch poke her head in. “Professor Bliss, the headmistress would like to see Brett Steyers in her office. As a matter of urgency.” Professor Bliss nodded, and Brett grabbed his bag and stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as he left. After the door closed, Mr. B. drew a terrible picture of a mummy on the board, which looked more like a hairy stick figure. “The Egyptians used to remove the brains of their dead before mummification. Now, why on earth would they do that?” There was a vacant silence. “Think, people! There must be a reason. Why the brain? What were they trying to preserve?” When no one answered, he answered his own question. “The mind!” he said, exasperated. “The soul!” As much as I had planned on paying attention and participating in class, I spent the majority of the period passing notes with Eleanor. For all of his enthusiasm, Professor Bliss was repetitive and obsessed with death and immortality. When he faced the board to draw the hieroglyphic symbol for Ra, I read the note Eleanor had written me. Who is cuter? A. Professor Bliss B. Brett Steyers C. Dante Berlin D. The mummy I laughed. My hand wavered between B and C for the briefest moment. I wasn’t sure if you could really call Dante cute. Devastatingly handsome and mysterious would be the more appropriate description. Instead I circled option D. Next to it I wrote Obviously! and tossed it onto her desk when no one was looking.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARYAN INVASION THEORY Before the 1857 uprising it was recognized that British rule in India could not be sustained without a large number of supporters and collaborators from within the Indian population. Recognizing this, it was influential men like Thomas Babbington Macaulay, who, as Chairman of the Education Board, sought to set up an educational system modeled after the British system, which, in the case of India, would serve to undermine the Hindu tradition. While not a missionary himself, Macaulay came from a deeply religious family steeped in the Protestant Christian faith. His father was a Presbyterian minister and his mother a Quaker. He believed that the conversion of Hindus to Christianity held the answer to the problems of administering India. His idea was to create a class of English educated elite that would repudiate its tradition and become British collaborators. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, he enthusiastically wrote his father about his idea and how it was proceeding: “Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious... It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.

Oblong cocooned little visitor, the baby shows her profile blindly in the shuddering flashes of color jerking from the Sony, the tiny stitchless seam of the closed eyelid aslant, lips bubbled forward beneath the whorled nose as if in delicate disdain, she knows she’s good. You can feel in the curve of the cranium she’s feminine, that shows from the first day. Through all this she has pushed to be here, in his lap, his hands, a real presence hardly weighing anything but alive. Fortune’s hostage, heart’s desire, a granddaughter. His. Another nail in his coffin. His.

(...)very soon he went to sleep. He dreamed that the priest whom they had shot that morning was back in the house dressed in the clothes his father had lent him and laid out stiffly for burial. The boy sat beside the bed and his mother read out of a very long book all about how the priest had acted in front of the bishop the part of Julius Caesar: there were bleeding , wrapped in her handkerchief. He was very bored and very tired and somebody was hammering nails into a coffin in the passage. Suddenly the dead priest winked at him - an unmistakable flicker of the eyelid, just like that

She will save herself by proving that she is loyal, obedient, useful, even fanatic in the service of the men around her. She is the happy hooker, the happy homemaker, the exemplary Christian, the pure academic, the perfect comrade, the terrorist par excellence. Whatever the values, she will embody them with a perfect fidelity. The males rarely keep their part of the bargain as she understands it: protection from male violence against her person. But the militant conformist has given so much of herself […] that this betrayal is akin to nailing the coffin shut; the corpse is beyond caring.

Hate. Huh. He’d never hated himself. If anything, he’d always liked himself a little too much. Once, a human female had even accused him of picturing his own face while he climaxed. He hadn’t denied it, either, and next time he’d slept with her, he’d made sure to scream, “Strider” at the pivotal moment. She hadn’t appreciated his sense of humor, and that had been the final nail in their relationship coffin. He was too intense, too jaded, too warped and too…everything for most women to take for long. But so what. He was made of awesome. Anyone who couldn’t see that wasn’t smart enough to be with him, anyway. Haidee,

...very soon he went to sleep. He dreamed that the priest whom they had shot that morning was back in the house dressed in the clothes his father had lent him and laid out stiffly for burial. The boy sat beside the bed and his mother read out of a very long book all about how the priest had acted in front of the bishop the part of Julius Caesar: there was a fish basket at her feet, and the fish were bleeding, wrapped in her handkerchief. He was very tired and very bored and somebody was hammering nails into a coffin in the passage. Suddenly the dead priest winked at him - an unmistakable flicker of the eyelid, just like that.

