“
No," said Luis, "You can't date the Lord of the Night Court."
"Well, I'm not, he dumped me."
"You can't get dumped by the lord of the night court."
"Oh, yes, you can. You so completely can.
”
”
Holly Black (Ironside (Modern Faerie Tales, #3))
“
God will bring the right person into your life at the right time. Always believe that! If they are not there, God isn't finished yet!
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Meliorn?” said Clary. “I’ve met you, haven’t I? You used to go out with Isabelle Lightwood.”
Meliorn was almost expressionless, but Clary could have sworn he looked ever so slightly uncomfortable. Luke shook his head. “Clary, Meliorn is a knight of the Seelie Court. It’s very unlikely that he – “
“He was totally dating Isabelle,” Simon said, “and she dumped him too. At least she said she was going to. Tough break, man.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
“
Some people will hate you for not loving them.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
A whole woman will always attract a whole man. And when they touch, they will fuse to create a whole marriage. Ultimately, when the time is right, they will produce whole children.
”
”
T.D. Jakes
“
Your love is as stable as you are: It's not about how good a person makes you feel, but rather what good you can do for them.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
Alec, who was watching this back-and-forth as if sitting center court in a tennis match, raised a hand. “I’m sorry, but did you two used to date?”
That stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. Both Tessa and Magnus turned to him with identical looks of shock.
“You seem more horrified than I do,” Magnus told Tessa, “and somehow I am deeply wounded.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
“
What I personally knew about courting women could comfortably fit into a thimble without taking it off your finger first.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.
”
”
Sylvia Plath
“
Every species has a dinner date as part of courting ritual. A woman who won't let you pay for dinner is rejecting your courtship. She may think she's playing fair, or that she's being a feminist, but a very deep level, she knows that she's crossing you off her list of possibilities.
”
”
Jennifer Crusie (Bet Me)
“
When you least expect it is when the person you always dreamt of will finally show up.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Suzanne had totally forgotten about their court date since she'd been a little busy having tons of condom-free sex with Ryder, planning Nikki's wedding, and forming a placenta.
”
”
Erin McCarthy (Hot Finish (Fast Track, #3))
“
A man of worth is a man that sees the worth in others more than himself.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Familiarity destroys reverence.
”
”
Samuel Richardson (Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady)
“
Getting even with the person that broke your heart will never give you peace. The only thing that will heal your wounds is believing that God loves you enough to bring someone else into your life to respect you and love you in the way you deserve!
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Sometimes your inability to let go has nothing to do with real love and everything to do with what that person represents in your life. Why do you give them so much importance? Why do you believe that God doesn't love you enough that he would not bring someone else into your life? Why do you put up with less than you deserve?
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Whatever the mind can conceive it can achieve; I can CREATE whatever I can IMAGINE!
”
”
Cezanne Poetess (How to Get The Ring On Your Finger: (With Contributions from over 30 Brothers))
“
If you only ever like people you don't know and who don't know you, the ball is perpetually in their court. Only they don't realize that you think they're playing basketball with you. They are not actually at the court. You think you're there. But really you're not there, either.
”
”
Katie Heaney (Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date)
“
Don’t you think it’s a bad sign that your best argument for your beau is that nothing has been proved in court?
”
”
Lish McBride (Firebug (Firebug, #1))
“
If our reputation rests on the decisions we make, then Abishag has impeccable taste. If fragrance is worn to make a personal statement, then the unchosen Abishag has publicly proclaimed her allegiance. She has put on the scent of her lord, for her lord. She belongs to him. Every facet of her character proclaims rejection of other, so-called, 'shepherds.' Whether he chooses her, or not, she has chosen him.
”
”
Michael Ben Zehabe (Song of Songs: The Book for Daughters)
“
The most important thing to understand is that while we courted, Americans dated, a pragmatic custom whereby a male and a female set a mutually agreeable time to meet, as if to negotiate a potentially profitable business venture. Americans understood dating to be about investments and gains, short or long term , but we saw romance and courtship as being about losses. After all, the only worthwhile courtship involved persuading a woman who could not be persuaded, not a woman already predisposed to examine her calendar for her availability.
”
”
Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1))
“
Courting is a much sweeter term than 'dating'. It sounds like it has more intent, more like an agreement that two people enter into with a future in mind.
”
”
Kim Cattrall
“
Il n'y a que la mort qui soit simple, et éternelle. Parce que tu vois, la vie, c'est compliqué, et c'est terriblement court. On a l'impression qu'on a tout le temps devant soi, mais en réalité c'est comme une séance de speed-dating : à peine entré dans la bulle, c'est déjà le moment de dégager
”
”
Victor Dixen (Phobos (Phobos, #1))
“
There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.
”
”
Mark Gevisser
“
Pst, Rigel.” I leaned closer to him again. “What do you say we skip out on the banquet and go get donuts?” Rigel stared at me. “Are you asking me out on a date?” I wrinkled my forehead. “Dude, we’re married.
”
”
K.M. Shea (Crown of Moonlight (Court of Midnight and Deception, #2))
“
Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea.
When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair.
In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.
Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.
”
”
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
“
He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn't care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that's all Louis was, slipping back into the life.
”
”
Elmore Leonard (Rum Punch (Ordell Robbie & Louis Gara #2))
“
As a poor person, I was not accustomed to looking past the month, week, or sometimes hour. I compartmentalized my life the same way I cleaned every room of every house—left to right, top to bottom. Whether on paper or in my mind, the problems I had to deal with first—the car repair, the court date, the empty cupboards—went at the top, on the left. The next pressing issue went next to it, on the right. I’d focus on one problem at a time, working left to right, top to bottom. That shortsightedness kept me from getting overwhelmed, but it also kept me from dreaming.
”
”
Stephanie Land (Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive)
“
The senior class already nominated Beth for homecoming court and Ryan is dating her.'
I become a rock. This isn't how I wanted my parents to find out.
”
”
Katie McGarry (Dare You To (Pushing the Limits, #2))
“
Don't give a permanent solution to a temporary situation.
”
”
Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu
“
I paid you five thousand instead and promised the balance only if you made the match. As it turns out, this is your lucky day because I've decided to write you the full check, whether the match comes from you or from Portia. As long as I have a wife and you've been part of the process, you'll get your money." He toasted her with his beer mug. "Congratulations."
She put down her fork. "Why would you do that?"
"Because it's efficient."
"Not as efficient as having Powers handle her own introductions. You're paying her a fortune to do exactly that."
"I'd rather have you."
Her pulse kicked. "Why?"
He gave her the melty smile he must have been practicing since the cradle, one that made her feel as though she was the only woman in the world. "Because you're easier to bully. Do we have a deal or not?"
"You don't want a matchmaker. You want a lackey."
"Semantics. My hours are erratic, and my schedule changes without warning. It'll be your job to cope with all that. You'll soothe ruffled feathers when I need to cancel at the last minute. You'll keep my dates company when I'm going to be late, entertain them if I have to take a call. If things are going well, you'll disappear. If not, you'll make the woman disappear. I told you before. I work hard at my job. I don't want to have to work hard at this, too."
"Basically, you expect me to find your bride, court her, and hand her over at the altar. Or do I have to come on the honeymoon, too?"
"Definitely not." He gave her a lazy smile. "I can take care of that all by myself.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars, #6))
“
Whether on paper or in my mind, the problems I had to deal with first—the car repair, the court date, the empty cupboards—went at the top, on the left. The next pressing issue went next to it, on the right. I’d focus on one problem at a time, working left to right, top to bottom.
”
”
Stephanie Land (Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive)
“
How impatience men are! All Jack has to do to get everything he wants is to keep quiet and let that girl marry him; whereas I have to calculate and contrive, and retreat and advance, as if I were going through an intricate dance where one misstep would throw me hopelessly out of time.
”
”
Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth)
“
So," Benji says when Chloe finds Georgia next to him, "I know things have been crazy, but I just wanted to say, oh my god! Shara Wheeler is in love with you, and Georgia has been secretly dating a member of the Homecoming Court. Like, what is going on?? Also, when do I get a hot person??"
"I saw you flirting with Ace," Chloe counters.
"Yeah, he's, like, Dodge Truck Month level straight. I'm not wasting my time.
