Compass And Blade Quotes

The Angel blade burns you, just as God's name chokes you," said Valentine, his cool voice sharp as crystal. "They say that those who die upon its point will achieve the gates of heaven. In which case, revenant, I am doing you a favor." He lowered the blade so that the tip touched Simon's throat. Valentine's eyes were the color of black water and there was nothing in them: no anger, no compassion, not even any hate. They were empty as a hollowed-out grave. "Any last words?" Simon knew what he was supposed to say. Sh'ma Yisrael, adonai elohanu, adonai echod. Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. He tried to speak the words, but a searing pain burned his throat. "Clary," he whispered instead.

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

The night following the reading, Gansey woke up to a completely unfamiliar sound and fumbled for his glasses. It sounded a little like one of his roommates was being killed by a possum, or possibly the final moments of a fatal cat fight. He wasn’t certain of the specifics, but he was sure death was involved. Noah stood in the doorway to his room, his face pathetic and long-suffering. “Make it stop,” he said. Ronan’s room was sacred, and yet here Gansey was, twice in the same weak, pushing the door open. He found the lamp on and Ronan hunched on the bed, wearing only boxers. Six months before, Ronan had gotten the intricate black tattoo that covered most of his back and snaked up his neck, and now the monochromatic lines of it were stark in the claustrophobic lamplight, more real than anything else in the room. It was a peculiar tattoo, both vicious and lovely, and every time Gansey saw it, he saw something different in the pattern. Tonight, nestled in an inked glen of wicked, beautiful flowers, was a beak where before he’d seen a scythe. The ragged sound cut through the apartment again. “What fresh hell is this?” Gansey asked pleasantly. Ronan was wearing headphones as usual, so Gansey stretched forward far enough to tug them down around his neck. Music wailed faintly into the air. Ronan lifted his head. As he did, the wicked flowers on his back shifted and hid behind his sharp shoulder blades. In his lap was the half-formed raven, its head tilted back, beak agape. “I thought we were clear on what a closed door meant,” Ronan said. He held a pair of tweezers in one hand. “I thought we were clear that night was for sleeping.” Ronan shrugged. “Perhaps for you.” “Not tonight. Your pterodactyl woke me. Why is it making that sound?” In response, Ronan dipped the tweezers into a plastic baggy on the blanket in front of him. Gansey wasn’t certain he wanted to know what the gray substance was in the tweezers’ grasp. As soon as the raven heard the rustle of the bag, it made the ghastly sound again—a rasping squeal that became a gurgle as it slurped down the offering. At once, it inspired both Gansey’s compassion and his gag reflex. “Well, this is not going to do,” he said. “You’re going to have to make it stop.” “She has to be fed,” Ronan replied. The ravel gargled down another bite. This time it sounded a lot like vacuuming potato salad. “It’s only every two hours for the first six weeks.” “Can’t you keep her downstairs?” In reply, Ronan half-lifted the little bird toward him. “You tell me.

I held in my hand an invisible sword that sliced through every illusion. The sharpness of the blade gave me its icy and dazzling strength. I no longer believed in the compassion of men; I believed in the strength of the gods. I had averted my eyes from my suffering and fixed them on the stars.

You would kiss a lover with a dagger pressed to their throat and call it love.

This was the double blade of how I felt about anything that hurt: I wanted someone else to feel it with me, and also I wanted it entirely for myself.

Compassion for every living blade of grass, and yet walls thirty feet high, six feet thick from within which you meditate on the unity and beauty of all things. Son, does this make my point?

A blade can cut down a person, but words can bring down a kingdom. Adultery can end a dynasty, greed can start a war, and compassion can end one. People will die for strangers out of faith and kill their neighbours out of fear.

This,” he said, “is the weakest weapon there is. A blade can cut down a person, but words can bring down a kingdom. Adultery can end a dynasty, greed can start a war, and compassion can end one. People will die for strangers out of faith and kill their neighbours out of fear.

