Easy Route Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Easy Route. Here they are! All 100 of them:

There's never an easy route to the things that matter.
Charles de Lint (The Onion Girl (Newford, #8))
seven wonders of the world and I have to ask for an eighth fill a bottle with some prayers and spend them on hope create an easy route just so I can complicate send my heart down that slippery slope
David Levithan (The Realm of Possibility)
Life made you get your hands dirty; life was vengeful if you tried an easy route.
Meghan Ciana Doidge (After The Virus)
It is so simple and easy to hate and so grueling and hard to love, when the emotional “love forever”- revelation has become a crumbling “love never, ever again”- crack-up. There is no route back to a paradise lost, when the bonds of trust have, irrevocably, been blasted. ("Another empty room")
Erik Pevernagie
Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit. It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers. He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers--and spirit itself will stink. Every one being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking. Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it even becometh populace. He that writeth in blood and proverbs doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart. In the mountains the shortest way is from peak to peak, but for that route thou must have long legs. Proverbs should be peaks, and those spoken to should be big and tall. The atmosphere rare and pure, danger near and the spirit full of a joyful wickedness: thus are things well matched. I want to have goblins about me, for I am courageous. The courage which scareth away ghosts, createth for itself goblins--it wanteth to laugh.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and yet you’ve gotten away with it. Then you sort of go into a trance, because it’s truly dazzling—that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. And—God—the sweet release, that’s the best way I can describe it, kind of like a balloon that’s tied to a little kid’s hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. You just know that balloon is thinking, Ha, I don’t belong to you after all; and at the same time, Do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here? And then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights. When reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don’t ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. You can feel your embarrassment; it’s a backbeat underneath your pulse. Whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. You literally make yourself sick, because you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again, you’ve let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it’s summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. You throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it were really that easy.
Jodi Picoult (Handle with Care)
They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pitying, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.
James Allen (As a Man Thinketh)
The easy road is always under construction,so have an alternate route planned.
Jill Shalvis
When you set down the path to create art, whatever sort of art it is, understand that the path is neither short not easy. That means you must determine if the route is worth the effort. If it's not, dream bigger.
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
As you travel along the roads in life, there is a certain kind of peace that comes with knowing you're on the right path. And when you are faced with adversity, it challenges you but makes you stronger. The road is not always an easy route. Nevertheless, you must not allow your fears to keep you from reaching the destination.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana (Sweet Destiny)
Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know how to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost. While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete and their Weltanschauung is correct (indeed, even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Life is a mountain, Youngblood. Nobody said the climb was gonna be easy. You gotta choose your route. Get your gear. Breathe. Clear your mind. And enjoy the journey
Kwame Alexander (Solo)
It's a promise ring. A long time ago, they would be engraved with the words Pour route ma vie, de tout mon coeur, For my whole life, all of my love. I wanted to give you something that showed my complete and total devotion to you, to us. I have turned your world upside down. First when I tried to kill myself and left you to deal with the aftermath. Then again when I came back and you've been trying to handle my constantly changing life. I know I haven't been easy. I wish I could say that one day things might be simpler. But the truth is I can't say that. I wish I could. I can only say, with one hundred percent certainty that I love you. That I live and breathe for you. That I would lay down my life a million times over for you. And no matter what happens tomorrow, next week, next year, my heart will always be yours.
A. Meredith Walters (Light in the Shadows (Find You in the Dark, #2))
I know what it’s like to walk down that path, feeling as if you have no other route. I know how hard it is to pull yourself back from it once that instinct is ingrained. And I know how easy it is to give in to it when you tell yourself it’s the only way to survive.
Emily Skrutskie (Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy, #1))
Equality is fine as a transitional demand, but it’s dishonest not to recognise it for what it is - the easy route. There is a difference between saying ‘we want to be included’ and saying ‘we want to reconstruct your exclusive system’. The former is more readily accepted in the mainstream.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
But Giovanni Lawson wasn’t one to take the easy route. He saw the world in complex shapes and designs, and when he looked up at the trees around him, he knew what he would do.
T.J. Klune (In the Lives of Puppets)
Sometimes this fear of speculation masquerades as skepticism. We see this in people who delight in shooting down any theory or explanation before it gets anywhere. They are trying to pass off skepticism as a sign of high intelligence, but in fact they are taking the easy route—it is quite simple to find arguments against any idea and knock it down from the sidelines.
Robert Greene (Mastery)
A certain kind of courage is required to follow what truly calls to us; why else would so many choose to live within false certainties and pretensions of security? If genuine treasures were easy to find this world would be a different place. If the path of dreams were easy to walk or predictable to follow many more would go that route. The truth is that most prefer the safer paths in life even if they know that their souls are called another way.
Michael Meade (Fate and Destiny, the Two Agreements of the Soul)
Then there’s the challenge. If I only climb easy routes, I get bored. Besides I usually find the harder routes more impressive. For example, at Flatanger I’ve been working on a 15d (9c) line for some time. It’s become my lifetime goal.
Chris Noble (Why We Climb: The World's Most Inspiring Climbers)
All I do is fly, so one-upping Ann was pretty easy. “A few years back, at a book signing, I met a pilot,” I began. “He flew the Newark to Palm Beach route, right? So it’s December twenty-third, and as they touch down in Florida, one of the flight attendants takes the microphone and delivers her standard landing speech. ‘Please remain seated until the FASTEN SEAT BELT sign has been turned off and be careful when opening the overhead bins. We’d like to wish you a merry Christmas and, to those of you already standing, happy Hanukkah.
