Deliberate Hurt Quotes

Trust in someone means that we no longer have to protect ourselves. We believe we will not be hurt or harmed by the other, at least not deliberately. We trust his or her good intentions, though we know we might be hurt by the way circumstances play out between us. We might say that hurt happens; it’s a given of life. Harm is inflicted; it’s a choice some people make.

Isn't every hero aware of all the terrible reason they did those good deeds?" Aware of every mistake they ever made and how good people got hurt because of their decisions? Don't they recall the moments they weren't heroic at all? The moments where their heroism led to more deaths than deliberate villainy ever could?

A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out. A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from inside the house. "What's that terrifyin' sound?" asks the friend. "It's my dog," said the farmer. "He's sittin' on a nail." "Why doesn't he just sit up and get off it?" asks the friend. The farmer deliberates on this and replies: "Doesn't hurt enough yet.

Believe it or not, some of us have piercings and tattoos and dye our hair because we think it looks pretty, not for any deep sociological reason. This isn't an act of protest against cultural or social repression. It's not a grand, deliberately defiant gesture against capitalists or feminists or any other social group. It's not even the fashion equivalent to sticking two fingers up at the world. The boring truth of it, Gabriel, is that I don't dress like this to hurt my parents or draw attention to myself or make a statement. I just do it because I think it looks nice. Disappointed?

The knowledge that he had left me with no intent ever to return had come over me in tiny droplets of realization spread over the years. And each droplet of comprehension brought its own small measure of hurt...He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return.

Do you know why I freaked out? Because I realized I'd fallen in love with my best friend. The very same person who had just told me she didn't love me. Call me an asshole for overreacting but that's what happened. You're not the only one who is hurting here, Perry. At least I didn't do it deliberately.

You know, when someone hurts my feelings, somehow it does not comfort me to know that it was deliberate... On the other hand, knowing that someone else thinks they are assholes helps a great deal." "I think that's some kind of rule for the universe.

He dropped his forehead to hers. “I know I’m a little fucked up. Don’t give up on me baby. I’m not saying that things will suddenly be perfect. I’m a guy, and guys can be stupid. I admit I need the room to mess up a little. I can’t promise I won’t piss you off again, but I can promise you that I’ll never deliberately hurt you. Nothing is more important to me than you. Nothing.

are there really people on this earth who deliberately set out to do evil things? Who say to themselves, I want to hurt people, to inflict all the pain I can, to make their lives impossible?

Max's scarred brow crinkled. He reached for the coffee mug on his desk. “Motive is tricky. See, what might be a good reason for me to kill someone might not be a good enough reason for you to kill someone." Swift stared at his hands loosely clasped around his ankle. “I wouldn't. Deliberately hurt anyone." "And my impulse is to hurt anyone who hurts you.” When Swift's gaze lifted to his, Max said, “See how that works?" He did, and while it wasn't intended as a compliment, it did warm his heart in a funny way. He managed to joke, “Why, I think that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me.

A man worth being with is one… That never lies to you Is kind to people that have hurt him A person that respects another’s life That has manners and shows people respect That goes out of his way to help people That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met Who brags about your accomplishments with pride Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less That is a peacemaker That will see you through illness Who keeps his promises Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy That is gentle and patient with children Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow Who lives what he says he believes in Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him Who will run with your dreams That makes you laugh at the world and yourself Who forgives and is quick to apologize Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down Who communicates to solve problems Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met Who works hard to provide for the family Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family Who is morally free from sin Who sees your potential to be great Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you Who is a gentleman Who is honest and lives with integrity Who never discusses your private business with anyone Who will protect his family Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.

That Chippendale is a coffee table, Lieutenant, not a footstool." "How do you walk with that stick up your ass?" She left her feet where they were, propped comfortably on the table. "Does it hurt, or does it give you a nice little rush?" "Your dinner guests," he said, curling his lip, "have arrived." "Thank you, Summerset." Roarke got to his feet. "We'll have the hors d'oeuvres in here." He held out a hand to Eve. She waited, deliberately, until Summerset had stepped out again before swinging her feet to the floor. "In the interest of good fellowship," Roarke began as they started toward the foyer, "could you not mention the stick in Summerset's ass for the rest of the evening?" "Okay. If he rags on me I'll just pull it out and beat him over the head with it." "That should be entertaining.

I don't need a mate,” she muttered, staring up at the bright circle of the early autumn moon. “But can't you send me a nice, sexy, strongmale to dance with? Pretty please?” She hadn't had a lover for close to eight months now, and it was starting to hurt on every level. “He doesn't even have to be smart, just good between the sheets.” Good enough to unsnap the tension in her body, allow her to function again. Because sex wasn't simply about pleasure for a cat like her—it was about affection, about trust, about everything good. “Though right this second, I'd take plain old hot sex.” That was when Riley walked out of the shadows. “Got an itch, kitty?” Snapping to her feet, she narrowed her eyes, knowing he had to have deliberately stayed downwind in order to sneak up on her. “Spying?” “When you're talking loud enough to wake the dead?” She swore she could feel steam coming out her ears.

You do not know me for sure, yet you feel yourself better than me. But if you ever deliberately provoke me, in a way trying to hurt me, I'm so worried that you will die, or injured with heart full of revenge. The kind of revenge which you will never be able to fully retaliate, a revenge that will only add to next innocent victims..in between you and me.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle. There is not a whisper of wind. The hours last forever. You are so bored you sink into a state of apathy close to a coma. Then the sea becomes rough and your emotions are whipped into a frenzy. Yet even these two opposites do not remain distinct. In your boredom there are elements of terror: you break down into tears; you are filled with dread; you scream; you deliberately hurt yourself And in the grip of terror—the worst storm—you yet feel boredom, a deep weariness with it all.

Sometimes when a person does things to deliberately hurt you, All you need to do is shift atleast six steps back to observe the situation. If it is worth enduring, move two steps forward. If not, turn around and bless them with your back.

But then again, didn't all marriages carry thousands of hurts? Didn't husbands and wives injure each other all the time, leaving wounds both big and small, with snapped words or forgotten anniversaries or emotional buttons deliberately pushed? But thousands of kindnesses existed in marriages, too. The important thing was that the kindnesses triumphed over the hurts.

Everyone deserves someone who loves them through everything. Through anything. And maybe it’s an impossible wish, but I want to be loved by someone who would die before deliberately hurting me.

Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You’re giving a gift. You’re helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They’ll become real.

Part of you is broken, and the other part is bitter. Part of you wants to cry, and part of you wants to fight. The tears you cry are hot because they come from your heart, where there is a fire burning. It’s the fire of anger. It’s blazing. It’s consuming. Its flames leap up under a steaming pot of revenge. And you are left with a decision. “Do I put the fire out or heat it up? Do I get over it or get even? Do I release it or resent it? Do I let my hurts heal, or do I let hurt turn into hate?”. . . Resentment is the deliberate decision to nurse the offense until it becomes a black, furry, growling grudge . . . Unfaithfulness is wrong. Revenge is bad. But the worst part of all is that, without forgiveness, bitterness is all that is left.

Jim waited for us at the Gold Gate. His teeth were bared. “What happened to barely winning?” “You said sloppy! Look, I didn’t even use my sword; I hit him with my head like a moron.” “A man with a sword attacked you and you disarmed him and knocked him out cold in under two seconds.” He turned to Curran. The Beast Lord shrugged. “It’s not my fault that he didn’t know how to fall.” Jim’s gaze slid from Curran to Dali. “What the hell was that?” “Crimson Jaws of Death.” “And were you planning on letting me know that you can turn people’s elbows backwards?” “I told you I did curses.” “You said they don’t work!” “I said they don’t always work. This one worked apparently.” Dali wrinkled her forehead. “It’s not like I ever get to use them against live opponents anyway. It was an accident.” Jim looked at us. The clipboard snapped in his hands. He turned around and very deliberately walked away. “I think we hurt his feelings.” Dali looked at his retreating back, sighed, and went after him. Curran looked at me. “What the hell was I supposed to do, catch the werebison as he was falling?

Ammu," Chako said, his voice steady and deliberately casual, "is it at all possible for you to prevent your washed-up cynicism from completely coloring everything?" Silence filled the car like a saturated sponge. 'Washed-up' cut like a knife through a soft thing. The sun shone with a shuddering sigh. This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

Apo had struggled to attain amnesia. The freedom to live, even the freedom to die, was linked to his ability to forget. But now that forgetfulness has set in as a natural process, it hurts him. Back then, amnesia was a deliberate act of hope. Now it is a sign of life unraveling.

Face the symptoms. Cure the disease. Ego makes it so hard—it’s easier to delay, to double down, to deliberately avoid seeing the changes we need to make in our lives. But change begins by hearing the criticism and the words of the people around you. Even if those words are mean spirited, angry, or hurtful. It means weighing them, discarding the ones that don’t matter, and reflecting on the ones that do.