Sometime toward dawn the rain ceases. But it is not yet day when Cash drives the last nail and stands stiffly up and looks down at the finished coffin, the others watching him. In the lantern light his face is calm, musing; slowly he strokes his hands on his raincoated thighs in a gesture deliberate, final and composed. Then four of them - Cash and pa and Vernon and Peabody - raise the coffin to their shoulders and turn towards the house. it is light, yet they move slowly; empty, yet they carry it carefully; lifeless, yet they move with hushed precautionary words to one another, speaking of it as though, complete, it now slumbered lightly alive, waiting to come awake. On the dark floor their feet clump awkwardly, as though for a long time they have not walked on floors.

When he was a small child, six years old or about that, his father’s apprentice had been making nails from the scrap pile: just common old flat-heads, he’d said, for fastening coffin lids. The nail rods glowed in the fire, a lively orange. “What for do we nail down the dead?” The boy barely paused, tapping out each head with two neat strokes. “It’s so the horrible old buggers don’t spring out and chase us.” He knows different now. It’s the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn’t enough for him to take Bilney’s life away; he had to take his death too.

The nail in the coffin of my brief career as a linguist was probably a seminar I took that winter about the philosophy of language. The aim of this seminar was to formulate a theory that would explain to a Martian "what it is that we know when we know a language." I could not imagine a more objectless, melancholy project. The solution turned out to consist of a series of propositions having the form "'Snow is white' is true iff snow is white." The professor, a gaunt logician with a wild mane of red hair and a deep concern about Martians, wrote this sentence on the board during nearly every class, and we would discuss why it wasn't trivial. Outside the window, snow piled deeper and deeper. (...) I had expected linguistics (the general study of language) to resemble a story, and Russian (the study of a particular language) to resemble a set of rules, but the reality was just the opposite.

The key point here is Macaulay’s belief that “knowledge and reflection” on the part of the Hindus, especially the Brahmanas, would cause them to give up their age-old belief in anything Vedic in favor of Christianity. The purpose was to turn the strength of Hindu intellectuals against their own kind by utilizing their commitment to scholarship in uprooting their own tradition, which Macaulay viewed as nothing more than superstitions. His plan was to educate the Hindus to become Christians and turn them into collaborators. He persisted with this idea for fifteen years until he found the money and the right man for turning his utopian idea into reality. He needed someone who would translate and interpret the Vedic texts in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see the superiority of the Bible and choose that over everything else. Upon his return to England, after a good deal of effort he found a talented but impoverished young German Vedic scholar by name Friedrich Max Muller who was willing to take on the arduous job. Macaulay used his influence with the East India Company to find funds for Max Muller’s translation of the Rig Veda. Though an ardent German nationalist, Max Muller agreed for the sake of Christianity to work for the East India Company, which in reality meant the British Government of India. He also badly needed a major sponsor for his ambitious plans, which he felt he had at last found. The fact is that Max Muller was paid by the East India Company to further its colonial aims, and worked in cooperation with others who were motivated by the superiority of the German race through the white Aryan race theory. This was the genesis of his great enterprise, translating the Rig Veda with Sayana's commentary and the editing of the fifty-volume Sacred Books of the East. In this way, there can be no doubt regarding Max Muller’s initial aim and commitment to converting Indians to Christianity. Writing to his wife in 1866 he observed: “It [the Rig Veda] is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years.” Two years later he also wrote the Duke of Argyle, then acting Secretary of State for India: “The ancient religion of India is doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?” This makes it very clear that Max Muller was an agent of the British government paid to advance its colonial interests. Nonetheless, he still remained an ardent German nationalist even while working in England. This helps explain why he used his position as a recognized Vedic and Sanskrit scholar to promote the idea of the “Aryan race” and the “Aryan nation,” a theory amongst a certain class of so-called scholars, which has maintained its influence even until today.