David Sedaris (Calypso)
The hearing was adjourned. For a few brief moments, as I left the Law Courts on my way to the van, I recognised the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I rediscovered one by one, as if rising from the depths of my fatigue, all the familiar sounds of a town that I loved and of a certain time of day when I sometimes used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper sellers in the languid evening air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the moaning of the trams high in the winding streets of the town and the murmuring of the sky before darkness spills over onto the port, all these sounds marked out an invisible route which I knew so well before going into prison. Yes, this was the time of day when, long ago, I used to feel happy. What always awaited me then was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, for with the prospect of the coming day, it was to my cell that I returned. As if a familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep.
Albert Camus (The Stranger)
Charlie brought her dandelion to her mouth. "I've heard that, too. But this happens to be something I've done a lot and it's easy. Just take a deep breath, put your lips together, and blow." She closed her eyes and blew. When she lifted her lids, she found him watching her. Or rather, watching her mouth. She let go of the flower stem and swallowed. "I'm thinking those lips of yours could make any man's wish come true.
Robin Bielman (His Million Dollar Risk (Take a Risk, #3))
Only a very bold country would mix vodka and clams. The cocktail, also known as the Bloody Caesar, was invented in 1969 by Canadian hero Walter Chell, who crushed fresh clams into tomato juice and added plenty of vodka. Americans can now take the easy route by buying Clamato off the shelf.
Kerry Colburn (The U.S. of EH?: How Canada Secretly Controls the United States and Why That's OK)
It wouldn't take much to expand the building, adding a room or two. But Giovanni Lawson wasn't one to take the easy route. He saw the world in complex shapes and designs, and when he looked up at the trees around him, he knew what he would do. He wouldn't build outwards. He'd build upwards.
T.J. Klune (In the Lives of Puppets)
one time when we were at the Friendly Lounge they introduced me to Skinny Razor, and I got started doing it on my route. It was easy money, no muscle, strictly providing a service for people who had no credit. This was before credit cards when the people had nowhere to go for a couple of bucks between paychecks.
Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself. This will have two critically important positive effects:   Feedback won’t be personal in your company. If the CEO constantly gives feedback, then everyone she interacts with will just get used to it. Nobody will think, “Gee, what did she really mean by that comment? Does she not like me?” Everybody will naturally focus on the issues, not an implicit random performance evaluation.   People will become comfortable discussing bad news. If people get comfortable talking about what each other are doing wrong, then it will be very easy to talk about what the company is doing wrong. High-quality company cultures get their cue from data networking routing protocols: Bad news travels fast and good news travels slowly. Low-quality company cultures take on the personality of the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wiz: “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
Setting goals is easy but starting and continuing the journey is hard. When the times get tough remember your why. Your mind will settle and you will be stronger for going through the pain.
Wallace Miles (UNDERR8TED: The Route That Caught an NFL Dream)
But none of us are able to really see the world we are living in—this world, occupying as it does the contradiction between its banality (the squat wall of the Detention Center, the bus running along its ordinary route) and its extremity (the cell and the man inside the cell), is something that we see only briefly and then do not see again for a long time, if ever. It is surprisingly easy to forget what you have witnessed, the horrifying image or the voice speaking the unspeakable, in order to exist in the world we must and we do forget, we live in a state of I know but I do not know.
Katie Kitamura (Intimacies)
[W]hat cause can there be for complaint, after all, in anything that was always bound to come to an end fading gradually away? What is troubling about that? [...] Moving to one's end through nature's own gentle process of dissolution - is there a better way of leaving life than that? Not because there is anything wrong with a sudden, violent departure, but because this gradual withdrawal is an easy route.
Seneca (Letters from a Stoic)
How can man know himself? He is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven skins, the human being can shed seven times 70 skins and still not be able to say: ‘This is really you, this is no longer an outer shell. Besides, it is an agonizing, dangerous undertaking to dig down into yourself in this way, to force your way by the shortest route down the shaft of your own being. How easy it is to do damage to yourself that no doctor can heal. And moreover, why should it be necessary, since everything – our friendships and hatreds, the way we look, our handshakes, the things we remember and forget, our books, our handwriting – bears witness to our being.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Untimely Meditations)
I wondered what a man I had encountered the day before on the plane en route to Chicago's O'Hare airport would have made of this. As he tried to push through a crowded aisle, he said loudly: "Life is never easy. And it's never pleasant." I couldn't let this go. I looked up at him from my seat and said, "I do hope life gives you cause to change that opinion. Otherwise you may find that opinion walking ahead of you, giving you more and more reasons to believe it.
Robert Moss
As Mr. R. U. Sayee has well said: 'It should be clear a priori that fairy lore must have developed as a result of modifications and accretions received in different countries and at many periods, though we must not overlook the part played by tradition in providing a mould that to some extent determines the nature of later additions.' It must also be self-evident that a great deal of confusion has been caused by the assumption that some spirit-types were fairies which in a more definite sense are certainly not of elfin provenance. In some epochs, indeed, Faerie appears to have been regarded as a species of limbo to which all 'pagan' spirits - to say nothing of defeated gods, monsters, and demons - could be banished, along with the personnel of Olympus and the rout of witchcraft. Such types, however, are usually fairly easy of detection.
Lewis Spence (British Fairy Origins)
My litmus test of compatibility is 'Tom Cruise.' I hate people who hate Tom Cruise, cultural automatons who at the mention of his name reflexively bridle and say the diminutive thespian and Theta level Scientoligist is 'crazy' and 'a terrible actor'. They hate him because he's easy to hate. They think that despising Tom Cruise's lack of personality and supposed lack of talent is somehow a blow against the bland American Anschluss of the rest of the planet. Tom Cruise may indeed be the Christopher Columbus of the twentieth century, sent off by the kings of Hollywood to prove the new world of International Box Office isn't flat and to find a direct route into the Asian market, but the decline of everything isn't his fault; he's just a cinematic explorer and a damn fine actor. And hating him doesn't make you seditious- it makes you complicit.