I understood her hrythm. That feeling of everything inside twisting to the point that if you didn't find a release you'd explode. I craved to grant her peace. I placed my hand over hers. My own heart rested when i rubbed my thumb over her smooth skin. She dropped the pen and grasped hes sleeve in her palm, her constant defense mechanism. No. If she grasped anything, it would me. My thumb worked its way between her fingers and her sleeve and released her death grip on the material. I wrapped my fingers around her fragile hand. Touching Echo felt like home. Her ring figer slid against mime, causing electricity to move through my bloodstream. She moved it again. Only this time the movement was slow, deliberate and the most seductive touch in the world. Everything inside of me ached to touch her more. Beth had been both wrong and right. Echo couldn’t hurt anyone, especially when she seemed so breakable herself. But the need I felt to be the one to keep the world from shattering her only confirmed Beth’s theory. I was falling for her and I was fucked.

Now they were slow and deliberate, the way hurt people loved, stretching carefully just to see how far their damaged muscles could go.

One way, he thought, the whole thing of ring fighting was hurting somebody else, deliberately, and particularly when it was not necessary. Two men who have nothing against each other get in a ring and try to hurt each other, to provide vicarious fear for people with less guts than themselves. And to cover it up they called it sports and gambled on it. He had never looked at that way before, and if there was any single thing he could not endure it was to be a dupe.

The note of almost unbearable irritation sounding through the deliberately calm tone in which he has just spoken penetrates her child's heart like a cruel needle of ice. Her face falls grotesquely, her mouth trembles, tears - the sudden, despairing tears of a hurt child - fill her eyes to the brim.

Many people have lived with a negative self-concept so long that they can no longer feel how it affects them. Instead of feeling indignation or hurt feelings, these people have conditioned themselves to accept subjugation and disrespect. This dulls the pain of being treated badly, but it’s important to awaken to the high cost of a low self-concept. Once they finally realize how painful it is to feel so diminished by others, they can do something about it. As Tony Robbins (1992) has described, sometimes the best way to motivate yourself to change is by deliberately amplifying how painful the old way is.

This obsession with the past, with something that someone did or how things should have been, as much as it hurts, is ego embodied. Everyone else has moved on, but you can’t, because you can’t see anything but your own way. You can’t conceive of accepting that someone could hurt you, deliberately or otherwise. So you hate.

Some people with OCD are compelled to pick up pieces of broken glass from the street. They worry that, if they don’t, then someone else might cut themselves on the glass. If the person with OCD fails to prevent that happening, they think, well I may as well have walked up to the stranger and deliberately hurt them. So they take

Any mode of thought that lays out complete and final answers to great existential questions is liable to dogmatism. A great attraction of care ethics, I think, is its refusal to encode or construct a catalog of principles and rules. One who cares must meet the cared-for just as he or she is, as a whole human being with individual needs and interests. [...] At most, it directs us to attend, to listen, and to respond as positively as possible. [...] it recognizes that virtually all human beings desire not to be hurt, and this gives us something close to an absolute: We should not inflict deliberate hurt or pain. Even when we must fight to save our children, we must not inflict unnecessary or deliberate pain.

emphasized that anger is a signal that someone wants to be treated differently, which is healthy; cruelty is when someone deliberately wants to hurt someone

Anger is a signal that someone wants to be treated differently, which is healthy; cruelty is when we deliberately want to hurt someone else.

He was capable of hurting Ludens even to the point sometimes of deliberate malice.

With a slow, deliberate movement, he pushed his hand into the fall of her hair, wrapping a thick strand around his fingers and wrist. His voice dropped, deepening as he spoke words meant for her. “I love your hair. The color of blood at its most fragrant and powerful.” The light tug on the strands didn’t hurt. Instead it sensitized her. The swirl of color in his eyes was myriad shades of red reflected and magnified. “You should let go now,” she said, low even tones that matched his own. The corner of that edible mouth lifted, baring a fang. “Never.

He raked his hand through his hair. 'This is more difficult than I'd anticipated.' Good, she thought. If he was going to break her heart, she didn't want it to be easy for him. 'What I'm trying to say is that I had it all wrong. I don't want a wife who...' 'You don't want a wife?' she choked. 'No!' he practically yelled. Then he continued in a more normal tone, 'I don't want a wife who will look the other way if I stray.' 'You want me to /watch?/ 'No, I want you to be furious.' Ellie was by now on the verge of tears. 'You deliberately want to make me angry? To hurt me?' 'No. Oh, God, you've got it all wrong...I just want you to love me so much that if I did [be unfaithful] - which I'm not going to - you would want to have me drawn and quartered.

For the Orthodox tradition, then, Adam's original sin affects the human race in its entirety, and it has consequences both on the physical and the moral level: it, results not only in sickness and physical death, but in moral weakness and paralysis. But does it also imply an inherited guilt? Here Orthodoxy is more guarded. Original sin is not to be interpreted in juridical or quasi-biological terms, as if it were some physical 'taint' of guilt, transmitted through sexual intercourse. This picture, which normally passes for the Augustinian view, is unacceptable to Orthodoxy. The doctrine of original sin means rather that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good; easy to hurt others, and hard to heal their wounds; easy to arouse men's suspicions, and hard to win their trust. It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being. And to this accumulation of wrong we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin. The gulf grows wider and wider. It is here, in the solidarity of the human race, that we find an explanation for the apparent unjustness of the doctrine of original sin. Why, we ask, should the entire human race suffer because of Adam's fall? Why should all be punished because of one man's sin? The answer is that human beings, made in the image of the Trinitarian God, are interdependent and coinherent. No man is an island. We are 'members one of another'(Eph. 4:25), and so any action, performed by any member of the human race, inevitably affects all the other members. Even though we are not, in the strict sense, guilty of the sins of others, yet we are somehow always involved.

We don’t open our hearts by being a tower of strength. We don’t open our hearts by glossing over things in our head. We open our hearts by feeling what we feel. We open our hearts by being vulnerable, honest, and gentle. We’ve become so strong, so self-sufficient. I can deal with that, we say. No big deal. I’ll keep moving on. Yet many circumstances we’ve been through, and some we’re going through now, cause break lines in our heart. Some of the fractures are small. Some are big. They really hurt. Maybe certain people in our lives weren’t there for us, aren’t there for us now in a way we’d like them to be. Maybe some deceived us unconsciously or betrayed us deliberately. I can deal with that, we say. I understand. They have their own issues. I forgive… Yes, people do have their own issues. And we do forgive. But now it may be time to learn gentleness, compassion, understanding, and forgiveness for ourselves as well. We don’t open our hearts by ignoring the break lines. We take our hand, knowing it’s held by God, and gently run our fingers across each crack. Yes, it’s there. Yes, I feel it. Yes, I’m ready to heal my heart.

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

People are complicated, and they hurt each other. Effie Linton had known this for a long time, just as she knew that sometimes those wounds were inflicted deliberately, over and over, and not with fists or weapons. Sometimes, they did it with love.

Solutions to the complex plight of the Negro will not be easy. This does not signify that they are impossible. Recognizing these complexities as challenges rather than as obstacles, we will make progress if we freely admit that we have no magic. We will make progress if we accept the fact that four hundred years of sinning cannot be canceled out in four minutes of atonement. Neither can we allow the guilty to tailor their atonement in such a manner as to visit another four seconds of deliberate hurt upon the victim.

It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit, we challenge and encourage the human capacity to solve problems, just as in school we deliberately set problems for our children to solve. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.” It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.

In the prologue, I explained the gradual and subtle process in which history is re-written to fit a country's present self-image. As a result, many rich-country people recommend free-trade, free-market policies in the honest belief that these are policies that thier own ancestors used in order to make their countries rich. When the poor countries protest that those policies hurt, those protests are dismissed as being intellectually misguided or as serving the interests of their corrupt leaders. It never occurs to those Bad Samaritans that the policies they recommend are fundamentally at odds with what history teaches us to be the best development policies. The intention behind their policy recommendations may be honourable, but their effects are no less harmful than those from policy recommendations motivated by deliberate ladder-kicking.

I know the consequences of what I’ve done. Kill me if You must. There was a long silence, and I could sense Her softening, that strange affection She shared with me above the others. Do you think I rejoice in death? I raised my head. What? There is no joy for Me in punishing you or in taking lives. I do what I must to survive. And not only would I not delight in your death, I would mourn it. You must know by now how dear you are to Me. I swallowed. Why me? Why do I have Your favor more so than the others? She was so tender with me, lifting me up from the sand as if She were cradling a baby. Considering her timelessness and my temporariness, I practically was a newborn in Her eyes. Throughout My many, many years and all the sirens I’ve carried in My hands, none of them has considered Me as you do. There’s been a detachment, a deliberate isolation between them and Me. But you? You come to Me with a sweetness, an attempt to understand. You come to Me even when you are not called. I feel for you what a mother feels for her daughter. To end your life would be to end Mine. I cried again. I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt You.