”
”
Casey McQuiston (I Kissed Shara Wheeler)
“
Courting is an activity where a man and a woman flaunt their virtues. Dating is an activity where life exposes the other’s vices.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
Finding a feminine woman today is like trying to find a needle in a haystack while blind-folded and wearing gloves.
”
”
James Thomas Kesterson Jr
“
Although playing hard to get might be cute in the dating world, it won’t fly with potential employers. They don’t have time to court you, so you had better romance the hell out of them.
”
”
Sophia Amoruso (#Girlboss)
“
Come into my world.
I will show you the phenomenon that Stendhal experienced. I will help you feel the cascading arpeggios of Wagner's overture. I will dance to Doga’s waltzes with you.
A day spent without appreciating the beauty surrounding us is a waste. Let me appreciate you
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
Every song was the same song. These were songs for people who were scared to open their mailboxes, whose phone calls never brought good news. These were songs for people standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus. People who bounced between debt collectors and dollar stores, collection agencies and housing offices, family court and emergency rooms, waiting for a check that never came, waiting for a court date, waiting for a call back, waiting for a break, crushed beneath the wheel.
”
”
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls)
“
Fish and chip night was a Kumar family tradition that dated back to when Jaget was courting his wife and they used to meet in the last white English-owned fish and chip shop in Wembley on the basis that none of their relatives would go in there. “It
”
”
Ben Aaronovitch (The Furthest Station (Rivers of London, #5.7))
“
The two detectives had been there for well over an hour, and in that time the demon in Aidan had been growing stronger and stronger. HE had all but sprouted fangs as one of them did everything but beg for a date with Alexandria. Did she really need yet another suitor? He was going to have to post a sign on the lawn stating that all males courting Alexandria Houton did so at their own peril.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Dark Gold (Dark, #3))
“
All over Atlanta that fall, in the blue twilights, girls came clicking home from their jobs in their clunky heels and miniskirts and opened their apartment windows to the winesap air, and got out ice cubes, and put on Petula Clark singing 'Downtown', and sat down to wait.
Soon the young men would come, drifting out of their bachelor apartments in Bermuda shorts and Topsiders, carrying beers and gin and tonics, looking for a refill and a a date and the keeping of promises that hung in the bronze air like fruit on the eve of ripeness.
”
”
Anne Rivers Siddons (Down Town)
“
If the goal was to heal, move on, this was not the way to proceed. Healing needed privacy, needed patience, needed nurturing. Healing required planting seeds in the soft, dark underground. Reporters arrived like shovels tearing into the earth, scooping seeds out, bare-skinned, back onto the surface. I was left on my knees in the dirt digging holes, placing the broken shells down deep, patting the soil with my hands. But there would always be more shovels, more disruptions, looming court dates. The more it happened, the less energy I had to keep digging; a deadening faith that something would grow.
”
”
Chanel Miller (Know My Name: A Memoir)
“
A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial.
”
”
Mark Kurlansky (Salt: A World History)
“
If he had run the license plate, he would have seen that Brock Cutter had a suspended license and a bench warrant for a failure to appear for a court date related to a harassment case over in Kossuth County. He would have learned that Brock Cutter wasn’t as innocent and good-natured as his cousin, Brett.
”
”
Heather Gudenkauf (The Overnight Guest)
“
I’ll always be your friend,” he said. “Your best friend, if you let me. But I want to be your lover, too.” He groaned and shifted in his chair. “Soon. I want to be that soon.” Then a look came over him. “Oh Gina…I didn’t even court you! God, I should date you first before I beg you to take off your clothes!
”
”
Robyn Carr (The Wanderer (Thunder Point, #1))
“
I already knew what I’d research. I wrote the words ‘Courtly love’ on my notepad in swirly script, then caught Hayden peering at it.
‘Courtly love? Sorry, Aurora, but I think I’ve already got that one in the bag.’
‘I think you’d better think again, because I’ve already claimed it,’ I replied.
‘You just said you’re not the Mills & Boon type and, technically, courtly love could be considered historical romance.’ He grinned. ‘As you don’t want to pollute your mind with any clichéd topics, you should probably leave that one to me.’
‘You, discussing romance? Ha!’
Hayden put on a hurt face. ‘I think I might be alright at it. After all, I’ve been doing a lot of observing lately.’ He gave me a significant look.
‘Observing?’ I repeated, curiosity getting the better of me.
‘Well, you keep accusing me of spying on your dates,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘So, technically, I guess I’m learning about romance firsthand. It seems kind of brutal, judging from the goodnight ritual I saw last night.’
My blood wasn’t boiling, but it was pretty warm. Despite that, I was not going to lose my temper. I was determined that this year Hayden Paris wasn’t going to destroy my composure.
”
”
Tara Eglington
“
Jesus has to become real to us. We need to court him and get to know him better. Go on some dates with the Lord.
”
”
Sandra M. Michelle
“
Marrying an angel you despise is better than courting a devil you adore.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
There is a deeper reason as to why some nice guys are frequently deemed the weaker, and that is because niceness is weaker than love.
”
”
Criss Jami
“
Are you insane? I'm not going to date a man who robbed me! I don't care how big his arms were." "Why not? Asterion dates me, and I murdered him.
”
”
Alessa Thorn (The Court of the Underworld: Books 1-4)
“
Court for money, and you will live superficially.
Court for virtue, and you will live prudently.
Court for fame, and you will live insincerely.
Court for love, and you will live joyously.
Marry for money, and you will live lavishly.
Marry for virtue, and you will live honorably.
Marry for fame, and you will live prominently.
Marry for love, and you will live happily.
Divorce for money, and you will live poorly.
Divorce for virtue, and you will live peacefully.
Divorce for fame, and you will live miserably.
Divorce for love, and you will live tragically.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
The fashion today is to place God in court and give Him a trial. We have had such a lust for “debunking” every good and useful man in history that even God cannot escape. It is one of the unfortunate by-products of the quest for truth, plus an unlovely hunger in humanity for scandal. It is a species of jealousy. We dislike to believe that anybody else is quite as good as we are, not even God. As for me, I choose to stop following this current, to stop posing as the judge of the universe. If it brought any good results I might continue, but to date it has carried me out into the desert and left me there.
”
”
Frank C. Laubach (Letters by a Modern Mystic)
“
...he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candies fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself as the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, half-revealed.
”
”
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
“
She'd see that I loved her in that way I had thought I had loved all the girls before her; openly, desperately hoping for my affections returned with the same warmth and passion.
That's how I lost them all, I had wanted far too much.
”
”
Maddy Kobar (From Out of Feldspar)
“
Case 2:13-cv-45524-PAD Document 4 Filed 16/01/20 Page 152 of 285
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT – EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
Annotation for Exhibit D: Please note the date of this chapter. By this time the death of the victim had already taken place.
”
”
Lauren James (An Unauthorized Fan Treatise (Gottie Writes, #0))
“
I never knew it happened like that."
I snap my gaze to her. "What?"
"You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that."
"It's not like that," I say quickly.
"You could have fooled me." We're up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop.
When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap.
With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line.
Will's there, fighting laughter. "Nice," he says. "Glad I'm downcourt of you."
I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. "Happy to amuse you."
His smile slips then, and he's looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember...must recognize me on some level even though he can't understand it.
"You want to go out?" he asks suddenly.
I blink. "As in a date?"
"Yes. That's what a guy usually means when he asks that question."
Whistles blow. The guys and girls head in opposite directions.
"Half-court scrimmage," Will mutters, looking unhappy as he watches the coaches toss out jerseys. "We'll talk later in study hall. Okay?"
I nod, my chest uncomfortably tight, breath hard to catch. Seventh period. A few hours to decide whether to date a hunter. The choice should be easy, obvious, but already my head aches. I doubt anything will ever be easy for me again.