Paul Beatty (Slumberland)
By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise.
John le Carré (The Secret Pilgrim (George Smiley, #8))
While this is obvious, it is something that most people to a greater or lesser degree choose to ignore. They ignore it because our route to reality is not easy. First of all, we are not born with maps; we have to make them, and the making requires effort. The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be. But many do not want to make this effort. Some stop making it by the end of adolescence. Their maps are small and sketchy, their views of the world narrow and misleading. By the end of middle age most people have given up the effort. They feel certain that their maps are complete and their Weltanschauung is correct (indeed, even sacrosanct), and they are no longer interested in new information. It is as if they are tired. Only a relative and fortunate few continue until the moment of death exploring the mystery of reality, ever enlarging and refining and redefining their understanding of the world and what is true.
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
Russia is not an Asian power for many reasons. Although 75 per cent of its territory is in Asia, only 22 per cent of its population lives there. Siberia may be Russia’s ‘treasure chest’, containing the majority of the mineral wealth, oil, and gas, but it is a harsh land, freezing for months on end, with vast forests (taiga), poor soil for farming and large stretches of swampland. Only two railway networks run west to east – the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal–Amur Mainline. There are few transport routes leading north to south and so no easy way for Russia to project power southward into modern Mongolia or China: it lacks the manpower and supply lines to do so.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics)
Mountains like these and travelers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. This allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes. Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there's no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1))
They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pityings, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.
James Allen (As a Man Thinketh)
That’s the thing about being an evader. You have to be flexible and know when to bail before it all gets weird. Better for everyone, really. I’m a giver. My plane landed half an hour ago, but I’m taking a circuitous route to what I hope is the backside of baggage claim, where my dad is supposed to pick me up. The key to avoiding uncomfortable situations is a preemptive strike: make sure you see them first. And before you accuse me of being a coward, think again. It’s not easy being this screwed up. It takes planning and sharp reflexes. A devious mind. My mom says I’d make a great pickpocket, because I can disappear faster than you can say, Where’s my wallet? The Artful Dodger, right here.
Jenn Bennett (Alex, Approximately)
Lillian concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, when all she wanted was to head back to Westcliff and fling herself upon him in a mindless attack. “That arrogant, pompous clodpole—” “Easy,” she heard St. Vincent murmur. “Westcliff is in a thorough temper—and I wouldn’t care to engage him in your defense. I can best him any day with a sword, but not with fists.” “Why not?” Lillian muttered. “You’ve got a longer reach than Westcliff.” “He’s got the most vicious right hook I’ve ever encountered. And I have an unfortunate habit of trying to shield my face—which frequently leaves me open for gut punches.” The unashamed conceit behind the statement drew a reluctant laugh from Lillian. As the heat of anger faded, she reflected that with a face like his, one could hardly blame him for desiring to protect it. “Have you fought with the earl often?” she asked. “Not since we were boys at school. Westcliff did everything a bit too perfectly—I had to challenge him now and then just to make certain that his vanity didn’t become overinflated. Here…shall we take a more scenic route through the garden?” Lillian hesitated, recalling the numerous stories that she had heard about him. “I’m not certain that would be wise.” St. Vincent smiled. “What if I promise on my honor not to make any advances to you?” Considering that, Lillian nodded. “In that case, all right.” St. Vincent guided her through a small leafy grove, and onto a graveled path shaded by a row of ancient yews. “I should probably tell you,” he remarked casually, “that since my sense of honor is completely deteriorated, any promise I make is worthless.” “Then I should tell you that my right hook is likely ten times more vicious than Westcliff’s.” St. Vincent grinned.
Lisa Kleypas (It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2))
Your algorithms are like a highway; you have taken that route every time in your life because the highway is fast and easy. Your new algorithm is a hidden path through the undergrowth where you have to cut down bushes along the way. If you keep forcing yourself up the hidden path, it eventually becomes the highway. The old highway gets overgrown and forgotten about.
Gilbert Eijkelenboom (People Skills for Analytical Thinkers)
Nestorian Christians, expelled for their heresies from the Byzantine Empire but tolerated in the Muslim world as "people of the book," began to arrive from the West via the overland route. It is easy to see how a splinter Christian movement, repelled by the savage intolerance of the Catholic Church and attracted by the relative tolerance of Islam, spread ever eastward.
William J. Bernstein (A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World)
Deacon began to speak of a woman who he had used; how he had turned up his nose at her because her loose and easy ways gave him the license to drop and despise her. That while the adultery preyed on him for a short while (very short), his long remorse was at having become what the Old Fathers cursed: the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different.
Toni Morrison (Paradise (Beloved Trilogy, #3))
A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow. If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
The new normal is rarely an easy adjustment and never truly feels, well, normal. Let’s be honest. Plan B is never preferred. Detours and alternate routes are never quite as scenic. The darkness of being gifted a second chance is that it means something went wrong in the first place. And yet, I would rather have a few speed bumps slow me down, causing me to spill coffee on my dress, than ever hand someone else the keys to my life.
Alicia Cook (Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately)
The Legend of Robert Halsey This article examines the criminal conviction of Robert Halsey for sexually abusing two young boys on his school-van route near Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Mr. Halsey's name has been invoked by academics, journalists, and activists as the victim of the “witch hunt” in this country over child sexual abuse. Based on a comprehensive examination of the trial transcript, this article details the overwhelming evidence of guilt against Mr. Halsey. The credulous acceptance of the “false conviction” legend about Robert Halsey provides a case study in the techniques and tactics used to minimize and deny sexual abuse, while promoting a narrative about “ritual abuse” and “witch hunts” that apparently requires little or no factual basis. The second part of this article analyzes how the erroneous “false conviction” narrative about Robert Halsey was constructed and how it gained widespread acceptance. The Legend of Robert Halsey provides a cautionary tale about how easy it is to wrap even the guiltiest person in a cloak of righteous “witch hunt” claims. Cases identified as “false convictions” by defense lawyers and political activists deserve far greater scrutiny from the media and the public. journal: Cheit, Ross E. "The Legend of Robert Halsey." Journal of child sexual abuse 9.3-4 (2002): 37-52.