I was backed against the sink; Emile was close, warm, his eyes glittering, his mouth sensuous and lovely. "You," I said deliberately, "don't give a damn about me except physically." Any boy would deny that; any gallant boy; any gallant lier. But Emile shook me, his voice was urgent, "You know, you shouldn't have said that. You know? You know? The truth always hurts." (Even clichés can come in handy.) He grinned, "Don't be bitter; I'm not. Come away from the sink, and watch." He stepped back, drawing me toward him, slapping my stomach away, he kissed me long and sweetly. At last he let go. "There," he said with a quiet smile. "The truth doesn't always hurt, does it?" And so we left. It was pouring rain. In the car he put his arm around me, his head against mine, and we watched the streetlights coming at us, blurred and fluid in the watery dark. As we ran up the walk in the rain, as he came in and had a drink of water, as he kissed me goodnight, I knew that something in me wanted him, for what I'm not sure: He drinks, he smokes, he's Catholic, he runs around with one girl after another, and yet... I wanted him. "I don't have to tell you it's been nice," I said at the door. "It's been marvelous," he smiled. "I'll call you. Take care." And he was gone. So the rain comes down hard outside my room, and like Eddie Cohen," I say, "... fifteen thousand years - - - of what? We're still nothing but animals." Somewhere, in his room, Emile lies, about to sleep, listening to the rain. God only knows what he's thinking.

We shouldn't have left." Keeley paced the kitchen, stopping at the windows on each pass. Why weren't they back? "Darling, you're shaking.Come on now, sit and drink your tea." "I can't.What's wrong with men? They'd have beaten that idiot to a pulp.I'm not that surprised at Brian,I suppose, but I expected more restraint from Dad." Genuinely surprised, Adelia glanced over. "Why?" As worry ate through her she raked her hands through her hair. "He's contained. Now you,I could see you taking a few swings..." SHe winced. "No offense," she said, then saw that her mother was grinning. "None taken.My temper might be a bit, we'll say, more colorful than your father's. His tends to be cold and deliberate when it's called for.And it was.The man hurt and frightened his little girl." "His little girl was about to attempt to gut the man with a hoof pick." Keeley blew out a breath. "I've never seen Dad hit anyone, or look like he wanted to keep right on with it.

Girls start thinking about their ideal body at a shockingly early age. Thirty-four percent of five-year-old girls engage in deliberate dietary restraint at least “sometimes.” Twenty-eight percent of these girls say they want their bodies to look like the women they see in movies and on television.1 To put this into context, important developmental milestones for five-year-olds include the successful use of a fork and spoon and the ability to count ten or more objects. These are girls who are just learning how to move their bodies around in the world, yet somehow they’re already worried about how their bodies look, already seeking to take up less space.

Consider the perverse logic of Rush Limbaugh’s suggestion that President Obama was deliberately trying to destroy the American economy as some form of “payback” for slavery and racism, or Glenn Beck’s charge that health care reform is really just Barack Obama’s way to obtain reparations for slavery. Both allegations seem the stuff of absurdist and paranoid fantasy, and yet, in an era of white racial anxiety and resentment, they couldn’t be more rational. They serve, almost perfectly, as triggers for our racial angers and insecurities. That black guy is trying to harm us, to take our money and give it to them, to make us hurt the way his people were hurt.

I didn’t know you involved yourself in political issues.” She glanced at him wryly. “Of course you didn’t. You don’t know a lot about me.” He scowled as he turned his attention to the circle and watched his mother dance, resplendent in her beautiful buckskins. No, he didn’t know a lot about Cecily, but he did know how devastated she’d been to discover he’d paid her way through college, absorbed all her expenses out of pity for her situation. He was sorry for how much that had hurt her. But over the past two years, he’d deliberately distanced himself from her. He wondered why… “I had dinner with Senator Holden last week,” she said conversationally, deliberately trying to irritate him. “He wanted to point me toward some special collections for the museum.” He stared at his mother in the circle, but he was frowning, deep in thought. “I don’t like Holden,” he said curtly. “Yes, I know. You’ll be delighted to hear that he returned your sentiment,” she said with a chuckle at his scowl.

Once we understand that patriarchy is totally dependent upon our mistrusting and thwarting and hurting one another, and that for this reason we have been deliberately, thoroughly, and fiercely indoctrinated from birth to hate and to hurt women, surely we can forgive one another and learn to resist the most central and deadly of all patriarchal mandates.

A basic precept of intimate communication is that each person owns their own feelings. No one "makes" you feel jealous or insecure—the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel.

A budget?" He'd expected an explosion.Even, perversely,hoped for one.Margo's tantrums were always so..stimulating.It didn't appear that he was going to be disappointed. "A budget?" she repeated,storming to him. "Of all the unbelievable,bloody nerve.You arrogant son of a bitch. Do you think I'm going to stand here and let you treat me like some sort of brainless bimbo who needs to be told how much she can spend on face powder?" "Face powder." Deliberately, he scanned the papers,took a pen out of his pocket,and made a quick note. "That would come under 'Miscellaneous Luxuries.' I think I've been very generous there. Now,as to your clothing allowance-" "Allowance!" She used both hands to shove him back a step. "Just let me tell you what you can do with your fucking allowance." "Careful,duchess." He brushed the front of his shirt. "Turnbill and Asser." The strangled sound in her throat was the best she could do.If there had been anything at all to throw,she'd have heaved it at his head. "I'd rather be picked apart,alive, by vultures than let you handle the money." "You don't have any money," he began, but she barreled on as she whirled around the room. Watching her, he all but salivated. "I'd rather be gang-raped by midgets, staked naked to a wasp nest,be force-fed garden slugs." "Go three weeks without a manicure?" he put in and watched her hands curl into claws. "You go after my face with those, I'll have to hurt you." "Oh,I hate you." "No,you don't.

John Boyd, a sort of warrior-monk who revolutionized Western military strategy in the latter half of the twentieth century, refused to take checks from defense contractors and deliberately lived in a small condo even as he advised presidents and generals. “If a man can reduce his needs to zero,” he said, “he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.

But I’m not so sure the way you lose someone you love makes the pain of losing them any easier or more difficult. It’s the emptiness they leave behind that hurts so badly, regardless of whether they deliberately walked away or were taken from us. But the heart is a wonderful, strong organ. It has the ability to heal and grow and love more than one person. The trickier part is finding someone who makes your heart want to love again. Someone who fills all those empty places and then some.

people learning about climate change for the first time might understandably believe, upon listening to Lunnon and Thunberg, that climate change is the result of deliberate, malevolent actions. In reality, it is the opposite. Emissions are a by-product of energy consumption, which has been necessary for people to lift themselves, their families, and their societies out of poverty, and achieve human dignity. Given that’s what climate activists have been taught to believe, it’s understandable that so many of them would be so angry.

I reach out and trace the dragon relic on his back, my fingers lingering on the raised silver scars, and he stiffens. They're all short, thin lines, too precise to be a whip, no rhyme or reason to their pattern but never intersecting. 'What happened?' I whisper, holding my breath. 'You really don't want to know.' He's tense, but doesn't move away from my touch. 'I do.' They don't look accidental. Someone hurt him deliberately maliciously, and it makes me want to hunt the person down and do the same to them. His jaw flexes as he looks over his shoulder, and his eyes meet mine. I bite my lip, knowing this moment can go either way. He can shut me out like always or he can actually let me in. 'There's a lot of them,' I murmur, dragging my fingers down his spine. 'A hundred and seven.' He looks away. The number makes my stomach lurch, and then my hand pauses. A hundred and seven. That's the number Liam mentioned. 'That's how many kids under the age of majority carry the rebellion relic.' 'Yeah.' I shift so I can see his face. 'What happened, Xaden?' He brushes my hair back, and the look that passes is over his face is so close to tender that it makes my heart stutter. 'I saw the opportunity to make a deal,' he says softly. 'And I took it.' 'What kind of deal leaves you with scars like that?' Conflict rages in his eyes, but then he sighs. 'The kind where I take personal responsibility for the loyalty of the hundred and seven kids the rebellion's leaders left behind, and in return, we're allowed to fight for our lives in the Riders Quadrant instead of being put to death like our parents.' He averts his gaze. 'I chose the chance of death over the certainty.' The cruelty of the offer and the sacrifice he made to save the others hits like a physical blow. I cradle his cheek and guide his face back to mine. 'So if any of them betray Navarre...' I lift my brows. 'Then my life is forfeit. The scars are a reminder.' It's why Liam says he owes him everything. 'I'm so sorry that happened to you.' Especially when he wasn't the one who led the rebellion. He looks at me like he sees into the very depths of who I am. 'You have nothing to apologise for.

You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily. “If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!” He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver. “That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor. “It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm. It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther. “What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him. She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!” “That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.” She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.” “You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.” He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.” He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.” “Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…” “I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.” His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.” “You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.