You can't ever rule again, back in the world," said Nanny. "There's too much music. There's too much iron." "Iron rusts." "Not the iron in the head." The King snorted. "Nevertheless...even that...one day..." "One day." Nanny nodded. "Yes. I'll drink to that. One day. Who knows? One day. Everyone needs 'one day.'' But it ain't today. D'you see? So you come on out and balance things up. Otherwise, this is what I'll do. I'll get 'em to dig into the Long Man with iron shovels, y'see, and they'll say, why, it's just an old earthworks, and pensioned-off wizards and priests with nothin' better to do will pick over the heaps and write dull old books about burial traditions and suchlike, and that'll be another iron nail in your coffin. And I'd be a little bit sorry about that, 'cos you know I've always had a soft spot for you. But I've got kiddies, y'see, and they don't hide under the stairs because they're frit of the thunder, and they don't put milk out for the elves, and they don't hurry home because of the night, and before we go back to them dark old ways I'll see you nailed.

In Germany, the Depression was the final nail in the coffin of the Weimar Republic. Germany needed loans to pay its reparations, but once the Depression hit, its funding dried up and hyperinflation ensued as the government printed more money in a desperate effort to come up with the funds to repay what it owed. The collapse of the Weimar Republic was a textbook case of what happens when democracy and capitalism fail; angry, desperate people became willing to go along with a suspension of the most basic civil liberties in the hope that order and prosperity would be restored. Parties and politicians embracing fascism—a philosophy animated by extreme nationalism that called for government control of virtually all aspects of political and economic life—gained ground in Germany, Italy, Austria, and Japan. By 1932, the Nazi Party had become the largest party in the German parliament; a year later, Adolf Hitler became chancellor. He quickly consolidated power, dismantled democratic protections, formalized harsh discrimination against Jews and others, and began rearming Germany. Hitler broke through the military constraints set by the Versailles Treaty. The absence of a French or British response taught Hitler the dangerous lesson that he could assert German rights as he saw them with little to fear.

The photographer was taking pictures with a small pocket camera but the sergeant sent him back to the car for his big Bertillon camera. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed left the cellar to look around. The apartment was only one room wide but four storeys high. The front was flush with the sidewalk, and the front entrance elevated by two recessed steps. The alleyway at the side slanted down from the sidewalk sufficiently to drop the level of the door six feet below the ground-floor level. The cellar, which could only be entered by the door at the side, was directly below the ground-floor rooms. There were no apartments. Each of the four floors had three bedrooms opening on to the public hall, and to the rear was a kitchen and a bath and a separate toilet to serve each floor. There were three tenants on each floor, their doors secured by hasps and staples to be padlocked when they were absent, bolts and chains and floor locks and angle bars to protect them from intruders when they were present. The doors were pitted and scarred either because of lost keys or attempted burglary, indicating a continuous warfare between the residents and enemies from without, rapists, robbers, homicidal husbands and lovers, or the landlord after his rent. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, mammoth sexual organs, vulgar limericks, opened legs, telephone numbers, outright boasting, insidious suggestions, and impertinent or pertinent comments about various tenants’ love habits, their mothers and fathers, the legitimacy of their children. “And people live here,” Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for.” “Like maggots in rotten meat.” “It’s rotten enough.” Twelve mailboxes were nailed to the wall in the front hall. Narrow stairs climbed to the top floor. The ground-floor hallway ran through a small back courtyard where four overflowing garbage cans leaned against the wall. “Anybody can come in here day or night,” Grave Digger said. “Good for the whores but hard on the children.” “I wouldn’t want to live here if I had any enemies,” Coffin Ed said. “I’d be scared to go to the john.” “Yeah, but you’d have central heating.” “Personally, I’d rather live in the cellar. It’s private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat.” “But you’d have to put out the garbage cans,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever occupied that whore’s crib ain’t been putting out any garbage cans.” “Well, let’s wake up the brothers on the ground floor.” “If they ain’t already awake.

I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! Let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow, - death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove; - ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched; - at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume. "The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!" Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent. "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;--at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

The fact that people are good at evaluating others’ reasons is the nail in the coffin of the intellectualist approach. It means that people have the ability to reason objectively, rejecting weak arguments and accepting strong ones, but that they do not use these skills on the reasons they produce. The apparent weaknesses of reason production are not cognitive failures; they are cognitive features.