Ross E. Cheit
Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart. Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.
Albert Camus (L'étranger)
Someone stop them!” I yell. No one does. I think about Porter surrounded by people that horrible day on the beach years ago, when no one would help him save his dad from the shark. If strangers won’t help when someone is dying, they’re definitely not going to stop two kids from running out of a museum. Pulse swishing in my temples, I race around the information booth, pumping my arms, and watch them split up again. Polo is heading for the easy way out: the main exit, where there’s (1) only a set of doors to go through, and (2) Hector, the laziest employee on staff. But Backpack is headed for the ticketing booth and the connecting turnstiles. Freddy should be there, but no one’s entering the museum, so he’s instead chatting it up with Hector. The turnstiles are unmanned. Like a pro hustler who’s never paid a subway fare, Backpack hurdles over the turnstiles in one leap. Impressive. Or it would have been, had his backpack not slipped off his shoulder and the strap not caught on one of the turnstile arms. While he struggles to free it, I take the easier route and make for the wheelchair access gate. I unhitch the latch. He frees the strap. I slip through the gate, and just as he’s turning to run, I lurch forward and— I jump on his back. We hit the ground together. The air whooshes out of my lungs and my knee slams into tile. He cries out. I don’t. I freaking got him.
Jenn Bennett (Alex, Approximately)
Whatever its European credentials, Russia is not an Asian power for many reasons. Although 75 per cent of its territory is in Asia, only 22 per cent of its population lives there. Siberia may be Russia’s ‘treasure chest’, containing the majority of the mineral wealth, oil, and gas, but it is a harsh land, freezing for months on end, with vast forests (taiga), poor soil for farming and large stretches of swampland. Only two railway networks run west to east – the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal–Amur Mainline. There are few transport routes leading north to south and so no easy way for Russia to project power southward into modern Mongolia or China: it lacks the manpower and supply lines to do so.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics)
So what was the dierence between Alison and Jillian? Both were pseudo-extroverts, and you might say that Alison was trying and failing where Jillian was succeeding. But Alison’s problem was actually that she was acting out of character in the service of a project she didn’t care about. She didn’t love the law. She’d chosen to become a Wall Street litigator because it seemed to her that this was what powerful and successful lawyers did, so her pseudo-extroversion was not supported by deeper values. She was not telling herself, I’m doing this to advance work I care about deeply, and when the work is done I’ll settle back into my true self. Instead, her interior monologue was The route to success is to be the sort of person I am not. This is not self-monitoring; it is self-negation. Where Jillian acts out of character for the sake of worthy tasks that temporarily require a different orientation, Alison believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with who she is. It’s not always so easy, it turns out, to identify your core personal projects. And it can be especially tough for introverts, who have spent so much of their lives conforming to extroverted norms that by the time they choose a career, or a calling, it feels perfectly normal to ignore their own preferences. They may be uncomfortable in law school or nursing school or in the marketing department, but no more so than they were back in middle school or summer camp.
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
Patriarchy creates coercive background conditions for women, and thus patriarchy, not capitalism, is to blame for women’s exploitation under capitalism. Women are exploited under capitalism because they are forced by gendered expectations of women’s place into segregated spaces. In the home, gendered expectations about what women ought to do causes them to devote more time and energy to caring activities. Not only are women expected to be the main source of childcare and domestic labor in the home, they are also the psychic caregivers, coordinating social, spiritual, and emotional efforts for families. Their doing this explains the exploitation of women qua women in capitalism. The best evidence for this claim is that women in other economic systems are also exploited. For example, in the Soviet Union women were exploited for their domestic and sexual labor despite living under a noncapitalist economic system.121 I do not mean to say that there is no economic or material component to women’s condition. Women are stuck in these roles in part for material and economic reasons; they do not have enough bargaining power within heterosexual relationships generally to escape these roles. If women are able to gain an economic foothold, as is possible in an enlightened capitalism that eschews discrimination and gender segregation, then they can begin to work their way into better bargaining positions in their homes. And with better bargaining outcomes in their domestic lives, women can do better in the capitalist economy. Thus, capitalism does not provide an easy escape route, but it does point in the direction of escape from patriarchy.
Ann E. Cudd (Capitalism, For and Against: A Feminist Debate)
We will need comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone. Most of all, these policies need to be fair, so that the people already struggling to cover the basics are not being asked to make additional sacrifice to offset the excess consumption of the rich. That means cheap public transit and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy-efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren’t asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local, low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services like schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas; programs that require manufacturers to be responsible for the electronic waste they produce, and to radically reduce built-in redundancies and obsolescences.
Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate)
The trial was adjourned. As I was leaving the courthouse on my way back to the van, I recognized for a brief moment the smell and color of the summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I could make out one by one, as if from the depths of my exhaustion, all the familiar sounds of a town I loved and of a certain time of day when I used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper vendors in the already languid air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the screech of the streetcars turning sharply through the upper town, and that hum in the sky before night engulfs the port: all this mapped out for me a route I knew so well before going to prison and which now I traveled blind. Yes, it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content. What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day . . . as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.