Arin glanced up as she approached. One tree shadowed the knoll, a laran tree, leaves broad and glossy. Their shadows dappled Arin’s face, made it a patchwork of sun and dark. It was hard to read his expression. She noticed for the first time the way he kept the scarred side of his face out of her line of sight. Or rather, what she noticed for the first time was how common this habit was for him in her presence--and what that meant. She stepped deliberately around him and sat so that he had to face her fully or shift into an awkward, neck-craned position. He faced her. His brow lifted, not so much in amusement as in his awareness of being studied and translated. “Just a habit,” he said, knowing what she’d seen. “You have that habit only with me.” He didn’t deny it. “Your scar doesn’t matter to me, Arin.” His expression turned sardonic and interior, as if he were listening to an unheard voice. She groped for the right words, worried that she’d get this wrong. She remembered mocking him in the music room of the imperial palace (I wonder what you believe could compel me to go to such epic lengths for your sake. Is it your charm? Your breeding? Not your looks, surely.). “It matters because it hurts you,” she said. “It doesn’t change how I see you. You’re beautiful. You always have been to me.” Even when she hadn’t realized it, even in the market nearly a year ago. Then later, when she understood his beauty. Again, when she saw his face torn, stitched, fevered. On the tundra, when his beauty terrified her. Now. Now, too. Her throat closed. The line of his jaw hardened. He didn’t believe her. “Arin--” “I’m sorry for what happened in the village.” She dropped her hand to her lap. She hadn’t been conscious of lifting it.

It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a program of deliberate disinformation, keep telling the public that we still don't know whether electropollution is a threat to human health. That's simply not true. Certainly we need to know more, but a multitude of risks have been well documented.
Three dangers overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively proven: ELF electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hertz, even if they're weaker than the earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result. Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electropollution, increasing cancer rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climatic manipulation from a sorcerer's-apprentice level of ignorance.


Ribs hurting?" When he only shrugged, she shook her head. "Let me take a look." "She barely caught me." "Oh,for heaven's sake." Impatient, Keeley did what she would have done with one of her brothers: She tugged Brian's T-shirt out of his jeans. "Well,darling,if I'd known you were so anxious to get me undressed,I'd have cooperated fully,and in private." "Shut up.God, Brian, you said it was nothing." "It's not much." His definition of not much was a softball-size bruise the ribs in a burst of ugly red and black. "Macho is tedious, so just shut up." He started to grin,then yelped when she pressed her fingers to the bruise. "Hell, woman,if that's your idea of tender mercies, keep them." "You could have a cracked rib. You need an X ray." "I don't need a damned-ouch! Bollocks and bloody hell, stop poking." He tried to pull his shirt down, but she simply yanked it up again. "Stand still,and don't be a baby." "A minute ago it was don't be macho, now it's don't be a baby. What do you want?" "For you to behave sensibly." "It's difficult for a man to behave sensibly when a woman's taking his clothes off in broad daylight. If you're going to kiss it and make it better, I've several other bruises. I've a dandy one on my ass as it happens." "I'm sure that's terribly amusing.One of the men can drive you to the emergency room" "No one's driving me anywhere. I'd know if my ribs are cracked as I've had a few in my time.It's a bruise, and it's throbbing like a bitch now that you've been playing with it." She spotted another, riding high on his hip,and gave that a poke. This time he groaned. "Keeley,you're torturing me here." "Im just trying..." She trailed off as she lifted her head and saw his eyes. It wasn't pain or annoyance in them now. It was heat,and it was frustration. And it was surprisingly gratifying. "Really?" It was wrong,and it was foolish, but a sip of power was a heady thing.She trailed her fingers along his hip, up his ribs and down again, and felt his mucles quiver. "Why don't you stop me?" His throat hurt. "You make my head swim. And you know it." "Maybe I do.Now.Maybe I like it." She'd never been deliberately provocative before. Had never wanted to be. And she'd never known the thrill of having a strong man turn to putty under her hands. "Maybe I've thought about you, Brian,the way you said I would." "You pick a fine time to tell me when there's people everywhere, and your father one of them.

anger has a bad reputation. It’s a negotiation device that helps us stand up for ourselves, to say, in effect, “Get off my turf; you’re stomping on my sense of self. Stop crossing into my backyard.” Then it’s up to the other person to deal with your anger—to decide whether it’s a legitimate problem that requires a change in his or her behaviour. “Your mother was hurt, and then she considered it, and she hasn’t mentioned her ‘mother fantasy’ since,” I said. I emphasized that anger is a signal that someone wants to be treated differently, which is healthy; cruelty is when someone deliberately wants to hurt someone else.

The worst pair of opposites is boredom and terror. Sometimes your life is a pendulum swing from one to the other. The sea is without a wrinkle. There is not a whisper of wind. The hours last forever. You are so bored you sink into a state of apathy close to a coma. Then the sea becomes rough and your emotions are whipped into a frenzy. Yet even these two opposites do not remain distinct. In your boredom there are elements of terror: you break down into tears; you are filled with dread; you scream; you deliberately hurt yourself And in the grip of terror - the worst storm - you yet feel boredom, a deep weariness with it all. Only death consistently excites your emotions, whether contemplating it when life is safe and stale, or fleeing it when life is threatened and precious. Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing. You must make adjustments if you want to survive. Much becomes expendable. You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish.

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

In Uprooting Racism, Paul Kivel makes a useful comparison between the rhetoric abusive men employ to justify beating up their girlfriends, wives, or children and the publicly traded justifications for widespread racism. He writes: During the first few years that I worked with men who are violent I was continually perplexed by their inability to see the effects of their actions and their ability to deny the violence they had done to their partners or children. I only slowly became aware of the complex set of tactics that men use to make violence against women invisible and to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. These tactics are listed below in the rough order that men employ them.… (1) Denial: “I didn’t hit her.” (2) Minimization: “It was only a slap.” (3) Blame: “She asked for it.” (4) Redefinition: “It was mutual combat.” (5) Unintentionality: “Things got out of hand.” (6) It’s over now: “I’ll never do it again.” (7) It’s only a few men: “Most men wouldn’t hurt a woman.” (8) Counterattack: “She controls everything.” (9) Competing victimization: “Everybody is against men.” Kivel goes on to detail the ways these nine tactics are used to excuse (or deny) institutionalized racism. Each of these tactics also has its police analogy, both as applied to individual cases and in regard to the general issue of police brutality. Here are a few examples: (1) Denial. “The professionalism and restraint … was nothing short of outstanding.” “America does not have a human-rights problem.” (2) Minimization. Injuries were “of a minor nature.” “Police use force infrequently.” (3) Blame. “This guy isn’t Mr. Innocent Citizen, either. Not by a long shot.” “They died because they were criminals.” (4) Redefinition. It was “mutual combat.” “Resisting arrest.” “The use of force is necessary to protect yourself.” (5) Unintentionality. “[O]fficers have no choice but to use deadly force against an assailant who is deliberately trying to kill them.…” (6) It’s over now. “We’re making changes.” “We will change our training; we will do everything in our power to make sure it never happens again.” (7) It’s only a few men. “A small proportion of officers are disproportionately involved in use-of-force incidents.” “Even if we determine that the officers were out of line … it is an aberration.” (8) Counterattack. “The only thing they understand is physical force and pain.” “People make complaints to get out of trouble.” (9) Competing victimization. The police are “in constant danger.” “[L]iberals are prejudiced against police, much as many white police are biased against Negroes.” The police are “the most downtrodden, oppressed, dislocated minority in America.” Another commonly invoked rationale for justifying police violence is: (10) The Hero Defense. “These guys are heroes.” “The police routinely do what the rest of us don’t: They risk their lives to keep the peace. For that selfless bravery, they deserve glory, laud and honor.” “[W]ithout the police … anarchy would be rife in this country, and the civilization now existing on this hemisphere would perish.” “[T]hey alone stand guard at the upstairs door of Hell.

Each person owns their own feelings. No one “makes” you feel jealous or insecure — the person who makes you feel that way is you. No matter what the other person is doing, what you feel in response is determined inside you. Even when somebody deliberately tries to hurt you, you make a choice about how you feel. You might feel angry or hurt or frightened or guilty. The choice, not usually conscious, happens inside you. Reaching this understanding is not as easy as it sounds. When you feel rotten, it can be hard to accept the responsibility for how you feel: wouldn’t this be easier if it were someone else’s fault? The problem is that when you blame someone else for how you feel, you disempower yourself. If this is someone else’s fault, only that person can fix it, right? So poor you can’t do anything but sit there and moan.

Don’t cry, Evie.” He rubbed his broad hands on her back, gentling her. “Those things are not true. You aren’t a whore.” She choked. “I’m here aren’t I? At Ford’s?” John always knew exactly how to hurt her. Charley held her away from him, honest intensity in his chocolate eyes. He spoke deliberately, his tone serious. “I know you’re not a whore because I don’t often get denied. Nine out of ten people, man or woman, would have fucked me on the spot when I offered it the first time.” Her mouth dropped open and for a moment she forgot her emotions. He grinned and his eyes twinkled with mischief. Balling her fist, she cuffed him on the chest. Hard. “Ouch!” “You’re an asshole.” She was laughing through her tears. “That’s your whore test?” “No! God, of course not! That’s just my you-have-a-pulse test. My whore test is much more hard-core. I can give you that one if you want. But…” He made a show of looking around the room. “We’re going to need some lube. And possibly some plastic sheeting.” He got up and opened one of the dresser drawers. “Do you have a video recorder with a wide-angle lens? And a zucchini?