”
”
Sophie Jordan (Firelight (Firelight, #1))
“
One Archeology and Decipherment
Two History: Heroes, Kings, and Ensi's
Three Society: The Sumerian City
Four Religion: Theology, Rite, and Myth
Five Literature: The Sumerian Belles-Lettres
Six Education: The Sumerian School
Seven Character: Drives, Motives, and Values
Eight The Legacy of Sumer
APPENDIXES
A. The Origin and Development of the Cuneiform System of Writing
B. The Sumerian Language
C. Votive Inscriptions
D. Sample Date-Formulas
E. Sumerian King List
F. Letters
G. Dit lla's (court decisions)
H. Lipit-Ishtar Law Code
1. Farmers' Almanac
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
”
”
Samuel Noah Kramer (The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character)
“
Baudelaire"
When I fall asleep, and even during sleep,
I hear, quite distinctly, voices speaking
Whole phrases, commonplace and trivial,
Having no relation to my affairs.
Dear Mother, is any time left to us
In which to be happy? My debts are immense.
My bank account is subject to the court’s judgment.
I know nothing. I cannot know anything.
I have lost the ability to make an effort.
But now as before my love for you increases.
You are always armed to stone me, always:
It is true. It dates from childhood.
For the first time in my long life
I am almost happy. The book, almost finished,
Almost seems good. It will endure, a monument
To my obsessions, my hatred, my disgust.
Debts and inquietude persist and weaken me.
Satan glides before me, saying sweetly:
“Rest for a day! You can rest and play today.
Tonight you will work.” When night comes,
My mind, terrified by the arrears,
Bored by sadness, paralyzed by impotence,
Promises: “Tomorrow: I will tomorrow.”
Tomorrow the same comedy enacts itself
With the same resolution, the same weakness.
I am sick of this life of furnished rooms.
I am sick of having colds and headaches:
You know my strange life. Every day brings
Its quota of wrath. You little know
A poet’s life, dear Mother: I must write poems,
The most fatiguing of occupations.
I am sad this morning. Do not reproach me.
I write from a café near the post office,
Amid the click of billiard balls, the clatter of dishes,
The pounding of my heart. I have been asked to write
“A History of Caricature.” I have been asked to write
“A History of Sculpture.” Shall I write a history
Of the caricatures of the sculptures of you in my heart?
Although it costs you countless agony,
Although you cannot believe it necessary,
And doubt that the sum is accurate,
Please send me money enough for at least three weeks.
”
”
Delmore Schwartz
“
This poem is a witness to the rape of Shurpanaka.
This poem smears Rama for his suspicious mind.
This poem was once forced into suttee.
This poem is now taking her revenge.
This poem is addicted to eating beef.
This poem knows the castes of all the thirty-three million Hindu Gods.
This poem got court summons for switching the castes of Gods.
This poem once dated Karna who was sure he was no test-tube baby.
This poem is not curious about who-was-the-father.
This poem is horizontally flipped.
This poem is a plagiarised version.
This poem is selectively chosen.
This poem is running paternity tests on Hindutva.
”
”
Meena Kandasamy (This Poem Will Provoke You)
“
In the boreal forests there is reason to hope that we’ll guide the human part of this relationship with forethought. Over the last two decades, continent wide planning for conservation, forestry, and industry in the boreal forest have brought people together who have fought for years in the law courts. Now timber companies, industry, conservation groups, environmental activists, and governments, including those of the First Nations, are talking to one another. Such human talk is part of the forest’s larger system of thought, one way that the living network can achieve a measure of coherence; a diffuse conversation, able to listen and to adapt. To date, swaths of boreal forest as big as many countries- hundreds of thousands of square kilometers- more than 10 percent of Canada’s boreal forest- have been mapped for conservation, for carbon-savvy logging, for threatened animals, and for sustainable timber production.
”
”
David George Haskell (The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature's Great Connectors)
“
what encourages me when I’m faced with the call of the cross in a newly exposed area of my life is when I look around at the beloved people in my church and see that the cross is just as relentless in their lives. They are living, breathing movie trailers displaying the future redemption story. My single friends who want to be married could be traipsing around the city dating and sleeping with anyone and everyone. They could be taking their future into their own hands rather than waiting on the Lord and entrusting themselves to him. My married friends who have experienced difficulties in their marriages could be taking their spouses to divorce court. My same-sex attracted friends could be succumbing to their desires. All these hold steady in truth and grace for the sake of the gospel, and their stories not only compel me to do the same but also solidify our bonds of unity and friendship and show me anew the surpassing worth of the gospel.
”
”
Christine Hoover (Searching for Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time)
“
EXERCISE Creating Authentic Relationships The questions below deal with issues most people take for granted and let society define for them. You can start with a blank canvas and create your own definitions. • How do you define intimacy and closeness? • What constitutes a relationship for you? • Are there different types of relationships you wish you could have? • How long should a significant relationship last? • What is sex? Is it intercourse? Is it more specific: penis-in-vagina or penis-in-ass intercourse? What about manual stimulation and penetration, oral sex, sex toys, BDSM play? • What kinds of things do you consider intimate? Sex, sexual touch, genital contact, a BDSM scene with no sexual aspect? • Must you live near a partner for a relationship to be important? • How do you define fidelity? • What constitutes loving, affectionate, sexual, and romantic behavior? Where do things like flirting, kissing, love letters, gift giving, dating, courting, phone calls, emails, and instant messages fit into your definitions? • What does commitment mean to you? How do you define a committed relationship? • What are the most important things you need in a relationship? • How important is it for you to live with a partner? • Realistically , how much time and energy do you have to give to a relationship?
”
”
Tristan Taormino (Opening Up: A Guide To Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships)
“
The history of black workers in the United States illustrates the point. As already noted, from the late nineteenth-century on through the middle of the twentieth century, the labor force participation rate of American blacks was slightly higher than that of American whites. In other words, blacks were just as employable at the wages they received as whites were at their very different wages. The minimum wage law changed that. Before federal minimum wage laws were instituted in the 1930s, the black unemployment rate was slightly lower than the white unemployment rate in 1930. But then followed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—all of which imposed government-mandated minimum wages, either on a particular sector or more broadly. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which promoted unionization, also tended to price black workers out of jobs, in addition to union rules that kept blacks from jobs by barring them from union membership. The National Industrial Recovery Act raised wage rates in the Southern textile industry by 70 percent in just five months and its impact nationwide was estimated to have cost blacks half a million jobs. While this Act was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was upheld by the High Court and became the major force establishing a national minimum wage. As already noted, the inflation of the 1940s largely nullified the effect of the Fair Labor Standards Act, until it was amended in 1950 to raise minimum wages to a level that would have some actual effect on current wages. By 1954, black unemployment rates were double those of whites and have continued to be at that level or higher. Those particularly hard hit by the resulting unemployment have been black teenage males. Even though 1949—the year before a series of minimum wage escalations began—was a recession year, black teenage male unemployment that year was lower than it was to be at any time during the later boom years of the 1960s. The wide gap between the unemployment rates of black and white teenagers dates from the escalation of the minimum wage and the spread of its coverage in the 1950s. The usual explanations of high unemployment among black teenagers—inexperience, less education, lack of skills, racism—cannot explain their rising unemployment, since all these things were worse during the earlier period when black teenage unemployment was much lower. Taking the more normal year of 1948 as a basis for comparison, black male teenage unemployment then was less than half of what it would be at any time during the decade of the 1960s and less than one-third of what it would be in the 1970s. Unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers. In the early twenty-first century, the unemployment rate for black teenagers exceeded 30 percent. After the American economy turned down in the wake of the housing and financial crises, unemployment among black teenagers reached 40 percent.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy)
“
Husbands take photographs of their wives and children in front of a fountain and call out to the boys who rush back and forth, carrying trays of tea and wrinkly, black dates. We sit at opposite ends of a large wooden bench covered in rugs and pillows; a spot more suited to a courting couple than the two of us who have nothing to say.
”
”
Jennifer Klinec (The Temporary Bride: A Memoir of Love and Food in Iran)
“
Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing abuse and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. I’ve never attended a family reunion where I was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room I enter I can sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Without even realizing it, I pick up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as I can tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its psychotic mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. Talk to me all you want about happy families, but let me loose at a wedding or a funeral and I’ll bring you back the family crazy. They’re that easy to find.
”
”
Pat Conroy (The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son)
“
When I was twenty, in the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, I fell head over heels for a barista at my local coffee shop. His name was Sam, and he is the most beautiful boy I have ever seen—in any context—and I can promise you that if you saw him, he’d be the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen, too. His good looks were beyond the court of public opinion. He looked like the result of a magical gay union between Patrick Dempsey and Freddie Prinze Jr. Think about that for a few minutes. Close the book and set it aside, then close your eyes, and just think about that. I will wait here. I’m actually going to take a few minutes to think about him, too. All right. Calm down.