Albert Camus (The Stranger)
Degrees of Freedom This is important. One of the easy things about riding the train is that there aren’t many choices. The track goes where the track goes. Sure, sometimes there are junctions and various routes, but generally speaking, there are only two choices—go or don’t go. Driving is a little more complicated. In a car you can choose from literally millions of destinations. Organizations are far more complex. There are essentially an infinite number of choices, endless degrees of freedom. Your marketing can be free or expensive, online or offline, funny or sad. It can be truthful, emotional, boring, or bland. In fact, every marketing campaign ever done has been at least a little different from every other one. The same choices exist in even greater number when you look at the microdecisions that go on every day. Should you go to a meeting or not? Shake hands with each person or just start? Order in fancy food for your guests or go for a walk together because the weather is sunny. . . . In the face of an infinite sea of choices, it’s natural to put blinders on, to ask for a map, to beg for instructions, or failing that, to do exactly what you did last time, even if it didn’t work. Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works.
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
Sooner or later, however, a writer (or at least a writer of my type) finds himself at a crossroads: he has exhausted his initial experience of the world and the ways of expressing it and he must decide how to proceed from there. He can, of course, seek ever more brilliant ways of saying the things he has already said; that is, he can essentially repeat himself. Or he can rest in the position he achieved in his first burst of creativity, subordinate everything he learned to the interests of consolidating that position, and thus assure himself a place on Parnassus. But he has a third option: he can abandon everything proven, step beyond his initial experience of the world, with which he is by now all too familiar, liberate himself from what binds him to his own tradition, to public expectation and to his own established position, and try for a new and more mature self-definition, one that corresponds to his present and authentic experience of the world. In short, he can find his "second wind." Anyone who chooses this route—the only one (if one wishes to go on writing) that genuinely makes sense—will not, as a rule, have an easy time of it. At this stage in his life, a writer is no longer a blank sheet of paper, and some things are hard to part with. His original elan, self-confidence, and spontaneous openness have gone, but genuine maturity is not yet in sight; he must, in fact, start over again, but in essentially more difficult conditions.
Václav Havel (Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990)
Ground may be classified according to its nature as accessible, entrapping, indecisive, constricted, precipitous, and distant. Ground which both we and the enemy can traverse with equal ease is called accessible. In such ground, he who first takes high sunny positions convenient to his supply routes can fight advantageously. Ground easy to get out of but difficult to return to is entrapping. The nature of this ground is such that if the enemy is unprepared and you sally out you may defeat him. If the enemy is prepared and you go out and engage, but do not win, it is difficult to return. This is unprofitable. Ground equally disadvantageous for both the enemy and ourselves to enter is indecisive. The nature of this ground is such that although the enemy holds out a bait I do not go forth but entice him by marching off. When I have drawn out half his force, I can strike him advantageously. If I first occupy constricted ground I must block the passes and await the enemy. If the enemy first occupies such ground and blocks the defiles I should not follow him; if he does not block them completely I may do so. In precipitous ground I must take position on the sunny heights and await the enemy. If he first occupies such ground I lure him by marching off; I do not follow him. When at a distance from an enemy of equal strength it is difficult to provoke battle and unprofitable to engage him in his chosen position. These are the principles relating to six different types of ground. It is the highest responsibility of the general to inquire into them with the utmost care.
Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
February 3 Detours and Other Opputunities And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, This is the way; walk in it, when you turn to the right hand and when you turn to the left.—Isaiah 30:21 (AMP) In our city we are experiencing what seems to be never ending work on our streets and highways. Roads are being widened, safety medians installed, and turning lanes created, to name a few. Although the activity, the many people, and the massive machinery are expected with progress, the interruptions in the regular traffic flow are a nuisance. While we may recognize that the end results will be beneficial and help our traffic to move smoother, faster, and more safely, the delays are unwelcome. As I drove one of our major, busiest roads recently, I encountered an unanticipated slow down. I wasn’t in a particular hurry, just slightly irritated that I had to adjust my plans. Yes I was thankful for the advance warnings that the lane would be closing and for the workers directing us to an alternate route. But glancing around, it was easy to see that my fellow travelers harbored the same feelings of impatience as I did. Life’s highways have similar encounters. While we know that God is the master planner, the detours and changes in our travel are not always welcomed. We may acknowledge that his ways are not our ways, but our stubbornness still emerges accompanied by its fair share of annoyance. As we travel, God provides signs for us. Some are cautions; others are a clear and direct STOP! or GO! Some we call detours, some opportunities. Truth is, detours and slowdowns provide us with opportunity. We just need to pay attention to God’s directions and look for the opportunity whichever road he takes us down. Father, I thank You that You see the whole road and direct me along the way. Help me to accept Your detours in trust and obedience.
The writers of Encouraging.com (God Moments: A Year in the Word)
We danced to John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear.” We cut the seven-tiered cake, electing not to take the smear-it-on-our-faces route. We visited and laughed and toasted. We held hands and mingled. But after a while, I began to notice that I hadn’t seen any of the tuxedo-clad groomsmen--particularly Marlboro Man’s friends from college--for quite some time. “What happened to all the guys?” I asked. “Oh,” he said. “They’re down in the men’s locker room.” “Oh, really?” I asked. “Are they smoking cigars or something?” “Well…” He hesitated, grinning. “They’re watching a football game.” I laughed. “What game are they watching?” It had to be a good one. “It’s…ASU is playing Nebraska,” he answered. ASU? His alma mater? Playing Nebraska? Defending national champions? How had I missed this? Marlboro Man hadn’t said a word. He was such a rabid college football fan, I couldn’t believe such a monumental game hadn’t been cause to reschedule the wedding date. Aside from ranching, football had always been Marlboro Man’s primary interest in life. He’d played in high school and part of college. He watched every televised ASU game religiously--for the nontelevised games, he relied on live reporting from Tony, his best friend, who attended every game in person. “I didn’t even know they were playing!” I said. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have known. It was September, after all. But it just hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been a little on the busy side, I guess, getting ready to change my entire life and all. “How come you’re not down there watching it?” I asked. “I didn’t want to leave you,” he said. “You might get hit on.” He chuckled his sweet, sexy chuckle. I laughed. I could just see it--a drunk old guest scooting down the bar, eyeing my poufy white dress and spouting off pickup lines: You live around here? I sure like what you’re wearing… So…you married? Marlboro Man wasn’t in any immediate danger. Of that I was absolutely certain. “Go watch the game!” I insisted, motioning downstairs. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t need to.” He wanted to watch the game so badly I could see it in the air. “No, seriously!” I said. “I need to go hang with the girls anyway. Go. Now.” I turned my back and walked away, refusing even to look back. I wanted to make it easy on him. I wouldn’t see him for over an hour. Poor Marlboro Man. Unsure of the protocol for grooms watching college football during their wedding receptions, he’d darted in and out of the locker room for the entire first half. The agony he must have felt. The deep, sustained agony. I was so glad he’d finally joined the guys.