And so when the generation, which itself desired to level and to be emancipated, to destroy authority and at the same time itself, has, through the scepticism of the principle association, started the hopeless forest fire of abstraction; when as a result of levelling with this scepticism, the generation has rid itself of the individual and of everything organic and concrete, and put in its place 'humanity' and the numerical equality of man and man: when the generation has, for a moment, delighted in this unlimited panorama of abstract infinity, unrelieved by even the smallest eminence, undisturbed by even the slightest interest, a sea of desert; then the time has come for work to begin, for every individual must work for himself, each for himself. No longer can the individual, as in former times, turn to the great for help when he grows confused. That is past; he is either lost in the dizziness of unending abstraction or saved for ever in the reality of religion. Perhaps very many will cry out in despair, but it will not help them--already it is too late...Nor shall any of the unrecognizable presume to help directly or to speak directly or to teach directly at the head of the masses, in order to direct their decisions, instead of giving his negative support and so helping the individual to make the decision which he himself has reached; any other course would be the end of him, because he would be indulging in the short-sighted compassion of man, instead of obeying the order of divinity, of an angry, yet so merciful, divinity. For the development is, in spite of everything, a progress because all the individuals who are saved will receive the specific weight of religion, its essence at first hand, from God himself. Then it will be said: 'behold, all is in readiness, see how the cruelty of abstraction makes the true form of worldliness only too evident, the abyss of eternity opens before you, the sharp scythe of the leveller makes it possible for every one individually to leap over the blade--and behold, it is God who waits. Leap, then, into the arms of God'. But the 'unrecognizable' neither can nor dares help man, not even his most faithful disciple, his mother, or the girl for whom he would gladly give his life: they must make the leap themselves, for God's love is not a second-hand gift. And yet the 'unrecognizable' neither can nor dares help man, not even his most faithful disciple, his mother, or the girl for whom he would gladly give his life: they must make the leap themselves, for God's love is not a second-hand gift. And yet the 'unrecognizable' (according to his degree) will have a double work compared with the 'outstanding' man (of the same degree), because he will not only have to work continuously, but at the same time labour to conceal his work.

You grew up in a world of magical power,” Jason said, turning his gaze from Neil to address the whole team. “Direct, objective, honest power. I come from a political world, where power is nebulous and the wars are as much about ideology as territory. We grow up watching leaders who need to sway the populace in order to hold power, even as the populace can share information in ways that would be as amazing to you as magic was to me.” Jason nodded at Humphrey. “Humphrey’s mother encouraged our friendship because she recognised that I had a more political mind than is normally to be found in Greenstone. I’m sure it’s different in more cosmopolitan cities, but the politics here are amateurish and crude. Dangerous, yes, because power always is, but not especially complicated. She wanted Humphrey to get to know me so that he would see the next guy like me coming.” Jason conjured his dagger into his hand. “This,” he said, “Is the weakest weapon there is. A blade can cut down a person but words can bring down a kingdom. Adultery can end a dynasty, greed can start a war and compassion can end one. People will die for strangers out of faith and kill their neighbours out of fear.” He casually tossed aside the dagger and it vanished. “Everything is a weapon,” he concluded. “The trick is learning to wield them without doing yourself an injury.

You cannot be aware of yourself, for you are awareness itself. How can a witness witness itself? That is like trying to see your own eyes without a reflection, or cut a knife with the tip of its own blade—it is impossible. The subject can only observe the object; it cannot make an object out of itself. But by the very act of observing, you indirectly know yourself as the observer, as the subject. No witnessing of the witness is needed to prove its existence.

West couldn't simply leave the man like this, he didn't have it in him. "Goodman Heath," he said as he approached, and the peasant looked up at him, surprised. He fumbled for his hat and made to rise, muttering apologies. "No, please, don't get up." West sat down on the bench. He stared at his feet, unable to look the man in the eye. There was an awkward silence. "I have a friend who sits on the Commission for Land and Agriculture. There might be something he can do for you…" He trailed off, embarrassed, squinting up the corridor. The farmer gave a sad smile. "I'd be right grateful for anything you could do." "Yes, yes, of course, I'll do what I can." It would do no good whatsoever, and they both knew it. West grimaced and bit his lip. "You'd better take this," and he pressed his purse into the peasant's limp, calloused fingers. Heath looked at him, mouth slightly open. West gave a quick, awkward smile then got to his feet. He was very keen to be off. "Sir!" called Goodman Heath after him, but West was already hurrying down the corridor, and he didn't look back.

Lives to Serve Before I Sleep (The Poem) Lives to serve before I sleep, Cause service is my salvation; Wounds to heal before I sleep, Cause time is wailing for absolution; Bridges to build before I sleep, Cause too many walls are raised already; Peoples to unite before I sleep, Cause civilization is trembling and walking unsteady. Shackles to shatter before I sleep, Cause corruption festers in the stagnant norm; Labels to erase before I sleep, Cause they've only confused our global dorm; Sects to humanize before I sleep, Cause segregation has weakened the human bond; Blades to burn before I sleep, Cause they've turned the world into a bloody pond. Tears to wipe before I sleep, Cause the society is lost in fun; Homes to heal before I sleep, Cause ego has wrecked the nests a ton; Biases to alleviate before I sleep, Cause bigotry has outweighed compassion; Purity to pour before I sleep, Cause all are chasing petty gratification. Spirits to lift before I sleep, Cause the minds are running dry; Gods to build before I sleep, Cause orthodoxy makes humanity cry; Wars to end before I sleep, Cause no life is expendable and puny; Humans to raise before I sleep, Cause where humans act human there reigns harmony.