”
”
Katie Heaney (Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date)
“
spend some time with yourself. Date yourself. Court yourself. Get to know yourself. Who you are. Who you are not. What you like about yourself. What you don’t like about yourself. Spend some time making sure you are a person you can spend the rest of your life with so that you are sure somebody else can spend the rest of their life with you as well.
”
”
E.N. Joy (More Than I Can Bear: Always Divas Series Book Two)
“
The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws....
These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age.
”
”
Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America)
“
The Dangers of Dating There is a new phenomenon that has hit our society. It is called dating, and everyone is doing it. Dating has turned into a huge money-maker. Now, we have television shows dedicated to dating. We have internet dating sites, speed dating, and music that encourages it all over the world. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t say anything about dating. I realize there are many happily married couples whose marriages are a result of dating, but I want you to understand that there is great danger in dating. I’m not referring to courting or a betrothal. I’m referring to worldly dating, which consists of premarital sex, deep emotional connections, a great deal of kissing, and heavy petting, etc. This system of dating is recreational in nature, and it has no real purpose besides fulfilling lust, loneliness, and perversion. Never forget that it’s satan who convinces us to fill a legitimate need, illegitimately. Nonetheless, let’s examine some of these dangers now.
”
”
Cornelius Lindsey (So, You Want to be Married? II)
“
Because you do not happen to be married does not make you essentially different from others. All of us are very much alike in appearance and emotional responses, in our capacity to think, to reason, to be miserable, to be happy, to love and be loved.
You are just as important as any others in the scheme of our Father in Heaven, and under His mercy no blessing to which you otherwise might be entitled will forever be withheld from you. . . .
I do not worry about you young men who have recently returned from the mission field. You know as well as I what you ought to do. It is your responsibility and opportunity, under the natural process of dating and courting, to find a wonderful companion and marry in the house of the Lord. Don’t rush it unduly and don’t delay it unduly. “Marry in haste and repent at leisure” is an old proverb that still has meaning in our time. But do not dally along in a fruitless, frustrating, and frivolous dating game that only raises hopes and brings disappointment and in some cases heartache.
Yours is the initiative in this matter. Act on it in the spirit that ought to prompt every honorable man who holds the priesthood of God. Live worthy of the companionship of a wonderful partner. Put aside any thought of selfish superiority and recognize and follow the teaching of the Church that the husband and wife walk side by side with neither one ahead nor behind.
Happy marriage is based on a foundation of equal yoking. Let virtue garnish your courtship, and absolute fidelity be the crown jewel of your marriage.
”
”
Gordon B. Hinckley
“
There’s a beautiful poem at the beginning of a collection of books we call the Bible. In that poem, it is written: "Then God said, ‘Let us make man.’”
God then recognized that it was not good for man to be alone.
We can all agree on that one, I think. Loneliness is one of the most excruciating pains that the human heart, or any heart, has to go through.
What did God do about it?
What was His remedy?
What was His answer?
He created marriage. He didn’t create dating, He didn’t create courting - He created marriage.
”
”
Cole Ryan
“
In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty and—unless you are a danger to others or highly likely to flee the jurisdiction—you shouldn’t have to sit in jail waiting for your court date. This is the basic premise of due process: you get to hold on to your liberty unless and until a jury convicts you and a judge sentences you. It’s why the Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits excessive bail. That’s what justice is supposed to look like. What it should not look like is the system we have in America today. The median bail in the United States is $10,000. But in American households with an income of $45,000, the median savings account balance is $2,530. The disparity is so high that at any given time, roughly nine out of ten people who are detained can’t afford to pay to get out. By its very design, the cash bail system favors the wealthy and penalizes the poor. If you can pay cash up front, you can leave, and when your trial is over, you’ll get all of your money back. If you can’t afford it, you either languish in jail or have to pay a bail bondsman, which costs a steep fee you will never get back.
”
”
Kamala Harris (The Truths We Hold: An American Journey)
“
So,” Will begins, “do you play ball as well as you run?”
I laugh a little. I can’t help it. He’s sweet and disarming and my nerves are racing. “Not even close.”
The conversation goes no further as we move up in our lines. Catherine looks over her shoulder at me, her wide sea eyes assessing. Like she can’t quite figure me out. My smile fades and I look away. She can never figure me out. I can never let her. Never let anyone here.
She faces me with her arms crossed. “You make friends fast. Since freshman year, I’ve spoken to like . . .” She paused and looks upward as though mentally counting. “Three, no—four people. And you’re number four.”
I shrug. “He’s just a guy.”
Catherine squares up at the free-throw line, dribbles a few times, and shoots. The ball swished cleanly through the net. She catches it and tosses it back to me.
I try copying her moves, but my ball flies low, glides beneath the backboard. I head to the end of the line again.
Will’s already waiting it half-court, letting others go before him. My face warms at his obvious stall.
“You weren’t kidding,” he teases over the thunder of basketballs.
“Did you make it?” I ask, wishing I had looked while he shot.
“Yeah.”
“Of course,” I mock.
He lets another kid go before him. I do the same. Catherine is several ahead of me now.
His gaze scans me, sweeping over my face and hair with deep intensity, like he’s memorizing my features. “Yeah, well. I can’t run like you.”
I move up in line, but when I sneak a look behind me, he’s looking back, too.
“Wow,” Catherine murmurs in her smoky low voice as she falls into line beside me. “I never knew it happened like that.”
I snap my gaze to her. “What?”
“You know. Romeo and Juliet stuff. Love at first sight and all that.”
“It’s not like that,” I say quickly.
“You could have fooled me.” We’re up again. Catherine takes her shot. It swishes cleanly through the hoop.
When I shoot, the ball bounces hard off the backboard and flies wildly through the air, knocking the coach in the head. I slap a hand over my mouth. The coach barely catches herself from falling. Several students laugh. She glares at me and readjusts her cap.
With a small wave of apology, I head back to the end of the line.
Will’s there, fighting laughter. “Nice,” he says. “Glad I’m downcourt of you.”
I cross my arms and resist smiling, resist letting myself feel good around him. But he makes it hard. I want to smile. I want to like him, to be around him, to know him. “Happy to amuse you.”
His smile slips then, and he’s looking at me with that strange intensity again. Only I understand. I know why. He must remember . . . must recognize me on some level even though he can’t understand it.
“You want to go out?” he asks suddenly.
I blink. “As in a date?”
“Yes. That’s what a guy usually means when he asks that question.
”
”
Sophie Jordan (Firelight (Firelight, #1))
“
Listen, Google,’ I will say, ‘both John and Paul are courting me. I like both of them, but in a different way, and it’s so hard to make up my mind. Given everything you know, what do you advise me to do?’
And Google will answer: ‘Well, I know you from the day you were born. I have read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favourite films, your DNA and the entire history of your heart. I have exact data about each date you went on, and if you want, I can show you second-by-second graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels whenever you went on a date with John or Paul. If necessary, I can even provide you with accurate mathematical ranking of every sexual encounter you had with either of them. And naturally enough, I know them as well as I know you. Based on all this information, on my superb algorithms, and on decades’ worth of statistics about millions of relationships – I advise you to go with John, with an 87 per cent probability of being more satisfied with him in the long run.
Indeed, I know you so well that I also know you don’t like this answer. Paul is much more handsome than John, and because you give external appearances too much weight, you secretly wanted me to say “Paul”. Looks matter, of course; but not as much as you think. Your biochemical algorithms – which evolved tens of thousands of years ago in the African savannah – give looks a weight of 35 per cent in their overall rating of potential mates. My algorithms – which are based on the most up-to-date studies and statistics – say that looks have only a 14 per cent impact on the long-term success of romantic relationships. So, even though I took Paul’s looks into account, I still tell you that you would be better off with John.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
Before all else, men are expected to be good providers. Our parent's generation expects it of us, the family courts expect it of us, women on first dates often expect it, and in the event of an early death, our life insurance policies pre-suppose it. The simple mechanics of being a good provider excludes men from a number of other spaces, which, not coincidentally, are reserved for women. What more, as they aspire to switch traditional breadwinner roles with men in our evolving economy, even highly successful professional women collapse into the expectation that men are supposed to provide.