Stefan suspected it was wrong back then. Reading the Bible confirmed as much, but what he learnt in legal studies was the nail in the coffin.

he was in the coffin nailed shut with a dozen three-inch nails and two meters under the ground. “I am happy,” she said, “because only now do I know for certain where he is when he is not at home.

compromise is a coffin nail

The discovery of Carl Westover’s body would be the nail in the coffin at his trial. If the police could prove he murdered Carl for refusing to let the mob use the farm, it would blow Kat’s already shaky defense to pieces. Feliks’s only play was to take the entire forum down.

can’t believe my own father has a lady friend—at his age.” He shook his head as if this were the final nail in the coffin of his shattered life.

Your first contacts with most support agencies will put the last nails in the coffin of faintheartedness, and graft onto you a layer of scar tissue and cynicism as thick as rhino hide. There are gifted and resourceful people working in autism support, but with depressing regularity government policy appears to be about Band-Aids and fig leaves, and not about realizing the potential of children with special needs and helping them become long-term net contributors to society

Isolde was like a pebble dropped in the shallows, changing the shape of everything on the surface. And the moment I’d kissed her had been a nail in that coffin.

It is frightening for me to hear freshman art students talk about "branding," because, know it or not, they represent the last frontier. If the artists give up, there is no one else left. If we throw away our agency, being seduced into a corporate mentality so we can simply make our product to get our piece of the pie, we put another nail in the coffin of art's higher power.

Bliss knew she was getting close to convincing me and put the nail in the coffin. “If you’re even considering Fang’s offer to let Vaughn and Kian in, you have to know who you’re getting in bed with.

Sugar and Spice and everything nice, that's what your future could be made of. Snips, snails, and puppy-dog tails... Give me what I want or you'll soon hear the hollow clink of a coffin nail.

The final nail in my coffin. That was it. I was done for. Her reaching to take my hand as she lay on one of my best friend’s laps sealed the deal for me. I would never break a promise to this girl. So help me God.

I might be a biker, but I’m no scum.

My fingers brushed against his arm and a sob caught in my throat as I felt the cool metal of the Phoenix Kiss I’d gifted him there, returned to its bangle form following his passage from this world, another nail in the coffin of this unjust destiny.

hands, making him submit

night? He’d stay the week without even thinking of leaving this bed. He rocked his

Raja could take a shitload of dirty talk, but these words made him flush. He scratched his head and shrugged. “You heard him, Hunter. This little guy’s unstoppable, and I doubt that, out of all things, anyone could deny him me.

She woke me up in the middle of the night and told me that at church you told them that you are gay, and then had a menacing Arab man pick you up and beat up the priest. She thought you’d come to your senses and come back in the evening, but when that didn’t happen, she decided her best bet was to wake me up and tell me that I made you like this... somehow. I don’t even want to know what she thinks our home life looks like if that’s her idea.

Barbara Shanahan, sometimes known as Battering Ram Shanahan. She was over six feet tall and had freckles and wore her light red hair cut short and wore a blue suit with white hose. She worked hard and was a good prosecutor, and I had always wanted to like her. But she seldom smiled and she went about her job with the abrasiveness of a carpenter building coffins with a nail gun.

The Buried Woman // Die Begrabene In life we all pursued our aims. What held us up was lust and games. What drove us on was want and strife, And what we earned: an end to life. So now I lie stretched out alone, All covered up with earth and stone. "I have and want" I cannot say; "I must and will" became my way. In lands of light exults decay. He clothes himself as blue as a day; In many forms deceives the eye, And builds the tower of Babel high. We see his face in movie halls And nailed to newsstands, fences, walls; His name is there for all to see; "Success," he's called, "Technology." His cruel machines, his brutal crimes Break every record of our times. His coffin governs East and West. But will it soon be laid to rest? The victory of death seems near. But no! At last a grave appears, Awakens, yawns its jaws to bite, And crushes death in lasting night.

I finally persuaded the University of the West of England (UWE) (which was the less academic version of Bristol University) to offer me a place studying modern languages. (Incidentally, I had only pulled this off by going down there in person and begging the admissions lady for a place, face-to-face, after sitting outside her office all day. This was becoming a familiar pattern. Well, at least, I have always been persistent.) I wasn’t allowed to study purely Spanish, which I loved, so I had to do German and Spanish. My run-in with the beautiful German Tatiana had led me to believe that the German language might be as beautiful as her. Boy, was I wrong. The language is a pig to learn. This became the first nail in the coffin of my university experience.