These samurai swords were made from a special type of steel called tamahagane, which translates as “jewel steel,” made from the volcanic black sand of the Pacific (this consists mostly of an iron ore called magnetite, the original material for the needle of compasses). This steel is made in a huge clay vessel four feet tall, four feet wide, and twelve feet long called a tatara. The vessel is “fired”—hardened from molded clay into a ceramic—by lighting a fire inside it. Once fired, it is packed meticulously with layers of black sand and black charcoal, which are consumed in the ceramic furnace. The process takes about a week and requires constant attention from a team of four or five people, who make sure that the temperature of the fire is kept high enough by pumping air into the tatara using a manual bellows. At the end the tatara is broken open and the tamahagane steel is dug out of the ash and remnants of sand and charcoal. These lumps of discolored steel are very unprepossessing, but they have a whole range of carbon content, some of it very low and some of it high. The samurai innovation was to be able to distinguish high-carbon steel, which is hard but brittle, from low-carbon steel, which is tough but relatively soft. They did this purely by how it looked, how it felt in their hands, and how it sounded when struck. By separating the different types of steel, they could make sure that the low-carbon steel was used to make the center of the sword. This gave the sword an enormous toughness, almost a chewiness, meaning that the blades were unlikely to snap in combat. On the edge of the blades they welded the high-carbon steel, which was brittle but extremely hard and could therefore be made very sharp. By using the sharp high-carbon steel as a wrapper on top of the tough low-carbon steel they achieved what many thought impossible: a sword that could survive impact with other swords and armor while remaining sharp enough to slice a man’s head off. The best of both worlds.

There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.

Glory is as easy to grasp as a dagger. It draws attention to its bearer like a blade flashing in the sun. Honor, on the other hand, requires discipline and compassion and self-respect. It often works silently, without recognition or the desire for it. Honor comes only after years of effort and, once grasped, is even more difficult to hold. ~Abu Bakr

Modern science has discovered that through each emotion we experience in our bodies, we also undergo chemical changes of things such as pH and hormones that mirror our feelings.9 Through the “positive” experiences of love, compassion, and forgiveness and the “negative” emotions of hate, judgment, and jealousy, we each possess the power to affirm or deny our existence at each moment of every day. Additionally, the same emotion that gives us such power within our bodies extends this force into the quantum world beyond our bodies. It may be helpful to think of the Divine Matrix as a cosmic blanket that begins and ends in the realm of the unknown and spans everything between. This covering is many layers deep and is everywhere all the time, already in place. Our bodies, lives, and all that we know exist and take place within its fibers. From our watery creation in our mother’s womb to our marriages, divorces, friendships, and careers, all that we experience may be thought of as “wrinkles” in the blanket. From a quantum perspective, everything from the atoms of matter and a blade of grass to our bodies, the planet, and beyond may be thought of as a “disturbance” in the smooth fabric of this space-time blanket. Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that ancient spiritual and poetic traditions describe existence in much the same way. The Vedas, for example, speak of a unified field of “pure consciousness” that bathes and permeates all of creation.10 In these traditions, our experiences of thought, feeling, emotion, and belief—and all the judgment that they create—are viewed as disturbances, interruptions in a field that is otherwise smooth and motionless.

Vajrakilaya’s phurba dagger is the sharp piercing quality of one-pointed, concentrated compassion aimed against obstructions to goodness. The phurba nails the ignorance at the root of hatred, aggression, fear, desperation, jealousy, arrogance, narrow-mindedness — all the mental and emotional perversions that grow untended in the heart throughout a life of trying to do our best and then retreating and rationalizing when we fail.

Finally, I broke through and hit the steep track on the far side of the forest, and spotted the lone DS tent, silhouetted against the skyline. The routine when arriving at a checkpoint was rigorously enforced. You approached the checkpoint, crouched down on one knee, map folded tightly in one hand, compass in the other, and weapon cradled in your arms. Then you announced yourself. Name. Number. The DS would then give you your next six-figure grid reference, which you had to locate rapidly on the map, and then point out to him with the corner of the compass or a blade of grass. (If we were caught pointing at a map with a finger, instead of a blade of grass or something sharp, we had been threatened, by the unforgettable Sgt. Taff, that he would “Rip that finger off and beat you to death with the soggy end!” It’s a threat that I enjoy passing on to my boys when we are reading a map together nowadays.) As soon as the grid reference was confirmed, it was time to “pack up and f*** off,” as we were so often told. That was your cue to get moving.