”
”
Mark Greene (Remaking Manhood: The Modern Masculinity Movement: Stories From the Front Lines of Change)
“
Raquel laughed, and David joined her. They sounded slightly manic. “You’re free now,” he said.
“Of all of it,” she answered, and I looked up to see them locked in a gaze I’d previously only observed between actors on Easton Heights—one filled with all the things unspoken over the years, all the betrayals and fears and pain left behind in favor of overwhelming love. It was beautiful.
Oh, who am I kidding, it was awkward as all heck and I didn’t have time for it. “Okay! So, you may have noticed Lend is in the kitchen.”
“Mmm hmm,” Raquel answered, reaching up to smooth down a stray piece of David’s hair.
“Yeah, that’d be the big faerie curse.”
“Farie curse?” She actually turned toward me; David took both her hands in his.
“Yup. Really funny one, too. See, any time Lend and I are in the same room or can see each other or could actually, you know, touch, he falls fast asleep.”
“Oh,” Raquel frowned.
“So I need your help. You know all the names of the IPCA controlled faeries, right?”
She nodded, her frown deepening.
“Well, it was a dark faerie curse, so I figure we need a dark faerie to undo it. So you call an Unseelie faerie, we give him or her a named command to break the curse, ta-da, we can double-date!”
“Wait, who can double-date?” Lend asked.
“I’ll let your dad tell you. So. Faerie?”
Raquel heaved a sigh, along the lines of her famous things never get easier, do they? sign, and, boy, I agreed with her.
“To be honest, I don’t know which court most of the faeries belong to.”
“You don’t? How can you not know? It seems like pretty vital information to me. You know, ‘Are you a member of the evil court kidnapping humans and plotting world domination, or a member of the moderately less evil court who just wants to get the crap off the planet?’ sort of a survey when you get them.
”
”
Kiersten White (Endlessly (Paranormalcy, #3))
“
It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue from the start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank, not capacity. There wasn’t a knight in either team who wasn’t a sceptered sovereign.
”
”
Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)
“
Cher Monsieur Waters,
Je reçois votre courrier électronique en date du 14 avril dernier et suis comme il se doit impressionné par la complexité shakespearienne de votre drame. Chaque personnage dans votre histoire a une harmatia en béton. La sienne : être trop malade. La vôtre : être trop bien portant. Fût-ce le contraire, vos étoiles n'auraient pas été aussi contrariées, mais c'est dans la natures des étoiles d'être contrariées. A ce propos, Shakespeare ne s'est jamais autant trompé qu'en mettant ces mots dans la bouche de Cassius : « La faute, cher Brutus, n'en est pas à nos étoiles ; elle en est à nous-mêmes. » Facile à dire lorsqu'on est un noble romain (ou Shakespeare!), mais nos étoiles ne sont jamais à court de tort. Puisque nous en sommes au chapitre des défaillances de ce cher vieux William, ce que vous me dites de la jeune Hazel me rappelle le sonnet 55, qui commence, bien entendu ainsi : « Ni le marbre, ni les mausolées dorés des princes ne dureront plus longtemps que ma rime puissante. Vous conserverez plus d'éclat dans ces mesures que sous la dalle non balayée que le temps barbouille de sa lie. (Hors sujet, mais : quel cochon, ce temps ! Il bousille tout le monde.) Un bien joli poème, mais trompeur : nul doute que la rime puissante de Shakespeare nous reste en mémoire, mais que nous rappelons-nous de l'homme qu'il célèbre ? Rien. Nous sommes certains qu'il était de sexe masculin, le reste n'est qu'une hypothèse. Shakespeare nous raconte des clopinettes sur l'homme qu'il a enseveli à l'intérieur de son sarcophage linguistique. (Remarquez que, lorsque nous parlons littérature, nous utilisons le présent. Quand nous parlons d'un mort, nous ne sommes pas aussi gentils.) On ne peut pas immortaliser ceux qui nous ont quittés en écrivant sur eux. La langue enterre, mais ne ressuscite pas. (Avertissement : je ne suis pas le premier à faire cette observation, cf le poème d'Archibald MacLeish « Ni le marbre, ni les mausolées dorés » qui renferme ce vers héroïque : « Vous mourrez et nul ne se souviendra de vous ») Je m'éloigne du sujet, mais votre le problème : les morts ne sont visibles que dans l’œil dénué de paupière de la mémoire. Dieu merci, les vivants conservent l'aptitude de surprendre et de décevoir. Votre Hazel est vivante, Waters, et vous ne pouvez imposer votre volonté contre la décision de quelqu'un d'autre, qui plus est lorsque celle-ci est mûrement réfléchie. Elle souhaite vous épargner de la peine et vous devriez l'accepter. Il se peut que la logique de la jeune Hazel ne vous convainque pas, mais j'ai parcouru cette vallée de larmes plus longtemps que vous, et de mon point de vue, Hazel n'est pas la moins saine d'esprit.
Bien à vous
Peter Van Houten
”
”
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“
Lillian kept her face against Marcus’s shoulder. As mortified as she had been on the day that he had seen her playing rounders in her knickers, this was ten times worse. She would never be able to face Simon Hunt again, she thought, and groaned.
“It’s all right,” Marcus murmured. “He’ll keep his mouth shut.”
“I don’t care whom he tells,” Lillian managed to say. “I’m not going to marry you. Not if you compromised me a hundred times.”
“Lillian,” he said, a sudden tremor of laughter in his voice, “it would be my greatest pleasure to compromise you a hundred times. But first I would like to know what I’ve done this morning that is so unforgivable.”
“To begin with, you talked to my father.”
His brows lifted a fraction of an inch. “That offended you?”
“How could it not? You’ve behaved in the most highhanded manner possible by going behind my back and trying to arrange things with my father, without one word to me—”
“Wait,” Marcus said sardonically, rolling to his side and sitting up in an easy movement. He reached out with a broad hand to pull Lillian up to face him. “I was not being high-handed in meeting with your father. I was adhering to tradition. A prospective bridegroom usually approaches a woman’s father before he makes a formal proposal.” A gently caustic note entered his voice as he added, “Even in America. Unless I’ve been misinformed?”
The clock on the mantel dispensed a slow half-minute before Lillian managed a grudging reply. “Yes, that’s how it’s usually done. But I assumed that you and he had already made a betrothal agreement, regardless of whether or not it was what I wanted—”
“Your assumption was incorrect. We did not discuss any details of a betrothal, nor was anything mentioned about a dowry or a wedding date. All I did was ask your father for permission to court you.”
Lillian stared at him with surprised chagrin, until another question occurred to her. “What about your discussion with Lord St. Vincent just now?”
Now it was Marcus’s turn to look chagrined. “That was high-handed,” he admitted.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
“
He thought about how exuberant he himself used to feel as he got ready to meet Miriam when they first started courting. Butterflies flew in his stomach as he washed, shaved, slicked back his hair with a comb and smear of Brylcreem. He made sure that his suit and shirt were pressed, his shoes were buffed. He would put his comb in his pocket and whistle as he walked to meet her. There was an ice cream parlor where they would sit in the window and drink lemonade with a blob of vanilla floating on top, or they sometimes went to the cinema. At that time a trainee, he didn’t have much money so he would save up all week just in case Miriam wanted to go for a nice meal, but she was happy to go for a walk with him and with their simple dates.
”
”
Phaedra Patrick (The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper)
“
I never told you the details of how Cea and I started dating...I was worried and embarrassed back then about my decided lack of interest, in, well, everybody. I went out on date, well that part doesn’t really matter Cecilia was auditing a company representing at the time and there was a court case involved so we spent a lot of time together and became friends. Everything else, dating and being attracted to her, that followed after.”
“What are you saying here?“ Kai asks.
“I’m saying,“ I take a step closer, “ that I don’t get attracted to people that easily. In fact, it almost never happens. So I don’t think we can draw any fundamental conclusions about my sexuality. And maybe we don’t have to. I’ve never felt the need to label myself before, so why can’t I say I am more attracted to you and anyone else?