We placed her in her coffin the following afternoon. I tried to hammer the lid down, but the stupid nails were inferior and wouldn’t go in straight. To me, that said it all. As for my mother, she hadn’t enjoyed a single luxury since she’d moved to North Korea. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Had she experienced a single good day in her entire life? Or had her whole life been no better than her ragged work pants? Tattered pants . . . wretched life. Even as I carried her coffin, I mulled over whether she’d been granted a single day of pure happiness. But I couldn’t think of one. Maybe she could finally be happy in death.

Whether I cry about it or accept it, there is little I can do about it anyway. I am sorely grateful. And that gratitude, that essential need to live off the kindness of those around me, has worn me into a shrivelled person, a smaller version of what I once was. It has done for me what the illness has not. It is the final angry nail in the coffin of my being. For me, it means that I always have to be nice. I can’t be upset, annoyed or grumpy because I owe everyone around me so much. I owe them my life. And so it rankles, slowly niggling away at me, until each smile feels like a betrayal, each thank you feels like another reason to give up, to feel shame, remorse and regret for everything that has happened to me. I

My apostasy saddens her. This is very true. There are few of us left, and every loss now is another coffin nail. There is great beauty in the faith, and very deep truth. But there is also a bitterness at the core that I found at some point I could no longer deny.

By treating team members with respect, it puts another nail in the coffin of the Taylorist industrial approach to employee management.

Panic is a coffin nail,” was a saying Rothar had heard often as a youth in the wild, and presently, Harwin was supplying enough nails to seal all of Witherington in their boxes.

Desperate. He rolled his eyes. That was the third nail in the coffin to this whole fiasco. Kennedy wanted him to pose as a paid escort (which embarrassed him) to a desperate woman (which scared him) and take her to a wedding (which nauseated him.)

What was one more nail in my coffin? I was dead already.

Well, it was one more nail in the coffin of the old Adam” or “God absolved me” or maybe something as simple as, “It’s been good to understand the Gospel of John a little better over these past few months.

Cigarettes are called coffin nails for a reason, Billy Boy," I remembered telling him. "Be careful with those things. You're risking your life.

We have taxes upon every article that enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to feel, smell, or taste; taxes on everything in the earth, or in the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad or that is grown at home ; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every value that is added to it by the industry of man ; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and on the drug which restores him to health ; on the ermine which covers the judge, and the rope that hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride; — on bed and board — couchant or levant — we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages a taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon which has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of one hundred pounds for the privilege of presiding at his death-bed. His whole property is then taxed from two to twenty per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more.

«È un sopravvissuto. Chissà dove l’ha preso Prete. Non sembra uno col pedigree». Luci lo accarezzò sul mento, e il gattino chiuse gli occhi facendo le fusa. Denti non poté resistere alla tentazione e baciò la testa di Luci, inspirando il suo profumo. «Come noi». Luci gli accarezzò un braccio. «Io cerco sempre di guardare avanti. Non mi piace soffermarmi troppo sul passato. Passerei tutto il tempo chiuso in casa a digrignare i denti»

Saint will be the most devastating nail in my coffin because he made me so easily forget what I already knew.

He didn’t know how he got in the box.  Everything was foggy and numb like the bad end of a heavy dose.  He tried to blink himself clear, but couldn’t focus his mind.  This wasn’t heroin. He knew the difference.  His throat folded over on itself as he tried to swallow. When was the last time he drank something? When was the last time he remembered doing anything? And why the hell was he in a box? His hands were bound and he could feel the roughly cut end of a zip-tie digging into the skin on his leg where his wrists had been resting.  It felt like wood under his fingernails in the dark and he could feel the corners around him — he was hunched over, his knees to his chest. There were air holes the size of his fingers drilled through the plywood. He remembered the feeling of the layers from that time he’d been made to help his dad build that bookcase that fit in the nook under the stairs.  Mum had wanted to have one made, but dad had said it was way too expensive, and that he would build one — with Ollie’s help.  Why the hell was he in this box?  His arm was itching, the track marks enraged and fresh.  Ollie kicked out, his bare heels catching splinters as he thumped against the sides, listening to the noise ring in the room around him. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything except his own heart in his ears. He could smell fresh sawdust, damp earth, something sharp and synthetic, like bleach, and his own breath, hot against his cheeks as he pressed his eye to the hole above him. He tried to calm himself, replaying the last things he remembered over and over in his head. It was all fog. There were streets, people he knew but whose faces he couldn’t see, then there was someone he didn’t recognise, someone alien to him, and then nothing.  His fingers traced the seams, looking for a gap. There wasn’t one.  Tears burned hot on his face, his eyes stinging in the dust.  He kept searching, the rough skin under his chewed nails discovering the hard protrusion of an angled nail. The tip was sticking out through the wood on his right side — hammered through the lid at an odd angle. God, how couldn’t he remember being nailed inside a damn coffin?  He pulled at it, hands still bound, and felt his fingernails pull back.  He wept more, digging into the wood around it, focused solely on it. The only weak point in the box. His only chance. There was no one else around and he had to escape. That was all he knew.