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, The photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician, The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle, To-morrow for the young poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle. To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting, Today the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette, The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert, The masculine jokes; to-day the Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting. The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say alas but cannot help or pardon.

It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a program of deliberate disinformation, keep telling the public that we still don't know whether electropollution is a threat to human health. That's simply not true. Certainly we need to know more, but a multitude of risks have been well documented. Three dangers overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively proven: ELF electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hertz, even if they're weaker than the earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result. Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electropollution, increasing cancer rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climatic manipulation from a sorcerer's-apprentice level of ignorance.

There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt. That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard. Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties. One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it. It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.

You have to get safe and know how to work together with your system of selves before you can work on the memories with all the details and all the feelings. Even then it’s not just letting it all hang out. It’s a long slow process that is designed to overwhelm you as little as possible. We can discuss it in depth at a later time. Right now, your situation reminds me of a bunch of folks on a big sailboat that’s taking on water. No one knows where the life vests are, or how to put them on. Half the crew is below decks refusing to come out, and the other half is fighting with each other. Then someone says, ‘Ooh there’s a hurricane, let’s sail into that!’ Doesn’t sound likely that the ship and the crew are going to do very well there, does it? Sometimes, even if you’re not prepared, a hurricane hits, but that’s different from deliberately sailing into one. ‘The first thing is that everyone needs to work on working together, getting safe from harm to yourselves and others. I really believe, from everything you’ve all said, that you’ve all been hurt enough. You don’t need any more harm coming to any of you or your body. You don’t have to like everyone, love everyone, or even trust everyone inside. It’s just a matter of seeing how you can begin to risk to work together.

Just try, Tai-Pan, by God,” she said and glared back at him. He grabbed her swiftly and carried her, struggling, to the bed and flung up her robe and petticoats and gave her a smack on her buttocks that stung his hand and tossed her on the bed. He had never struck her before. May-may flew off the bed at him and viciously raked at his face with her long nails. A lantern crashed to the floor as Struan upended her again and resumed the spanking. She fought out of his grip, and her nails slashed at his eyes, missing by a fraction of an inch, and scoring his face. He caught her wrists and turned her over and tore off her robe and underclothes and smashed her bare buttocks with the flat of his hand. She fought back fiercely, shoving an elbow in his groin and clawing at his face again. Mustering all his strength, he pinned her to the bed, but she slipped her head free and sank her teeth into his forearm. He gasped from the pain and slashed her buttocks again with the flat of his free hand. She bit harder. “By God, you’ll never bite me again,” he said through clenched teeth. Her teeth sank deeper, but he deliberately did not pull his arm away. The pain made his eyes water, but he smashed May-may harder and harder and harder, always on her buttocks, until his hand hurt. At last she released her teeth. “Don’t—no more—please—please,” she whimpered, and wept into the pillow, defenseless. Struan caught his breath. “Now say you’re sorry for going out without permission.

He stared at her in insolent silence, unable to believe the alluring, impulsive girl he remembered had become this coolly aloof, self-possessed young woman. Even with her dusty clothes and the smear of dirt on her cheek, Elizabeth Cameron was strikingly beautiful, but she’d changed so much that-except for the eyes-he scarcely recognized her. One thing hadn’t changed: She was still a schemer and a liar. Straightening abruptly from his stance in the doorway, Ian walked forward. “I’ve had enough of this charade, Miss Cameron. No one invited you here, and you damn well know it.” Blinded with wrath and humiliation, Elizabeth groped in her reticule and snatched out the handwritten letter her uncle had received inviting Elizabeth to join Ian there. Marching up to him, she slapped the invitation against his chest. Instinctively he caught it but didn’t open it. “Explain that,” she commanded, backing away and then waiting. “Another note, I’ll wager,” he drawled sarcastically, thinking of the night he’d gone to the greenhouse to meet her and recalling what a fool he’d been about her. Elizabeth stood beside the table, determined to have the satisfaction of hearing his explanation before she left-not that anything he said could make her stay. When he showed no sign of opening it, she turned furiously to Jake, who was sorely disappointed that Ian was deliberately chasing off two females who could surely be persuaded to do the cooking if they stayed. “Make him read it aloud!” she ordered the startled Jake. “Now, Ian,” Jake said, thinking of his empty stomach and the bleak future that lay ahead for it if the ladies went away, “why don’t you jes’ read that there little note, like the lady asked?” When Ian Thornton ignored the older man’s suggestion, Elizabeth lost control of her temper. Without thinking what she was actually doing, she reached out and snatched the pistol off the table, primed it, cocked it, and leveled it at Ian Thornton’s broad chest. “Read that note!” Jake, whose concern was still on his stomach, held up his hands as if the gun were pointed at him. “Ian, it could be a misunderstanding, you know, and it’s not nice to be rude to these ladies. Why don’t you read it, and then we’ll all sit down and have a nice”-he inclined his head meaningfully to the sack of provisions on the table-“supper.” “I don’t need to read it,” Ian snapped. “The last time I read a note from Lady Cameron I met her in a greenhouse and got shot in the arm for my trouble.” “Are you implying I invited you into that greenhouse?” Elizabeth scoffed furiously. With an impatient sigh Ian said, “Since you’re obviously determined to enact a Cheltenham tragedy, let’s get it over with before you’re on your way.” “Do you deny you sent me a note?” she snapped. “Of course I deny it!” “Then what were you doing in the greenhouse?” she shot back at him. “I came in response to that nearly illegible note you sent me,” he said in a bored, insulting drawl. “May I suggest that in future you devote less of your time to theatrics and some of it to improving your handwriting?” His gaze shifted to the pistol. “Put the gun down before you hurt yourself.

In case you haven't noticed,rodeos are a serious business.Careless cowboys tend to break bones,or even their skulls,as hard as that may be to believe." She stared down at the hand holding her wrist. Despite his smile,she could feel the strength in his grip. If he wanted to,he could no doubt break her bone with a single snap. But she wasn't concerned with his strength,only with the heat his touch was generating. She felt the tingle of warmth all the way up her arm.It alarmed her more than she cared to admit. "My job is to minimize damage to anyone who is actually hurt." "I'm grateful." He sat up so his laughing blue eyes were even with hers. If possible,his were even bluer than the perfect Montana sky above them. "What do you think? Any damage from that fall?" Her instinct was to move back,but his fingers were still around her wrist,holding her close. "I'm beginning to wonder if you were actually tossed from that bull or deliberately fell." "I'd have to be a little bit crazy to deliberately fell." "I'd have to be a little bit crazy to deliberately jump from the back of a raging bull just to get your attention, wouldn't I?" "Yeah." She felt the pull of that magnetic smile that had so many of the local females lusting after Wyatt McCord. Now she knew why he'd gained such a reputation in such a short time. "I'm beginning to think maybe you are. In fact,more than a little.A whole lot crazy." "I figured it was the best possible way to get you to actually talk to me. You couldn't ignore me as long as there was even the slightest chance that I might be hurt." There was enough romance in her nature to feel flattered that he'd go to so much trouble to arrange to meet her. At least,she thought,it was original. And just dangerous enough to appeal to a certain wild-and-free spirit that dominated her own life. Then her practical side kicked in, and she felt an irrational sense of annoyance that he'd wasted so much of her time and energy on his weird idea of a joke. "Oh,brother." She scrambled to her feet and dusted off her backside. "Want me to do that for you?" She paused and shot him a look guaranteed to freeze most men. He merely kept that charming smile in place. "Mind if we start over?" He held out his hand. "Wyatt McCord." "I know who you are." "Okay.I'll handle both introductions. Nice to meet you,Marilee Trainor. Now that we have that out of the way,when do you get off work?" "Not until the last bull rider has finished." "Want to grab a bite to eat? When the last rider is done,of course." "Sorry.I'll be heading home." "Why,thanks for the invitation.I'd be happy to join you.We could take along some pizza from one of the vendors." She looked him up and down. "I go home alone." "Sorry to hear that." There was that grin again,doing strange things to her heart. "You're missing out on a really fun evening." "You have a high opinion of yourself, McCord." He chuckled.Without warning he touched a finger to her lips. "Trust me.I'd do my best to turn that pretty little frown into an even prettier smile." Marilee couldn't believe the feelings that collided along her spine. Splinters of fire and ice had her fighting to keep from shivering despite the broiling sun. Because she didn't trust her voice, she merely turned on her heel and walked away from him. It was harder to do than she'd expected. And though she kept her spine rigid and her head high, she swore she could feel the heat of that gaze burning right through her flesh. It sent one more furnace blast rushing through her system. A system already overheated by her encounter with the bold, brash,irritatingly charming Wyatt McCord.