”
”
Briar Prescott (The Happy List (Better With You, #1))
“
Love, love, love—all the wretched cant of it,
masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of
sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys,
blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures
of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its
barrenness. ‘We were not made to idolize one another, yet the whole
strain of courtship is little more than rank idolatry.’ It may seem
that young men no longer court with the elaborate servilities that
Mary Astell, the seventeenth-century feminist, was talking about,
but the mystic madness of love provides the same spurious halo,
and builds up the same expectations which dissipate as soon as the
new wife becomes capable of ‘calmly considering her Condition
”
”
Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch)
“
It is necessary to make this point in answer to the `iatrogenic' theory that the unveiling of repressed memories in MPD sufferers, paranoids and schizophrenics can be created in analysis; a fabrication of the doctor—patient relationship. According to Dr Ross, this theory, a sort of psychiatric ping-pong 'has never been stated in print in a complete and clearly argued way'.
My case endorses Dr Ross's assertions. My memories were coming back to me in fragments and flashbacks long before I began therapy. Indications of that abuse, ritual or otherwise, can be found in my medical records and in notebooks and poems dating back before Adele Armstrong and Jo Lewin entered my life.
There have been a number of cases in recent years where the police have charged groups of people with subjecting children to so-called satanic or ritual abuse in paedophile rings. Few cases result in a conviction. But that is not proof that the abuse didn't take place, and the police must have been very certain of the evidence to have brought the cases to court in the first place. The abuse happens. I know it happens. Girls in psychiatric units don't always talk to the shrinks, but they need to talk and they talk to each other.
As a child I had been taken to see Dr Bradshaw on countless occasions; it was in his surgery that Billy had first discovered Lego. As I was growing up, I also saw Dr Robinson, the marathon runner. Now that I was living back at home, he was again my GP. When Mother bravely told him I was undergoing treatment for MPD/DID as a result of childhood sexual abuse, he buried his head in hands and wept.
(Alice refers to her constant infections as a child, which were never recognised as caused by sexual abuse)
”
”
Alice Jamieson (Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind)
“
One could understand feminism generally as an attack on woman as she was under “patriarchy” (that concept is a social construction of feminism). The feminine mystique was her ideal; in regard to sex, it consisted of women’s modesty and in the double standard of sexual conduct that comes with it, which treated women’s misbehavior as more serious than men’s. Instead of trying to establish a single standard by bringing men up to the higher standard of women, as with earlier feminism, today’s feminism decided to demand that women be entitled to sink to the level of men. It bought into the sexual revolution of the late sixties and required that women be rewarded with the privileges of male conquest rather than, say, continue serving as camp followers of rock bands. The result has been the turn for the worse. ... What was there in feminine modesty that the feminists left behind?
In return for women’s holding to a higher standard of sexual behavior, feminine modesty gave them protection while they considered whether they wanted to consent. It gave them time: Not so fast! Not the first date! I’m not ready for that! It gave them the pleasure of being courted along with the advantage of looking before you leap. To win over a woman, men had to strive to express their finer feelings, if they had any. Women could judge their character and choose accordingly. In sum, women had the right of choice, if I may borrow that slogan. All this and more was social construction, to be sure, but on the basis of the bent toward modesty that was held to be in the nature of women. That inclination, it was thought, cooperated with the aggressive drive in the nature of men that could be beneficially constructed into the male duty to take the initiative. There was no guarantee of perfection in this arrangement, but at least each sex would have a legitimate expectation of possible success in seeking marital happiness. They could live together, have children, and take care of them.
Without feminine modesty, however, women must imitate men, and in matters of sex, the most predatory men, as we have seen. The consequence is the hook-up culture now prevalent on college campuses, and off-campus too (even more, it is said). The purpose of hooking up is to replace the human complexity of courtship with “good sex,” a kind of animal simplicity, eliminating all the preliminaries to sex as well as the aftermath. “Good sex,” by the way, is in good part a social construction of the alliance between feminists and male predators that we see today. It narrows and distorts the human potentiality for something nobler and more satisfying than the bare minimum.
The hook-up culture denounced by conservatives is the very same rape culture denounced by feminists. Who wants it? Most college women do not; they ignore hookups and lament the loss of dating. Many men will not turn down the offer of an available woman, but what they really want is a girlfriend. The predatory males are a small minority among men who are the main beneficiaries of the feminist norm. It’s not the fault of men that women want to join them in excess rather than calm them down, for men too are victims of the rape culture. Nor is it the fault of women. Women are so far from wanting hook-ups that they must drink themselves into drunken consent — in order to overcome their natural modesty, one might suggest. Not having a sociable drink but getting blind drunk is today’s preliminary to sex. Beautifully romantic, isn’t it?
”
”
Harvey C. Mansfield
“
The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year? We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization? The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.” After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.
”
”
Sandra K. Cook (Overcome Your Fear of Homeschooling with Insider Information)
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Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said in 2016, in the run-up to the EU referendum, that ‘the United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its twentieth-century history.’ Funny, because Britain is in fact one of the few countries in the world that literally did bury a good portion of its twentieth-century history. During the period of decolonisation, the British state embarked upon a systematic process of destroying the evidence of its crimes. Codenamed ‘Operation Legacy’, the state intelligence agencies and the Foreign Office conspired to literally burn, bury at sea or hide vast amounts of documents containing potentially sensitive details of things done in the colonies under British rule.25 Anything that might embarrass the government, that would show religious or racial intolerance or be used ‘unethically’ by a post-independence government was ordered destroyed or hidden. The Foreign Office were forced to admit in court about having hidden documents, then were unforthcoming about the scale of what was hidden, to the point that you’d be a fool to trust anything that is now said. But from what we know, hundreds of thousands of pages of documents were destroyed and over a million hidden, not just starting in the colonial period but dating all the way back to 1662. This operation was only exposed to the public in 2011 as part of a court case between the survivors of British concentration camps in Kenya and the government.
”
”
Akala (Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire)
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Is Joanna Gaines here? We have a warrant here for her arrest,” the officer said.
It was the tickets. I knew it. And I panicked. I picked up my son and I hid in the closet. I literally didn’t know what to do. I’d never even had a speeding ticket, and all of a sudden I’m thinking, I’m about to go to prison, and my child won’t be able to eat. What is this kid gonna do?
I heard Chip say, “She’s not here.”
Thankfully, Drake didn’t make a peep, and the officer believed him. He said, “Well, just let her know we’re looking for her,” and they left.
Jo’s the most conservative girl in the world. She had never even been late for school. I mean, this girl was straitlaced. So now we realize there’s a citywide warrant out for her arrest, and we’re like, “Oh, crap.” In her defense, Jo had wanted to pay those tickets off all along, and I was the one saying, “No way. I’m not paying these tickets.” So we decided to try to make it right. We called the judge, and the court clerk told us, “Okay, you have an appointment at three in the afternoon to discuss the tickets. See you then.” We wanted to ask the judge if he could remove a few of them for us. “The fines for our dogs “running at large” on our front porch just seemed a bit excessive.
We arrived at the courthouse, and Chip was carrying Drake in his car seat. I couldn’t carry it because I was still recovering from Drake’s delivery. We got inside and spoke to a clerk. They looked at the circumstances and decided to switch all the tickets into Chip’s name.
Those dogs were basically mine, and it didn’t make sense to have the tickets in her name. But as soon as they did that, this police officer walked over and said, “Hey, do you mind emptying out all of your pockets?”
I got up and cooperated. “Absolutely. Yep,” I said. I figured it was just procedure before we went in to see the judge.
Then he said, “Yeah, you mind taking off your belt?”
I thought, That’s a little weird.
Then he said, “Do you mind turning around and putting your hands behind your back?”
They weren’t going to let us talk to the judge at all. The whole thing was just a sting to get us to come down there and be arrested. They arrested Chip on the spot. And I’m sitting there saying, “I can’t carry this baby in his car seat. What am I supposed to do?”
I started bawling. “You can’t take him!” I cried. But they did. They took him right outside and put him in the back of a police car.
Now I feel like the biggest loser in the world. I’m in the back of a police car as my crying wife comes out holding our week-old baby.
I’m walking out, limping, and waving to him as they drive away.