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840’s. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have ‘taken’ what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have ‘taken’ what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. * * *
Aldo Leopold (Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology (LOA #238) (Library of America))
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BEHIND THE WALL The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, twenty-five years ago this month, but the first attempts to breach it came immediately after it went up, just past midnight on August 13, 1961. The East German regime had been secretly stockpiling barbed wire and wooden sawhorses, which the police, who learned of their mission only that night, hastily assembled into a barrier. For many Berliners, the first sign that a historic turn had been taken was when the U-Bahn, the city’s subway, stopped running on certain routes, leaving late-night passengers to walk home through streets that were suddenly filled with soldiers. As realization set in, so did a sense of panic. By noon the next day, as Ann Tusa recounts in “The Last Division,” people were trying to pull down the barbed wire with their hands. Some succeeded, in scattered places, and a car drove through a section of the Wall to the other side. In the following weeks, the authorities began reinforcing it. Within a year, the Wall was nearly eight feet high, with patrols and the beginnings of a no man’s land. But it still wasn’t too tall for a person to scale, and on August 17, 1962, Peter Fechter, who was eighteen years old, and his friend Helmut Kulbeik decided to try. They picked a spot on Zimmerstrasse, near the American Checkpoint Charlie, and just after two o’clock in the afternoon they made a run for it. Kulbeik got over, but Fechter was shot by a guard, and fell to the ground. He was easily visible from the West; there are photographs of him, taken as he lay calling for help. Hundreds of people gathered on the Western side, shouting for someone to save him. The East German police didn’t want to, and the Americans had been told that if they crossed the border they might start a war. Someone tossed a first-aid kit over the Wall, but Fechter was too weak to pick it up. After an hour, he bled to death. Riots broke out in West Berlin, and many asked angrily why the Americans had let Fechter die. He was hardly more than a child, and he wanted to be a free man. It’s a fair question, though one can imagine actions taken that day which could have led to a broader confrontation. It was not a moment to risk grand gestures; Fechter died two months before the Cuban missile crisis. (When the Wall went up, John F. Kennedy told his aides that it was “not a very nice solution, but a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) And there was something off key about Germans, so soon after the end of the Second World War, railing about others being craven bystanders. Some observers came to see the Wall as the necessary scaffolding on which to secure a postwar peace. That’s easy to say, though, when one is on the side with the department stores, and without the secret police. Technically, West Berlin was the city being walled in, a quasi-metropolis detached from the rest of West Germany. The Allied victors—America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—had divided Germany into four parts, and, since Berlin was in the Soviet sector, they divided the city into four parts, too. In 1948, the Soviets cut off most road and rail access to the city’s three western sectors, in an effort to assert their authority. The Americans responded with the Berlin Airlift, sending in planes carrying food and coal, and so much salt that their engines began to corrode. By the time the Wall went up, it wasn’t the West Berliners who were hungry. West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder , or economic miracle, was under way, while life in the East involved interminable shortages. West Berliners were surrounded by Soviet military encampments, but they were free and they could leave—and so could anyone who could get to their part of the city. The East Berliners were the prisoners. In the weeks before the Wall went up, more than a thousand managed to cross the border each day; the Wall was built to keep them from leaving. But people never stopped trying to tear it down.
Amy Davidson
The route of the Christian is never clearly laid out beforehand. Like Matthew the tax collector, the disciple is simply called out. He is not immediately told where he is going, but he knows the One who has called and promises to walk with him. Consequently the journey, although never easy, is joyous and fruitful.
Lyle Wesley Dorsett (A Passion for God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer)
wrote Mirza ‘Ata,   and only a handful came back alive, wounded and destitute. The rest fell with neither grave nor shroud to cover them, and lay scattered in that land like rotting donkeys. The English love gold and money so much that they cannot stop themselves from laying their hands on any area productive of wealth. But what prize did they find in Afghanistan except, on the one hand, the exhausting of their treasury and, on the other, the disgracing of their army? It is said that of the 40,000 English troops who had been in Kabul, many were taken captive en route, many remained as cripples and beggars in Kabul, and the rest perished in the mountains, like a ship sunk without trace; for it is no easy thing to invade or govern the Kingdom of Khurasan.
Anonymous
A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
About Tough as Silk, Escape from Beijing Uta Christensen did it again! With Tough as Fine Silk, Escape from Beijing, she wrote a most fascinating novel, so different from her other books. What impressed me first is her incredible knowledge of China. I learned so much about that part of the world—the historical, cultural and political aspects—through her wonderful and detailed expositions during that long train ride. I wondered whether she followed that route herself when she visited China. The intriguing love story that Ms. Christensen has so masterfully interwoven is a delightful contrast. It brings the reader back to reality, even though it does not feel quite real at times with all the premonitions hinting at a different outcome than desired. The betrayal was a shock, of course, but thinking about the planned future of the couple in California, it becomes clear that that kind of life would not have suited lovely Juan. She yearns for freedom, success, and independence—for a life that she can control herself. The intricate ideas Ms. Christensen brought together in this book and the easy-flowing style make the reading of the novel a true pleasure. I am happy she wrote this fine book, and I hope she will find a lot of excited readers. The finished product should make her very happy and proud.