In a very deliberate motion, he squared my shoulders in front of his and clasped my arms. “I know I could never ask you to leave River Oaks. It means a lot more to you than my family’s house means to me. Your aunt Jettie is there. It’s your home. I would like it to be my home, too. I want to make a life with you, and for most people, that means living in the same house.” Gabriel kissed me, as gentle as an angel’s wing brushing across my lips. “You’re my bloodmate in every sense of the word, the person I choose to spend the rest of my immortal life with, if you can stand me that long.” “That’s what that means?” My forehead wrinkled in concentration, and I tried to remember the first time I’d hear that word. “Wait, you told Missy the crazy Realtor that she’d suffer dire consequences if she hurt your ‘bloodmate.’ That was more than a year ago.” “I knew even then. You’re it for me, Jane. You’re my eternity.” “Well, why couldn’t you have told me?” I exclaimed. Gabriel shrugged. “You—” “I wasn’t ready to hear it yet,” I finished for him. “I’m sorry.” But as the enormity of what Gabriel had just said sunk in, a huge grin split my face. I brought it under control, so I could narrow my eyes at him. “So, you’re saying you will tell me everything now. You won’t try to protect me or keep me in the dark. You’ll trust me to make a rational decision about bad news after I have my inevitable, initial panic attack?” He nodded solemnly. “I will.” “And when I have my spastic fits of insecurity, when I make inappropriate jokes and wonder aloud why you love me, you’ll understand that this has nothing to do with you but years and years of conditioning by my mother?” He smirked. “I will.” “Will you agree never to accept invitations issued by my family unless you check with me first?” He nodded. “Absolutely.” I giggled, throwing my arms around him and kissing him deeply. “I love you.

Harvard pointed. “You know, right there is when the stuntman catches the sword out of frame.” “I know.” Aiden did know. Harvard always told him this fact at this precise moment. Aiden had watched this movie without Harvard once—on a date. Seeing the sword fly without the familiar murmur had upset Aiden enough to turn off the movie. Tonight, Harvard was here with him. They were both lying on their stomachs with their legs kicked up and their hands cupped in their chins, as though they were six years old. They weren’t. Aiden tangled their legs together slightly, deliberately. It felt far more dangerous than crossing swords. Aiden couldn’t imagine a match with so much at stake. “During a date when you stay in,” Aiden said, teaching, “you should try to see if the other person is receptive to you getting closer.” Harvard gave Aiden a look out of the corner of his eye, and let their legs stay tangled, resting with light pressure against one another. Love was a delusion, nothing but an electrical impulse in the brain, but there were many impulses running electric under Aiden’s skin right now. The man in black smiled beneath his mask and switched his sword to his right hand. The clash of swords rang over the sound of the sea. Aiden sneaked another look at Harvard, the shine of his dark eyes and white teeth in the silvery glow from the screen. Harvard caught him looking, but he returned Aiden’s look with a look of his own, warmly affectionate and never suspicious at all. Harvard never suspected a thing. Because Aiden was his best friend, and Harvard trusted him. And Harvard could trust him. Aiden would never do anything to hurt Harvard, not anything at all. Aiden moved in still closer, his arm set against Harvard’s, solid muscle under the thin material of his shirtsleeve. He could put his arm around Harvard’s shoulders or slip an arm around his waist or lean in. He was allowed, just for tonight.

That's all well and good,but my concern is for Willow. I think she's beginning to realize that she both needs and wants the respect and companionship of the women in this town. And frankly, a man with your reputation can only hurt her. Not that I think you'd deliberately cause her harm. I don't. But the girl already has several black marks against her and your attentions could very well add to her problems.Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?" Rider plowed his fingers through his jet hair. "Yes, you'd like me to stay clear of her. I understand,but I'm afraid I can't do that. Look, I know it's asking a lot,but you'll have to trust me where Willow Vaughn is concerned. I promise you that she'll come to no harm from me." "Trust,Mr. Sinclair,is something to be earned." "I know,and I hope you'll give me time to earn yours. But if you want me to pack up and find another place to stay, I'll understand." She considered that a moment. "No," she finally answered. "It would serve no purpose. This town has become a haven for every outlaw in the country and if every boarding house and hotel in Tombstone emptied out the disreputables, they'd soon go broke. I doubt I'll be held accountable for housing one more. Besides, at least this way,I can keep an eye on you." Rider smiled and stood, politely helping her to her feet. "Thanks. And by the way, for what it's worth, I'm not an outlaw." "If I truly believed you were, young man, you'd know it." "I'm very sorry for any trouble I might have caused you, Mrs. Brigham. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to change my clothes and saddle the horses." Rider walked to the parlor doors, glancing back over his shoulder as Miriam added, "You've asked me to trust you,Mr. Sinclair. Don't disappoint me or I guarantee you'll be sorry. I may be a woman, and not a young one at that, but I still have a few good tricks up my sleeve. If Willow suffers so much as a broken fingernail on your account, you'll have me to answer to." Rider inclined his head and opened the door to leave. "I'll do my best, ma'am, but much depends on the young lady." Knowing he'd already said more than he should, he turned and left.

She said, “Why can’t you see that people care for you?” She said, “I care for you.” “I know that you care. But…” He searched her face. “Anyone would, for a friend.” “You’re more than a friend.” “On the battlefield, you stayed--” “Of course I did.” “You have a strong sense of honor. You always have. I think you think you owe me something.” “I stayed because I love you.” He flinched and looked away. “You don’t mean that.” “Yes, I do.” The night outside seemed to swell against the tent. The lamp smelled like a hot stone. His face slowly opened. He touched her hand as it pressed against his heart. His caress was light, secret, almost unsure of her knuckles, the thin tendons as strong as bone. She felt him become sure. There was no sound when he kissed her. None when she unthreaded the ties of his shirt and found his skin. He grasped her dagger belt, flexed his fingers once around the leather, then simply held on. He whispered something into her mouth that was almost a word. It lost its shape, became something else. He let go. She heard the brush of linen as he drew the shirt over his head, his fingertips grazing the tent’s sloped ceiling as if for balance. His ribs were bound with gauze, his body marked by scars. Old ones, badly healed and raised. Others, pink and fresh. His shoulders bore pale gouges; they looked like sets of claws, almost deliberate, like tattoos. Curious, she touched them. He bit his lip. “That hurts?” “No.” “What is this? What happened?” “I’ll tell you,” he said. “Later.” His hand strayed over her shirt, which was eastern, as Arin’s was, with no collar. Threadbare in places. Frayed at the neck. He worried the cloth there, rubbing it between fingers and thumb. Then he drew her shirt open, and she felt as if reality had grown larger and tremulous: a drop of water on the point of a pin. “Kestrel…I’ve never--” She whispered that this was new for her, too. There was a long pause. “Are you certain you want--” “Yes.” “Because…” “Arin.” “Maybe you--” “Arin.” She laughed, and then so did he, aware that they’d already found the bed. Words had fallen away. Maybe the words lay on the earth, nestled among clothes, curled into the undone dagger belt. Maybe later, language would be recovered and pieced together. Made to make sense. But not now. Now there was touch and taste and sound. When he eased into her, she was glad for the burning lamp, the fuzzy glow of it on his skin. The way it showed the black fall of his wet hair, the flesh and scars that made him. She didn’t look away.

He was so very gentle, despite his power and size, his fingertips sliding over her in light, beguiling patterns. His focus on her, his awareness of every sound, pulse, shiver, was absolute. His low voice tickled her ear as he murmured how beautiful she was, how good she felt, how hard she made him... and all the while, the thick shaft kept sinking deeper and deeper. By the time he filled her completely, she was feverish with need. A little sob of anticipation escaped her as he began to move. But every thrust was long and agonizingly slow, withholding the last bit of stimulation she needed. He held her more closely now, his weight on her from pelvis to breasts, while his hips rolled and circled, drawing up new surges of feeling. His mouth lowered to one of her breasts, licking and gently gnawing at the erect nipple. Squirming in frustration, she pushed her hips upward, but he pulled back reflexively. "No, love. I could hurt you." "You won't. Please... Keir..." "Please what?" "I need more." His laugh, a smolder of a sound, could have come from the devil himself. "I dinna think you can take more than this, darlin'." "I can." She strained against him. "This deep?" he asked, reaching places in her that had never been touched before. She shook at the pleasure of it. "Oh, God. Yes." His hands grasped her hips, keeping them angled firmly upward as he pumped in a steady rhythm. Slow in... slow out... "Faster," she said desperately. "No' yet," he whispered. "Please," she begged. His low, dark voice curled in her ear. "There's a saying we have about whisky: Slow fire makes sweet malt." She whimpered as he rolled his hips gently, his hardness caressing everywhere inside. The deliberate pace didn't alter, no matter how she tried to drive herself harder onto the rigid length of him. Every time she began to plead for more, his mouth came to hers in another one of those obliterating kisses. None of this was what she'd expected. Her husband had been a considerate lover, doing everything she liked and giving her exactly what she wanted. Keir, however, was doing the exact opposite. He delighted in tormenting her until she didn't recognize herself in the frantic creature she'd become. He was absolutely wicked, shameless, making love to her in ways that felt unimaginably good, always holding satisfaction just out of reach. "You give me so much pleasure, darlin'... more than a body can stand. The way you hold me so tight inside... like that... I can feel you pulling at me. Your wee, hungry body wants me deeper, aye? Put your hands on me... anywhere... ah, how I love your sweet touch...