And I can’t even wave because my hands are cuffed behind my back. So here I am awkwardly trying to make a waving motion with my shoulder and squinching my face just to try to make Jo feel better.
It was just the most comical thing, honestly. A total joke. To take a man to jail because his dogs liked to walk around a neighborhood, half of which he owns? But it sure wasn’t funny at the time. I was flooded with hormones and just could not stop crying. They told me they were taking my husband to the county jail.
Luckily we had a buddy who was an attorney, so I called him. I was clueless. “I’ve never dated a guy that’s been in trouble, and now I’ve got a husband that’s in jail.
”
”
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
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The Camera Eye (38) sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order but today my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair an anonymous civilian
”
”
John Dos Passos (1919 (The U.S.A. Trilogy, #2))
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Listen, Google,’ I will say, ‘both John and Paul are courting me. I like both of them, but in different ways, and it’s so hard to make up my mind. Given everything you know, what do you advise me to do?’ And Google will answer: ‘Well, I’ve known you from the day you were born. I have read all your emails, recorded all your phone calls, and know your favourite films, your DNA and the entire biometric history of your heart. I have exact data about each date you went on and, if you want, I can show you second-by-second graphs of your heart rate, blood pressure and sugar levels whenever you went on a date with John or Paul. If necessary, I can even provide you with an accurate mathematical ranking of every sexual encounter you had with either of them. And naturally, I know them as well as I know you. Based on all this information, on my superb algorithms, and on decades’ worth of statistics about millions of relationships –I advise you to go with John, with an 87 per cent probability that you will be more satisfied with him in the long run. ‘Indeed, I know you so well that I also know you don’t like this answer. Paul is much more handsome than John, and because you give external appearances too much weight, you secretly wanted me to say “Paul”. Looks matter, of course; but not as much as you think. Your biochemical algorithms –which evolved tens of thousands of years ago on the African savannah –give looks a weight of 35 per cent in their overall rating of potential mates. My algorithms –which are based on the most up-to-date studies and statistics –say that looks have only a 14 per cent impact on the long-term success of romantic relationships. So, even though I took Paul’s looks into account, I still tell you that you would be better off with John.
”
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Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
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In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing. In the white and empty room he stood in his bespoken suit with his hat in his hand and he peered down with his small and lashless pig’s eyes wherein this child just sixteen years on earth could read whole bodies of decisions not accountable to the courts of men and he saw his own name which nowhere else could he have ciphered out at all logged into the records as a thing already accomplished, a traveler known in jurisdictions existing only in the claims of certain pensioners or on old dated maps.
In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his pallet for arms but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
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I do not want to marry you, Benjamin.” “You’ve been crying.” He brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheek, her skin silky soft to his touch. “We don’t need to set a date if you’re not ready to.” “You aren’t listening to me.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and removed his hand from her face. “I cannot marry you, and this is all moving too quickly. I don’t want to shame my family—that’s the last thing I want, but I don’t want…” She raised troubled eyes to his. “I don’t want to make a laughingstock of you when I jilt you.” “Portmaines are not strangers to broken engage-ments.” “Port…?” He saw when she recollected his family name. “Were we to marry, you’d become Maggie Portmaine.” “But we’re not going to marry.” She was appallingly convinced of this, and it irritated him more—worried him more—each time she emphasized her position. “You said things were moving too quickly, Maggie, but if you’ve conceived, they can’t move quickly enough.” Her gaze became haunted, and her hand went to her belly. “You listen to me,” he said, dropping his voice and covering her hand with his own. “Just for today, we are engaged. We need make no other decisions than that. You can jilt me, and I’ll step aside, or we can marry, or we can remain engaged for a time and make further decisions later.” She was listening; she was even watching his mouth as he spoke. He kissed her on the lips for no other reason than he didn’t want her arguing with him. “I want you for my countess, Maggie. I’d made up my mind before we found ourselves in this contretemps, but I wanted to woo you, to squire you about and give you the attention and courting you deserve. Give me a few weeks. We’ll know better what we’re dealing with, and we’ll placate the Lady Dandridges of Society in the meanwhile.” “I can do that,” she said slowly, “but, Benjamin, that’s all I can do. You must not take a notion that we will be wed.” “And if there’s a baby?” She shook her head, but when he took her in his arms, she went unresisting into his embrace. He hoped there was a baby, which surprised him. He understood the necessity for an heir but hadn’t felt any urgency as long as Archer enjoyed good health.
”
”
Grace Burrowes (Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (The Duke's Daughters, #2; Windham, #5))
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The truth is, the vanity of protective parents that I cited to the court goes beyond look-at-us-we’re-such-responsible-guardians. Our prohibitions also bulwark our self-importance. They fortify the construct that we adults are all initiates. By conceit, we have earned access to an unwritten Talmud whose soul-shattering content we are sworn to conceal from “innocents” for their own good. By pandering to this myth of the naïf, we service our own legend. Presumably we have looked the horror in the face, like staring into the naked eye of the sun, blistering into turbulent, corrupted creatures, enigmas even to ourselves. Gross with revelation, we would turn back the clock if we could, but there is no unknowing of this awful canon, no return to the blissfully insipid world of childhood, no choice but to shoulder this weighty black sagacity, whose finest purpose is to shelter our air-headed midgets from a glimpse of the abyss. The sacrifice is flatteringly tragic. The last thing we want to admit is that the forbidden fruit on which we have been gnawing since reaching the magic age of twenty-one is the same mealy Golden Delicious that we stuff into our children’s lunch boxes. The last thing we want to admit is that the bickering of the playground perfectly presages the machinations of the boardroom, that our social hierarchies are merely an extension of who got picked first for the kickball team, and that grown-ups still get divided into bullies and fatties and crybabies. What’s a kid to find out? Presumably we lord over them an exclusive deed to sex, but this pretense flies so fantastically in the face of fact that it must result from some conspiratorial group amnesia. To this day, some of my most intense sexual memories date back to before I was ten, as I have confided to you under the sheets in better days. No, they have sex, too. In truth, we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. That is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and its suppression is the true collusion of adulthood, the pact we make, the Talmud we protect.
”
”
Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
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Good manners disappear proportionately as the influence of the court and a self-contained aristocracy declines. This decrease can be observed clearly from decade to decade, if one has an eye for public events, which visibly become more and more vulgar. No one today understands how to pay homage or flatter with wit; this leads to the ludicrous fact that in cases where one must do homage (to a great statesman or artist, for example), one borrows the language of deepest feeling, of loyal and honorable decency-out of embarrassment and a lack of wit and grace. So men's public, ceremonious encounters seem ever more clumsy, but more tender and honorable, without being so.
But will manners keep going downhill? I think, rather, that manners are going in a deep curve, and that we are nearing its low point. Now we inherit manners shaped by earlier conditions, and they are passed on and learned ever less thoroughly. But once society has become more certain of its intentions and principles, these will have a shaping effect, and there will be social manners, gestures, and expressions that must appear as necessary and simply natural as these intentions and principles are. Better division of time and labor; gymnastic exercise become the companion of every pleasant leisure hour; increased and more rigorous contemplation, which gives cleverness and suppleness even to the body-all this will come with it.
As this point one might, of course, think, somewhat scornfully, of our scholars: do they, who claim to be antecedents of the new culture, distinguish themselves by superior manners? Such is not the case, though their spirit may be willing enough: their flesh is weak.9 The past is still too strong in their muscles; they still stand in an unfree position, half secular clergymen, half the dependent educators of the upper classes; in addition, the pedantry of science and out-of-date, mindless methods have made them crippled and lifeless. Thus they are, bodily at least, and often three-quarters spiritually, too, still courtiers of an old, even senile culture, and, as such, senile themselves; the new spirit, which occasionally rumbles about in these old shells, serves for the meanwhile only to make them more uncertain and anxious. They are haunted by ghosts of the past, as well as ghosts of the future; no wonder that they neither look their best, nor act in the most obliging way.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits)
“
Besides the fact that you’re a scoundrel at the gaming tables,” she responded tartly, “I’m beginning to suspect that you’re a womanizing rake.”
Christopher grinned leisurely as his perusal swept her.
“I’ve been a long time at sea. However, I doubt that in your case my reaction would vary had I just left the London Court.”