What drives every new nail into liberty’s coffin? Fear: of chaos and disaster, both real and imagined. Freedom is untamed possibility, and only the brave can make a home on its weathered, fruited terrain. The coward prefers the pathetic security of a dark and breathless bunker, safe from death as well as life. Authoritarians thrive on this cowardice.

President Carter attempted to negotiate the release of the hostages. When this failed, he authorized a military rescue mission, launched in April 1980. It was a disaster, and it turned out to be the hammer that would drive the final nail into Carter’s presidential coffin.

Imagine that as soon as you stop, or give up, they begin to prepare your coffin, hammer, and nails, and measure the size. As soon as you run, they stop for a break and they leave the coffin alone. If you stop, or accidentally stumble, the coffin is ready for you, my friend

His attack on Kiev was the final nail in the coffin of Kievan Rus.

about heaven coming on earth—the New Jerusalem coming from God’s dimension onto a physical newly created and transformed earth (Revelation 21:2). It’s not about shedding our bodies; it’s about God transforming them into an incorruptible state (2 Corinthians 5:2–4). The final dwelling place of man is not to go to heaven to be with God; the final dwelling place of God is to come from heaven to be with man (Revelation 21:3–4). Cemeteries once surrounded churches because the saints knew that the coffins they nailed shut would one day be thrown open. The decayed and dusty remains of a once-vibrant body would be transformed into a new type of physical reality—one that will never know death. Believers wanted to be near their church house when the trumpet sounds.

Lo!” cried the demon. “I am here! What dost thou seek of me? Why dost thou disturb my repose? Smite me no more with that dread rod!” He looked at Cabal. “Where’s your dread rod?” “I left it at home,” replied Cabal. “Didn’t think I really needed it.” “You can’t summon me without a dread rod!” said Lucifuge, appalled. “You’re here, aren’t you?” “Well, yes, but under false pretences. You haven’t got a goatskin or two vervain crowns or two candles of virgin wax made by a virgin girl and duly blessed. Have you got the stone called Ematille?” “I don’t even know what Ematille is.” Neither did the demon. He dropped the subject and moved on. “Four nails from the coffin of a dead child?” “Don’t be fatuous.” “Half a bottle of brandy?” “I don’t drink brandy.” “It’s not for you.” “I have a hip flask,” said Cabal, and threw it to him. The demon caught it and took a dram. “Cheers,” said Lucifuge, and threw it back. They regarded each other for a long moment. “This really is a shambles,” the demon added finally. “What did you summon me for, anyway?

I would have felt that I nailed his coffin. He was a wonderful person, Peter. A sweet man with a brilliant mind. In some ways he was much more attentive to me than Yitzchak. He would never do anything criminal, Peter. Just as you wouldn’t. It’s not in his makeup.

Will we ever learn and truly see, when we continue turning a blind eye to those in despair, that are in badly need...we help assist darkness put nails in the coffin of humanity.

Doubt discovers difficulties which it never solves; it creates hesitancy, despondency, despair. Its progress is the decay of comfort, the death of peace. "Believe!" is the word which speaks life into a man, but doubt nails down his coffin.

People are allowed to be screwed up. That's the most efficient realisation I have ever had. That people are allowed to be screwed up, to fall, and to hardly even make it at all. You're allowed that. Redemption is a part of life. You can be a train wreck today and a few months from now be an absolute winner in life. The problem is when you don't allow life to redeem yourself and others. It's a problem when you're severe and fatalistic. Let the river flow whichever way it may go! Let others die and come back to life again! Don't be hammering nails into coffins. Don't hammer nails into your own coffin, either.