Gisela Juengling, Assistant Professor, University of California
Instead of discovering the truth which is all-pervading, people take the easy route and say, "My belief is the only truth. It will become all-pervading in the future when all the non-believers will either perish or convert to my belief.
Shunya
The easy road is always under construction, so have an alternate route planned.
Jill Shalvis (Christmas in Lucky Harbor (Lucky Harbor, #1-2))
They who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self-pitying, all of which are indications of weakness, which lead, just as surely as deliberately planned sins (though by a different route), to failure, unhappiness, and loss, for weakness cannot persist in a power evolving universe.
Designing the Mind (The Book of Self Mastery: Timeless Quotes About Knowing, Changing, and Mastering Yourself)
3. A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow. If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
by the rain. The demonstration had been mostly peaceful, but a bus was stopped on Fillmore, and a car was overturned in front of Northern Station. Police in riot gear were stationed along the route. The media frenzy was fully engaged. “We’ll get through it, Gio,” I said. “Easy for you to say.” “We need to focus on what we can control.” “The chief won’t let me come to work. He said that I have to take a leave until Johnny’s case is resolved.” It was probably for the better. “I need you to focus on Johnny.” “I need you to get him out of jail.” “Working on it.” “Work harder. I heard that you couldn’t get a judge to set bail.” “We’ll try again at the arraignment.” “What are the chances?” Not great. “Hard to predict. If it’s first-degree murder, it’s going to be an uphill battle.” “He’ll wear a monitoring device. We’ll agree that he’ll stay with Maria and me.” “We’ll make that offer in the morning.” His tone turned pointed. “We need the judge to agree.” I leveled with him. “You know how things work, Gio. I can’t give you any guarantees.” “We’re talking about my son, Mike.” Luca put a hand on Gio’s shoulder. “Mike’s doing everything that he can, Gio. It’s been less than a day. Things take time.” I appreciated the vote of confidence, albeit tepid. Gio wouldn’t let it go. “My son is in jail.” “We’ll fix it,” I said. “It would be helpful if you, Maria, and the boys are in court in the morning. It’s good to have
Sheldon Siegel (Serve and Protect (Mike Daley/Rosie Fernandez, #9))
the ability to pass word rapidly in downtown Mogadishu, using radios, runners, and signal fires, was a key local capability. The battle occurred in an area where the terrain and population were intimately familiar to the locals, distances were short, it was easy to move on foot, Aidid’s core group could quickly draw on local allies for reinforcements, and there were multiple routes through the city to and from any given point. The locals could thus react flexibly to American moves—they could aggregate or disperse, their force could shrink or grow in size in response to the changing threat, and they could put ambushes or roadblocks in place ahead of the ground convoy.
David Kilcullen (Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla)
I wouldn't want to give the impression that I found my past easy to shed. My route out of marriage wasn't fast, and it wasn't linear. Even while I was trying my hardest to change direction, it was a painful little dance, the emotional steps so incremental that it sometimes appeared I wasn't moving at all. Even when it seemed as if I had made a big leap, I could find myself pulled down.
Samra Zafar (A Good Wife: Escaping the Life I Never Chose)
Happiness by Selfishness” is easy— just have no others but yourself to worry. Being the shortest route to happy life, many chose this poverty-causing type. “Happiness by Selflessness” is but tough— even one’s whole lifetime is not enough. Being the hardest route to happy life, few chose this poverty-redeeming type.
Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol
Knowing the right numbers can open safe. Knowing the trap door can pave for escape. Knowing the route can reach destination. Knowing God’s way can lead to salvation. “Knowledge is Power,” none could be greater; so easy to acquire, they’re everywhere. From hearing, reading, seeing, you’ll get them, but they’re nothing if you don’t apply them.
Rodolfo Martin Vitangcol
Tricia's sneakers pounded out the familiar steps. Willow to Old South to Pequot to Beachside to Burying Hill Beach and back again. She'd run this easy five-mile route hundreds of times since she started cross-country the year her mother died. At first, she ran to get out of the house, to smooth out the rough edges of anxiety she felt every day as her mother worsened. Then after, she ran to get away from the oppressive sadness, adding miles and hills and beach sprints to stay out as long as she could after school. She got faster and stronger. It was running that had taken her to prep school, along with a few strings pulled by Cap to get her in mid-year, and probably some of his own money to pay the tuition. She ran competitively in college and to save her sanity in law school. Running will get me through this, Tricia thought, then she let the sound of the steps and the breathing work their magic. The ball of stress in her gut unraveled and her mind cleared more with every football.
Lian Dolan (The Sweeney Sisters)
Researchers have even found that voter turnout increases when people are forced to create implementation intentions by answering questions like: “What route are you taking to the polling station? At what time are you planning to go? What bus will get you there?” Other successful government programs have prompted citizens to make a clear plan to send taxes in on time or provided directions on when and where to pay late traffic bills.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
Equality is fine as a transitional demand, but it’s dishonest not to recognise it for what it is - the easy route. There is a difference between saying ‘we want to be included’ and saying ‘we want to reconstruct your exclusive system’. The former is more readily accepted into the mainstream.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
If Nigeria must advance, we have to steak to work. There is no success that is easy on every body though some success candidate may claim to have gotten there through an easy route. It isn’t always true and unfair to hear that. Minds need to be broken to assemble with others.