Schweitzer argues is each creature’s inherent right to life without being injured or impeded by us, except in cases of absolute need: “We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

In all this, Androids reveals the potential for transcendence despite suffering. Society will likely not grow, but individuals can, and individuals make up society. Rick chooses to become a promoter of life rather than a destroyer. It’s a decision – to suffer and yet remain empathetic – that every human being can make. This, of course, implies that there’s something morally and psychologically wrong with those who are not empathetic, and the story points a finger at the reader as if to say that we are as underdeveloped as the androids. We, who are emblematic of the modern world, are the real chickenheads and degenerates. We, who may not have had the trials of these characters, and who haven’t even come to extend our circle of compassion to our fellow human beings, let alone the animals, are the destroyers, as we continue to make excuses for our tribalism, racism, exploitation, destruction, and war.

The sea is a fickle creature and, on a night like this, she can be wicked and cruel.

If you do not know it, Then you should know it, dear friends In the world we live in, we are all connected to a higher power that is all around us and above us, some call this invisible power God, and this invisible power is directly connected to our minds, its connected to our DNA, its connected to our visions, our dreams, our characters, even in places in the world, where there is no religion, this power exists and is alive and permanent, even long after we have gone from this life, this power will continue to exist, this invisible power gives life to everything around us, a life to a blade of grass that flickers in the wind on a mountain no one has visited, to the rivers and waterfalls that no human has discovered yet, this power is alive everywhere in the world, this power acts as a radar to your dreams, wishes and prayers, this power has the power to make miracles happen, this power when ignored and misuse, has brought down kingdoms and empires, recognition and gratitude is the key to this power, once you understand the power of this power, then you will understand the beauty of life, you will grounded and you will live in the here and now for today, Some people just can’t be fixed, they ignore this power that comes to them through religion or spirituality or meditation, this power is the power in all religions this power is the power in all spirituality, Some people lack human compassion gratitude and empathy, they are cold like the arctic and Antarctica, they live among the human race, pretending to be alive, but inside they are dead, they want to control things they cannot control like running other people’s lives, when they cannot run their own because they lack empathy and compassion, They hold onto material things, like it was the last prayer they are about to make in life, not knowing if they are going to hell or heaven, this power this God does not sleep on his watch, this power this God sees everything, and this power this God has blessed them many times through life so they can fix themselves, they refuse to Change from the misery they are living but to make others miserable through their actions and words, we all know someone like that, close or from afar, they are among us, be careful dear friends, stay far away from these people, stay blessed stay connected

If you do not know it, Then you should know it, dear friends In the world we live in, we are all connected to a higher power that is all around us and above us, some call this invisible power God, and this invisible power is directly connected to our minds, its connected to our DNA, its connected to our visions, our dreams, our characters, even in places in the world, where there is no religion, this power exists and is alive and permanent, even long after we have gone from this life, this power will continue to exist, this invisible power gives life to everything around us, a life to a blade of grass that flickers in the wind on a mountain no one has visited, to the rivers and waterfalls that no human has discovered yet, this power is alive everywhere in the world, this power acts as a radar to your dreams, wishes and prayers, this power has the power to make miracles happen, this power when ignored and misuse, has brought down kingdoms and empires, recognition and gratitude is the key to this power, once you understand the power of this power, then you will appreciate the beauty of life, you will be grounded and you will live in the here and now for today, Some people just can’t be fixed, they ignore this power that comes to them through religion or spirituality or meditation, this power is the power in all religions this power is the power in all spirituality, Some people lack human compassion gratitude and empathy, they are cold like the Arctic and Antarctica, they live among the human race, pretending to be alive, but inside they are dead, they want to control things, they cannot control, like running other people’s lives, when they cannot run their own because they lack empathy and compassion, They hold onto material things, like it was the last prayer they are about to make in life, not knowing if they are going to hell or heaven, this power this God does not sleep on his watch, this power this God sees everything, and this power this God has blessed them many times through life so they can fix themselves, they refuse to Change from the misery they are living but to make others miserable through their actions and words, we all know someone like that, close or from afar, they are among us, be careful dear friends, stay far away from these people, stay blessed stay connected