The previous year, on February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite returned from Vietnam. In his editorial report, Cronkite broadcasted to the American people that “the war could not be won.” That put the nail into the coffin of victory. President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.” Several weeks later, Johnson announced he would not be running for re-election.

Our compassion that night had been the final nail in our coffins. It was so ironically sad.

You know they used to use nails," he says. "In the old days. Poor folks still do. Not the best idea, a nail in a coffin." Bowman says nothing, but in his mind, he asks, Coffin? The man nods, smiling. He picks up something now, and shows it to Bowman, for inspection. It is a long brass screw. "That's better," he says. "Better than a nail. Notice anything about it?" Bowman shakes his head. "The screw runs widdershins. Back to front. 'Gainst the clock. All the other screws in the world turn the other way to this one. But coffin screws are different. " Bowman forms a word in his mind. Why? The coffin maker smiles. "To stop them from coming back, of course.

It would not be just my OCD patients and their PET scans, or any other data from neuroscience alone, that would drive the final nail in the coffin of materialism. It would be the integration of those data with physics. If there is to be a resolution to the mystery of how mind relates to matter, it will emerge from explaining the data of the human brain in terms of these laws—laws capable of giving rise to a very different view of the causal efficacy of human consciousness. Quantum mechanics makes it feasible to describe a mind capable of exerting effects that neurons alone cannot.

I heard her scream. Where is she? In the attic. I nailed her in a coffin. Why would you do that? She has claustrophobia. I know.

In 1939, a poet and author, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, recorded and put his version of this bizarre story to paper, as prose. I presume that he changed the name from Bucksport to Tucksport, to allow it to be considered fiction. In this rendition, Colonel Buck, being a Justice of the Peace and the highest civil authority, took it upon himself to have the woman nailed to the door of her home and then callously had the house set on fire. In this interpretation, her last words were that she would haunt the Colonel forever. In Robert P. Tristram Coffin’s version, it almost seems that the story of Robert Trim was commingled with the story of Jonathan Buck. The story continues that after the roar of the fire subsided, the woman’s son pulled his mother’s only remaining limb out of the fire and struck Colonel Buck on his back with his mother’s barbequed leg, thereby crippling Colonel Buck for life. Bad as the story was before, it became even more macabre under the pen of Robert P. Tristram Coffin.

Deader than a coffin nail, because a coffin nail is still performing useful work, and so in one sense is as alive as it’s ever been. Dead as hope. Dead as our financial affairs. Gone.

COVID-19 may be the final nail in the coffin of the traditional store model as the isolated people of the world switch to internet shopping.

Everything unfolds as Neelay foresaw it years ago. Browsers appear—yet another nail in the coffin of time and space. A click, and you’re at CERN. Another, and you’re listening to underground music from Santa Cruz. One more, and you can read a newspaper at MIT.

What are we doing on our smartphones? It’s clear that the demand for more intelligent mobile devices is huge – but what is driving it? One way to understand this accelerating trend is to investigate exactly what we’re using our smartphones for. A typical smartphone user looks at their phone about 150 times per day.11 That seems like a ridiculous number, but, when you break it down by activity, it suddenly seems a lot more plausible. Try ruthlessly logging your own smartphone activity for a couple of days. I tried it, and was astonished when I exceeded that number. All this activity means that we are spending an incredible amount of time interacting with our smartphones. In 2013, the average US consumer spent an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on their smartphone and tablet. That accounts for a whopping 17 per cent of their waking hours12 – that’s almost one-fifth of the time we spend with our eyes open. Wow! By the end of 2016, that number has increased to 3 hours and 6 minutes.13 Even more exciting is that those consumers spend 80 per cent of that time (that’s right – 2 hours and 29 minutes) using apps and only 20 per cent (37 minutes) on the mobile Web. Apps offer the better mobile experience – and as a result hold four times more of our daily attention than the mobile Web. So, now that we know that people love their apps, the question begs to be asked: which apps are hoovering up so much of our attention? The diagram below suggests we’re a big bunch of time-wasters, spending almost 60 per cent of our time on games, Facebook or entertainment-related apps. As you can see from this diagram, there are two apps so significant in their ability to capture and retain our attention that they deserve a direct mention. The Facebook app galvanises our attention so much that it represents 18 per cent of all time spent by Americans on smartphones. Social is clearly playing an increasing role our lives, especially on mobile. I’ll dive into the details later in the chapter. Interestingly, and this is a reflection of the quality of the app as well, in 2013 Apple’s Safari mobile browser captured 12 per cent of our time, representing more than half of all mobile Web browsing. Given the rather fragmented and competitive mobile browser space, this is a big achievement which represents another nail driven into the coffin of desktop browsing.