Though she could feel Dom darting glances at her the whole time, she couldn’t face him, couldn’t even look at him. Not just now, when she was still in turmoil about what they’d done. About what he’d said to her at the end. It will also give you a chance to decide what you want. That was the trouble. She didn’t know what she wanted. Well, she did know--she wanted to marry Dom the courteous gentleman. But not Dom the Almighty. She wanted the Dom who mourned for the six children who’d lost their mother needlessly, not the Dom who was sure Nancy was a whore because she’d married his bastard of a brother. But what if both parts were him? What if she couldn’t have one without the other? Why, he hadn’t even said he loved her! Then again, neither had she, so she could hardly fault him for that. Their past was still too raw, and they were both still afraid. Perhaps he’d been waiting for her to say it. She’d certainly been waiting for him. Because then she might really believe he meant to make a life with her again, and not go running off at the first sign of disaster. Like, perhaps, if Nancy proved to be bearing George’s son. “Since it’s such a beautiful morning,” Dom said, “I was thinking that someone might prefer to ride in the phaeton with me. What do you think, Jane? Shall you join me?” He was asking. Deliberately asking, not ordering. And she could feel his expectant gaze on her, indeed, feel everyone’s expectant gazes on her. But her thoughts were too jangled right now, and an enforced ride with him would only jangle them more. Especially since they’d be trapped together for half the day. She wouldn’t be able to escape. Not that she necessarily wanted to escape. Did she? Oh, Lord, she couldn’t handle this at the moment. “Actually, I was looking forward to chatting with your sister in His Grace’s coach. If you don’t mind.” Only then did she meet his gaze. It showed nothing of his thoughts, which made everything worse. She’d begun to recognize that bland expression; he only wore it when he was protecting himself. And if he felt a need to protect himself, then she’d hurt him. She swallowed hard. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Perhaps she should ride with him. Clear the air. Perhaps she was being a coward. “Whichever you prefer,” he said curtly. Then he walked briskly down the steps to his waiting phaeton, leapt in, and set it going. And the decision was made for her. Again. No, she couldn’t blame this one on him. This one was entirely hers. She’d sent him running away. Everyone knew it, too, which was nowhere more apparent than in the carriage once they were all settled in and headed off.

Mistakes occur in the life of everyone, but the same or similar mistakes happen repeatedly, are not the mistakes. Such methods are the deliberate attempt of teasing and harassing to hurt and damage others.

I only have to change on the one night of the month the moon is fullest. I can hold it off all right the rest of the time. So don’t worry—you won’t have to see too much more of my wolf.” “Oh really? That’s too bad.” To my surprise, she sounded disappointed. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Too bad? Why would you say that?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just… I liked your wolf. He was so big and cuddly—kind of like a living teddy bear. He kept me warm while I was sleeping—I mean really warm and that’s hard for me. I’m always cold since I was turned.” “He is actually me,” I reminded her. “I was the one cuddling you and keeping you warm last night.” “Oh, I know.” She blushed a pale pink. “I just… it’s hard to think of you and the wolf as the same being. You’re just so different in that form. Less, I don’t know… less threatening. Not that you’re threatening now,” she went on hurriedly. “But you’re just less… less scary as a wolf.” I couldn’t help laughing. “You must be the only person I know who thinks a huge wolf is less scary than a man.” “Animals aren’t deliberately cruel,” she said softly. “I mean, they may do savage things sometimes but it’s because of instinct, not because they want to hurt someone on purpose. You know?” I nodded. “So animals are safer than men—is that what you’re saying?” “Pretty much.” She crossed her arms over her chest protectively. “Sorry, I’m not saying you’re cruel or anything. I guess I just like animals better than people sometimes, that’s all. They’re less… complicated.

At the same time as suggesting the language game we clearly do not have a change in the name of God as our only way to think in New Testament terms of an earth at peace. There is Jesus! It is very hard to attribute violence to the originator of the gospel, of the good news of God’s forgiveness and love, of divine healing and welcome. Despite the fact that people refer to his action in the temple in the last days of his life as an exceptional yet conclusive ‘proof’ of Jesus’ use of violence no serious bible scholar would look on these actions divorced from his whole ministry. And because of that we have to see them as a conscious and deliberate prophetic sign-action, taking control of the temple for a brief period to show how it stood in contrast to the direct relationship with God which he proclaimed, and to make the point with a definitive emphasis. The whip he plaits in John is used to drive the animals, probably with the sound of the crack alone. No one is attacked. No one gets hurt. And very soon the situation reverts to the status quo: the authorities take back control of the temple and decide on Jesus’ suffering and death in order to control him. Overall the event is to be seen as Jesus placing himself purposely and calculatedly in the cross-hairs for the sake of the truth, much rather than doing harm to anyone else. The consequences of his actions were indeed ‘the cross’, and supremely in the situation of crucifixion Jesus does not invoke retaliation on his enemies, or threaten those who reject redemption; rather he prays for their forgiveness. No, Jesus’ whole life-story makes him unmistakably a figure of transcendent nonviolence. The problem lies elsewhere, with the way the cross is interpreted within the framework of a violent God. It is unfathomably ironic that the icon of human non-retaliation, Jesus’ cross, gets turned in the tradition into a supreme piece of vengeance—God’s ‘just’ punishment of Jesus in our place. My book, Cross Purposes, is about the way this tradition got formed and it represents just one of a constant stream of writing, gathering force at the end of the last century and continuing into this, questioning how this could be the meaning of the central symbol of Christianity.2 I think the vigor of that question can only continue to grow, while the nonviolence of Jesus’ response must at the same time stand out in greater and greater relief, in its own right and for its own sake. And for that same reason the argument at hand, of ‘No-name’ for a nonviolent God, can only be strengthened when we highlight the nonviolence of Jesus against the traditional violent concept of ‘God’. Now

Say something,” she forced out, already bracing for an unfavorable reaction. Annoyance. Or amusement. Or worst of all, pity. Ewan still looked odd, as if he hadn’t quite understood what she’d said. “You love me?” She supposed she could pretend it was a joke. By now, he must be used to her sarcastic ways. He might almost believe her. And if he did, it would salve her pride, if not the gaping wound inside her. But she’d ventured this far. She wasn’t coward enough to retreat. With shaking hands, she dragged the sheet up to cover her nakedness, hoping the fragile linen might armor her against the hurt she’d invited. She pressed back against the bedhead. “Yes.” The blue eyes continued to measure her with almost detached curiosity. “I’m….I’m astonished.” Better than pity, she supposed. At least it should be. “You don’t have to love me back. After all, it’s absurd to fall in love in the space of a few days.” To her chagrin, a ghost of a smile played around his lips. “Absurd.” Anger came to her aid. Thank goodness. She’d much rather feel angry than vulnerable. “This doesn’t have to make you feel uncomfortable. I won’t cling, or pine, or make scenes.” “I’m not uncomfortable,” he said steadily. His expression remained enigmatic. “Well, good,” she said, at a loss. Her fingers tightened on the sheet. What on earth happened now? Had she expected him to tell her he loved her too? The shaming truth was that somewhere deep inside her, she’d hoped that if she was henwitted enough to crash headlong in love with him, he might love her back. If only a little. “Charlotte, I didn’t fall in love with you in a couple of days.” He spoke deliberately, making every word count. She flinched at his honesty. Although she supposed the truth was kinder in the long run. Even if right now, she felt like he stuck a knife into her. “You don’t have to—” He raised his hand to silence her. “I fell in love with you at first sight. Before I met you.” Bewildered,

Did you see what you just did? You took the coffee can with you to the counter." "So what?" "You didn't have to. You could have left it by the stove where you were standing and then gone to the counter to get the spoon." "You're saying I carried the coffee can unnecessarily." "You carried it in your ri ght hand all the way to the counter, put it down to open the drawer, which you didn't want to do with your left hand, then got the spoon with your right hand, switched it to your left hand, picked up the coffee can with your right hand and went back to the stove, where you put it down again." "That's what people do." "It's wasted motion. People waste tremendous amounts of motion. You ought to watch Baba make a salad sometime." "People don't deliberate over each tiny motion and gesture. A little waste doe sn't hurt." "But over a lifetime?" "What do you save if you don't waste?" "Over a lifetime? You save tremendous amounts of time and energy," he said. "What will you do with them?" "Use them to live longer.