Erienne’s eyes flared with poorly suppressed ire. The insufferable egotist! Did he dare think he could find a willing wench at the back door of the mayor’s cottage?
“I’m sure that Claudia Talbot would welcome your company, sir. Why don’t you ride on over to see her? I hear his lordship traveled off to London this morning.”
He laughed softly at her sneering tones. “I’d rather be courting you.”
“Why?” she scoffed. “Because you want to thwart my father?”
His smiling eyes captured hers and held them prisoner until she felt a warmth suffuse her cheeks. He answered with slow deliberation. “Because you are the prettiest maid I’ve ever seen, and I’d like to get to know you better. And of course, we should delve into this matter of your accidents more thoroughly, too.”
Twin spots of color grew in her cheeks, but the deepening dusk did much to hide her blush. Lifting her nose primly in the air, Erienne turned aside, tossing him a cool glance askance. “How many women have you told that to, Mr. Seton?”
A crooked smile accompanied his reply. “Several, I suppose, but I’ve never lied. Each had their place in time, and to this date, you are the best I’ve seen.”
He reached out and taking a handful of the cracklings, he chewed the crisp morsels as he awaited her reaction. A flush of anger spread to the delicate tips of her ears, and icy fire smoldered in the deep blue-violet pools. “You conceited, unmitigated boor!” Her voice was as cold and as flat as the Russian steppes. “Do you think to add me to your long string of conquests?” Her chilled contempt met him face to face until he rose and towered above her. His eyes grew distant, and he reached out a finger to flip a curl that had strayed from beneath the kerchief.
“Conquest?” His voice was soft and deeply resonant. “You mistake me, Erienne. In the rush of a moment’s lust, there are purchased favors, and these are for the greater part forgotten. The times that are cherished and remembered are not taken, are not given, but shared, and are thus treasured as a most blissful event.” He lifted his coat on his fingertips and slung it over his shoulder. “I do not ask that you yield to me, nor do I desire to conquer you. All I plead is that you grant me moments now and then that I might present my case, to the end that we could share a tender moment at some distant time.”
-Erienne & Christopher
”
”
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (A Rose in Winter)
“
I didn’t think we were being quiet, particularly. High heels may have looked dainty, but they didn’t sound that way on a tile floor. Maybe it was just that my dad was so absorbed in the convo on his cell phone. For whatever reason, when we emerged from the kitchen into the den, he started, and he stuffed the phone down by his side in the cushions. I was sorry I’d startled him, but it really was comical to see this big blond manly man jump three feet off the sofa when he saw two teenage girls. I mean, it would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.
Dad was a ferocious lawyer in court. Out of court, he was one of those Big Man on Campus types who shook hands with everybody from the mayor to the alleged ax murderer. A lot like Sean, actually. There were only two things Dad was afraid of. First, he wigged out when anything in the house was misplaced. I won’t even go into all the arguments we’d had about my room being a mess. They’d ended when I told him it was my room, and if he didn’t stop bugging me about it, I would put kitchen utensils in the wrong drawers, maybe even hide some (cue horror movie music). No spoons for you! Second, he was easily startled, and very pissed off afterward. “Damn it, Lori!” he hollered.
“It’s great to see you too, loving father. Lo, I have brought my friend Tammy to witness out domestic bliss. She’s on the tennis team with me.” Actually, I was on the tennis team with her.
“Hello, Tammy. It’s nice to meet you,” Dad said without getting up or shaking her hand or anything else he would normally do. While the two of them recited a few more snippets of polite nonsense, I watched my dad. From the angle of his body, I could tell he was protecting that cell phone behind the cushions.
I nodded toward the hiding place. “Hot date?”
I was totally kidding. I didn’t expect him to say, “When?”
So I said, “Ever.” And then I realized I’d brought up a subject that I didn’t want to bring up, especially not while I was busy being self-absorbed. I clapped my hands. “Okay, then! Tammy and I are going upstairs very loudly, and after a few minutes we will come back down, ringing a cowbell. Please continue with your top secret phone convo.”
I turned and headed for the stairs. Tammy followed me. I thought Dad might order me back, send Tammy out, and give me one of those lectures about my attitude (who, me?). But obviously he was chatting with Pamela Anderson and couldn’t wait for me to leave the room. Behind us, I heard him say, “I’m so sorry. I’m still here. Lori came in. Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try.”
“He seems jumpy,” Tammy whispered on the stairs.
“Always,” I said.
“Do you have a lot of explosions around your house?”
I glanced at my watch. “Not this early.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2))
“
I no longer require your services." With her head held high, she strode for the door.
Hell and blazes, he wouldn't let her do this! Now when he knew what was at stake.
"You don't want to hear my report?" he called out after her.
She paused near the door. "I don't believe you even have a report."
"I certainly do, a very thorough one. I've only been waiting for my aunt to transcribe my scrawl into something decipherable. Give me a day, and I can offer you names and addresses and dates, whatever you require."
"A day? Just another excuse to put me off so you can wreak more havoc." She stepped into the doorway, and he hurried to catch her by the arm and drag her around to face him.
He ignored the withering glance she cast him. "The viscount is twenty-two years your senior," he said baldly.
Her eyes went wide. "You're making that up."
"He's aged very well, I'll grant you, but he's still almost twice your age. Like many vain Continental gentlemen, he dyes his hair and beard-which is why he appears younger than you think."
That seemed to shake her momentarily. Then she stiffened. "All right, so he's an older man. That doesn't mean he wouldn't make a good husband."
"He's an aging roué, with an invalid sister. The advantages in a match are all his. You'd surely end up taking care of them both. That's probably why he wants to marry you."
"You can't be sure of that."
"No? He's already choosing not to stay here for the house party at night because of his sister. That tells me that he needs help he can't get from servants."
Her eyes met his, hot with resentment. "Because it's hard to find ones who speak Portuguese."
He snorted. "I found out this information from his Portuguese servants. They also told me that his lavish spending is a façade. He's running low on funds. Why do you think his servants gossip about him? They haven't been paid recently. So he’s definitely got his eye on your fortune.”
“Perhaps he does,” she conceded sullenly. “But not the others. Don’t try to claim that of them.”
“I wouldn’t. They’re in good financial shape. But Devonmont is estranged from his mother, and no one knows why. I need more time to determine it, though perhaps your sister-in-law could tell you, if you bothered to ask.”
“Plenty of people don’t get along with their families,” she said stoutly.
“He has a long-established mistress, too.”
A troubled expression crossed her face. “Unmarried men often have mistresses. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t give her up when he marries.”
He cast her a hard stare. “Are you saying you have no problem with a man paying court to you while he keeps a mistress?”
The sigh that escaped her was all the answer he needed.
“I don’t think he’s interested in marriage, anyway.” She tipped up her chin. “That still leaves the duke.”
“With his mad family.”
“He’s already told me about his father, whom I knew about anyway.”
“Ah, but did you know about his great-uncle? He ended his life in an asylum in Belgium, while there to receive some special treatment for his delirium.”
Her lower lip trembled. “The duke didn’t mention that, no. But then our conversation was brief. I’m sure he’ll tell me if I ask. He was very forthright on the subject of his family’s madness when he offered-“
As she stopped short, Jackson’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Offered what?”
She hesitated, then squared her shoulders. “Marriage, if you must know.”
Damn it all. Jackson had no right to resent it, but the thought of her in Lyons’s arms made him want to smash something. “And of course, you accepted his offer,” he said bitterly. “You couldn’t resist the appeal of being a great duchess.”
Her eyes glittered at him. “You’re the only person who doesn’t see the advantage in such a match.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
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The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows: 1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:- (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court. 2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel. 3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework. 4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity. 5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account. 6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS). 7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view: (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions. 8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.
”
”
M. Laxmikanth (Governance in India)
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In the meantime, he said, he would have to take Jennie down to the pound. Hugo was magnificent. Very cool and patient. He. explained to the man who Jennie was, what she was, and why it was impossible to even think of putting her in the pound. He dropped hints about Jennie’s strength and how she could escape from any cage made for an animal. He frightened the poor man half to death. He said, well, under the circumstances it would be acceptable if Jennie were kept at home, fully restrained at all times, until the court date.
”
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Douglas Preston (Jennie: A Novel)