There was a gate, and eternity lay beyond its black archway. But not for her. No, there would be no Afterworld for her. The gods had built another coffin, this time crafting it of that dark, glimmering stone. Stone her fire could never melt. Never pierce. The only way to escape was to become it—dissolve into it like sea-foam on a beach. Every breath was thinner than the previous one. They had not put any holes in this coffin. Beyond her confines, she knew a second coffin sat beside hers. Knew, because the muffled screams within still reached her here. Two princesses, one golden and one silver. One young and one ancient. Both the cost of sealing that gate to eternity. The air would run out soon. She’d already lost too much of it in her frantic clawing at the stone. Her fingertips pulsed where she’d broken nails and skin. Those female screams became quieter. She should accept it, embrace it. Only when she did would the lid open. The air was so hot, so precious. She could not get out, could not get out—

The rumors spread to the town by the next day, or so Onora judged. Alastair was in a fouler mood than ever when he dropped off her meal, trudging past with a storm-cloud glower on his face and tossing her the package of food without even pausing. Onora felt a slight pang as she watched him go. No doubt he was wondering what manner of woman he was expected to wed and cursing his own future. Perhaps he was as afraid as she, or more so. Perhaps he had reason to be angry. All the same, he could certainly handle his anger better. Onora shook the thoughts away. If Lord Alastair of Airde revolted at the thought of wedding imposter-Onora, all the better. 'Twould be another nail in the imposter's coffin, and 'twould keep Alastair himself away from the throne.

I put the sweater on and watched the waves come up and fall down on the beach. But not clumsily. On purpose, with a green sort of elegance. Even a drunken man could not collapse with such elegance as those waves. It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason. The beach was so long and lonely with only about six people on it. The kids quit bouncing the ball because somehow the wind made them sad, too, whistling the way it did, and the kids sat down and felt autumn come along the endless shore. All of the hot-dog stands were boarded up with strips of golden planking, sealing in all the mustard, onion, meat odors of the long, joyful summer. It was like nailing summer into a series of coffins. One by one the places slammed their covers down, padlocked their doors, and the wind came and touched the sand, blowing away all of the million footprints of July and August. It got so that now, in September, there was nothing but the mark of my rubber tennis shoes and Donald and Delaus Arnold's feet, down by the water curve. Sand blew up in curtains on the sidewalks, and the merry-goround was hidden with canvas, all of the horses frozen in mid-air on their brass poles, showing teeth, galloping on. With only the wind for music, slipping through canvas. I stood there. Everyone else was in school. I was not. Tomorrow I would be on my way west across the United States on a train. Mom and I had come to the beach for one last brief moment. There was something about the loneliness that made me want to get away by myself. "Mama, I want to run up the beach aways," I said. "All right, but hurry back, and don't go near the water.

When a partner looks at the marriage more like a partnership or business relationship, they put more focus into making it work. They don’t see leaving or divorce as an option and are thus committed to solving issues and compromise. Having disagreements or lacking that spark are not seen as legitimate reasons to end a relationship, whereas they may be the nail in the coffin for love marriages built on attraction and love alone. This tendency to look into the future and get around problems before they appear gives arranged marriages a strategic advantage that passion-based relationships do not have.

But the final nail in the coffin was the discovery of Indian ink across the entire surface and again this pointed directly to Van Meegeren. Apparently it worked like this. Once the forger had varnished his work, he would cover it with a layer of Indian ink which would sink into the crevices in the varnish and dry naturally. He would then clean the rest off. What remained would be indistinguishable from dust, giving the painting its antique, lived-in feel. This was one of his favourite techniques. But of course Indian ink would have been entirely alien to Vermeer.

Full grown without memory, the robots waited. In green silks the color of forest pools, in silks the color of frog and fern, they waited. In yellow hair the color of the sun and sand, the robots waited. Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death, for there had never been a life.