You know, everybody has some little quirk in his brain that makes him different—some trait that isn’t quite normal. I’ve come to watch for it, and it’s always there, even in the most commonplace people. It’s the quirk which, when accentuated, makes religious fanatics, screaming suffragists and anarchists. My ‘twist’ takes the form of an uncontrollable desire to retaliate upon those who have deliberately, through sheer cruelty and without any personal reason for their animosity, gone out of their way to hurt me.” That was it, then—she had been hurt—terribly! Her

He glanced at the thick scar across her palm—proof of the vow she’d made to Nehemia to free Eyllwe. Arobynn clicked his tongue. “It hurts my heart to see so many new scars on you.” “I rather like them.” It was the truth. Arobynn shifted in his seat—a deliberate movement, as all his movements were—and the light fell on a wicked scar stretching from his ear to his collarbone. “I rather like that scar, too,” she said with a midnight smile. That explained why he’d left the tunic unbuttoned, then. Arobynn waved a hand with fluid grace. “Courtesy of Wesley.

Running a bar really wasn't just about serving food and alcohol to customers, Letty quietly deliberated, sometimes you had to provide them with glasses of encouragement and plates of hope and sometimes, you even had to help to repair the hurt that lay inside their hearts from the missiles of destruction that people and life had thrown at them.

To win back time and unleash talent you have to delegate something substantial. You can tell if the delegated thing is substantial if: 1) it hurts a bit to give up; 2) it feels risky to let go; 3) it is stretching for the delegatee; 4) it makes you all a bit nervous; and 5) it constitutes a good chunk of your time, 20% for example, based on your Time Tracker results (see Chapter 3).

no one has hurt the Athenian Empire more than the malicious Mytilenians, he says, they are deliberately aggressive, have aided the enemy, and would happily kill every one of us if they could.

Many persons knowingly violate the laws of nature against their better impulses, for the sake of fashion. For instance, there is one thing that nothing living except a vile worm ever naturally loved, and that is tobacco; yet how many persons there are who deliberately train an unnatural appetite, and overcome this implanted aversion for tobacco, to such a degree that they get to love it. They have got hold of a poisonous, filthy weed, or rather that takes a firm hold of them. Here are married men who run about spitting tobacco juice on the carpet and floors, and sometimes even upon their wives besides. They do not kick their wives out of doors like drunken men, but their wives, I have no doubt, often wish they were outside of the house. Another perilous feature is that this artificial appetite, like jealousy, "grows by what it feeds on;" when you love that which is unnatural, a stronger appetite is created for the hurtful thing than the natural desire for what is harmless. There is an old proverb which says that "habit is second nature," but an artificial habit is stronger than nature. Take for instance, an old tobacco-chewer; his love for the "quid" is stronger than his love for any particular kind of food. He can give up roast beef easier than give up the weed.

without question. One of the older men said something under his breath about babes and sucklings, but not loudly enough to be overheard. Mr Beaumaris glanced round the table. ‘Stakes, gentlemen,’ he said calmly. Bertram, who had changed his bill for one modest rouleau, thrust it in a quick movement towards the queen in the livrat. Other men were placing their bets; someone said something which made his neighbour laugh; Lord Petersham sighed deeply, and deliberately pushed forward several large rouleaus, and ranged them about his chosen cards; then he drew a delicately enamelled snuff-box from his pocket, and helped himself to a pinch of his latest blend. A pulse was beating so hard in Bertram’s throat that it almost hurt him; he swallowed, and fixed his eyes on Mr Beaumaris’s hand, poised above the pack before him. The boy has been having some deep doings, thought Mr Beaumaris. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s rolled-up! What the devil possessed Chuffy Wivenhoe to bring him here? The bets were all placed; Mr Beaumaris turned up the first card, and placed it to the right of the pack. ‘Scorched again!’ remarked Fleetwood, one of whose bets stood by the card’s counterpart. Mr Beaumaris turned up the Carte Anglaise, and laid it down to the left of the pack. The Queen of Diamonds danced before Bertram’s eyes. For a dizzy moment he could only stare at the card; then he looked up, and met Mr Beaumaris’s cool gaze, and smiled waveringly. That smile told Mr Beaumaris quite as much as he had need to know, and did nothing to increase his enjoyment of the evening ahead of him. He picked up the rake beside him, and pushed two twenty-guinea rouleaus across the table. Lord Wivenhoe called for wine for himself and his friend, and settled down to plunge with his usual recklessness.

healing yourself is an opening to true happiness. letting go of the mental burdens you carry from the past will help your mind become clearer and more aligned with the natural flow of life. often the hurt that weighs you down functions as a wall that stops you from fully engaging with the present moment. unprocessed hurt also limits the flow of compassion because too much of our energy is focused on surviving one day at a time. this hinders the ability to deepen interpersonal connections. the happiness that is derived from being able to exist peacefully in the present moment is a quality that must be developed deliberately. happiness does not just happen; you need to tend your inner garden, remove the weeds, and plant the right seeds.

Why was Malin deliberately trying to hurt the feelings of his parents? Aravinda could not find an answer. Hurting his own parents' feelings was something alien to Aravinda. He lived among rural folk who encouraged children not to flout the wishes of parents and elders.

Animals aren’t deliberately cruel,” she said softly. “I mean, they may do savage things sometimes but it’s because of instinct, not because they want to hurt someone on purpose. You know?” I nodded. “So animals are safer than men—is that what you’re saying?” “Pretty much.” She crossed her arms over her chest

Merripen,” Cam said slowly, “you’re going to have to find a way to tolerate me. Because there are things I can do for Amelia, and the rest of them, that you can’t.” He continued in a level tone despite the look on Merripen’s face, which would have terrified a lesser man. “And I don’t have the patience to battle you every step of the way. If you want what’s best for them, either leave, or accept this. I’m not going anywhere.” As the huge chal glared at him, Cam could almost see the progression of his thoughts, the weighing of options, the violent desire to mow down his enemy, all of it overshadowed by the urge to do what was right for his family. “Besides,” Cam said, “if Amelia doesn’t marry me, the gadjo will be after her again. And you know she’ll be better off with me.” Merripen’s eyes narrowed. “Frost broke her heart. You took her innocence. Why does that make you any better?” “Because I’m not going to leave her. Unlike the gadjos, the Rom are faithful to our women.” Cam paused and measured out five seconds before adding deliberately, “You probably know that better than I.” Merripen fixed his furious gaze at a point in the distance. “If you hurt her in any way…” he finally said, “I’m going to kill you.” “Fair enough.” “I may kill you anyway.” Cam smiled slightly. “You’d be surprised how many people have said that to me before.” “No,” Merripen said, “I wouldn’t.

Where is the Angel of Yahweh?” asked Abram. “In the heavenlies.” Mikael considered how much he should tell Abram. “There has been a slight change of plans, and the divine council is in deliberation about what to do right now.” “Did I…?” Abram was horrified. “I told you, it was not you,” interrupted Mikael. He was a bit impatient with Abram. “Is the Destroyer coming back here?” “No,” said Mikael. “So it is just you. Why are you still here?” Mikael looked at him like a parent scolding a child. “To protect you from hurting yourself.” Abram felt foolish. He was like a child being watched by a babysitter.

Release children as part of your delegated leadership influence - this will enable you to leave a legacy worth noting. Realise the risk in delegation and bestowing this trust - if you sacrifice a rib, you expose your heart to possible pain, hurt or pride, fulfilment and joy. When these come – it’s not the end of the world, be brave enough to face the challenge with a positive attitude.

Your words are powerful containers, carrying blessings or curses depending on what is inside of you. If you harbour bitterness in you, you will speak spitefully and create hurt and hatred in those you speak with. If there is love inside of you, you will release pleasant and caring words that create appreciation, gratitude and warmth in those around you.

I am Gregori, Jacques.” Gregori’s voice was power itself, yet soft and soothing. “A healer for our people.” Shea was lying across Jacques, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. She groaned— a low, husky sound that added fuel to Jacques’ rage. His fingers brushed the dark smudges along her swollen throat, and he turned a murderous gaze on Mikhail. “Leave us alone.” Her voice was barely a whisper, hoarse and raw. She did not open her eyes or try to move. “I can help him,” Gregori persisted, using his same compelling tone. The woman was so obviously the key to reaching Jacques. It was in the way he held her, the protective posture of his body, the way his eyes moved possessively, even tenderly, over her face. His hands were continually caressing her, stroking her hair, her skin. At the underlying command in Gregori’s beautiful voice, her long eyelashes lifted, and she studied his face. He was savagely beautiful, a blend of elegance and untamed beast. He looked more dangerous than the other two strangers did. Shea made an effort to swallow, but it hurt. “You look like an ax murderer to me.” This one has brains. Mikhail’s soft laughter echoed in Gregori’s head. She sees beyond that handsome face of yours. You are so funny, ancient one. Gregori deliberately reminded him of the quarter of a century difference in their ages.