Prince Akwarandu
local 111.111.111.111 dev tun proto udp port 1194 ca /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/ca.crt cert /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/SERVERNAME.crt # TBD - Change SERVERNAME to your Server name key /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/SERVERNAME.key # TBD - Change SERVERNAME to your Server name dh /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/dh1024.pem    # TBD - Change if not using 2048 bit encryption server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0 ifconfig 10.8.0.1 10.8.0.2 push "route 10.8.0.1 255.255.255.255" push "route 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0" push "route 111.111.111.111 255.255.255.0" push "dhcp-option DNS 222.222.222.222" push "redirect-gateway def1" client-to-client duplicate-cn keepalive 10 120 tls-auth /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/keys/ta.key 0 comp-lzo persist-key persist-tun user nobody group nogroup cipher AES-128-CBC log /var/log/openvpn.log status /var/log/openvpn-status.log 20 verb 1 Note: To paste in
Ira Finch (Build a Smart Raspberry Pi VPN Server: Auto Configuring, Plug-n-Play, Use from Anywhere)
In another invaluable service to the Allies, the resistance movements in every captive country helped rescue and spirit back to England thousands of British and American pilots downed behind enemy lines, as well as other Allied servicemen caught in German-held territory. In Belgium, for example, a young woman named Andrée de Jongh set up an escape route called the Comet Line through her native country and France, manned mostly by her friends, to return Britons and Americans to England. De Jongh herself escorted more than one hundred servicemen over the Pyrenees Mountains to safety in neutral Spain. As de Jongh and her colleagues knew, being active in the resistance, regardless of gender, was far more perilous than fighting on the battlefield or in the air. If captured, uniformed servicemen on the Western front were sent to prisoner of war camps, where Geneva Convention rules usually applied. When resistance members were caught, they faced torture, the horrors of a German concentration camp, and/or execution. The danger of capture was particularly great for those who sheltered British or American fighting men, most of whom did not speak the language of the country in which they were hiding and who generally stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. As one British intelligence officer observed, “It is not an easy matter to hide and feed a foreigner in your midst, especially when it happens to be a red-haired Scotsman of six feet, three inches, or a gum-chewing American from the Middle West.” James Langley, the head of a British agency that aided the European escape lines, later estimated that, for every Englishman or American rescued, at least one resistance worker lost his or her life. Andrée de Jongh managed to escape that fate. Caught in January 1943 and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany, she survived the war because, although she freely admitted to creating the Comet Line, the Germans could not believe that a young girl had devised such an intricate operation. IN
Lynne Olson (Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour)
TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877–4-LA LECHE (877–452–5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while.
La Leche League International (The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding)
Forgiveness" in the Jubilee traditions is at heart a political word. The images by which forgiveness is presented in those traditions are of people set free from the dehumanising effects of social role definitions (Luke 7:36-50; 19:1-10), from the stigma as well as the physical consequences of disease (Isa. 61:1-2; Mark 2:1-12), and from the vicious cycle of economic oppression (Leviticus 25; Matt. 18:23-35). The traditions in which these images are found point to an actual change of circumstances for those who suffer, and thus to a change in the power relationship between oppressor and oppressed. Far from being an easy of cheap route of escape for the privileged, "forgiveness" becomes their "liberty" as well, whether that be the genuine liberty marked by acts of justice or the "liberty" of the consequences of business as usual (Jer. 34:17). As the satrap discovered (Matt. 18:23-25), if one opts to live with the pattern of forgiveness, that choice must govern those situations from which one benefits as well as those where one's own debt is insurmountable.
Sharon H. Ringe (Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee: Images for Ethics and Christology)
To minimize the sense of confinement, one of our video channels provided a breathtaking view of our journey, as seen from a helicopter flying low over the landscape, following our exact route on a lovely spring day. The photographic sequence had been speeded up so that each view corresponded in real-time to a point directly above our location deep underground in the floater tunnel. That was, I concluded, a rather easy trick technically, because all the photographic information obtained in the original helicopter flight was stored electronically for easy recall.
Gerard K. O'Neill (2081)
living BIG [Boundaries Integrity Generosity] saved us that morning. Had either one of us assumed the worst, defaulted to the easy route, or gone into self-protection or attack mode, it would be a different, albeit familiar, story.
Brené Brown (Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.)
Given the option, would you rather choose the right path, even though it’s difficult, or the easy route, knowing that you’ll be compromising your standards?
Frank Sonnenberg (BookSmart: Hundreds of real-world lessons for success and happiness)
A net of human surveillance had been thrown over the neighborhood. He’d picked out a couple of them. Men who were too fit and too clean-cut. They were Agency muscle, ex–special operations types. They were excellent with a gun and terrific to have on your team if things went sideways, but they were too visible and Harmon had requested no babysitters. His request, though, had been ignored. He had also asked that they buy the woman a plane ticket so he could conduct the meeting in a nice, anonymous airline lounge out at Hong Kong International. It was a controlled environment. Much harder to bring weapons in. Easier to spot trouble before it happened. Tradecraft 101. That request had also been ignored. Langley felt the airport was too controlled and therefore too easy for the Chinese to tilt in their favor. The CIA wanted a public location with multiple evacuation routes. They had cars, safe houses, changes of clothes, medical equipment, fake passports, and even a high-speed boat on standby.
Brad Thor (Act of War (Scot Harvath, #13))
The new normal is rarely an easy adjustment and never truely feels, well, normal. Let's be honest. Plan B is never preferred. Detours and alternate routes Are never quite as scenic The darkness of being gifted a second chance Is that it means something went Wrong in the first place. And yet, I would rather have a few speed bumps slow me down, causing me to spill coffee on my dress, than ever hand someone the keys to my life.
Alicia Cook (Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately)
montagneux. Madame GPS dit : « Sortir à droite. » Melba met le clignotant. La voiture quitte la route principale. Il est cinq heures du soir. Ils ont assez˚ roulé. C’était une journée fatigante˚, après le voyage en bateau. assez : enough fatigant(e) : tiring
Sylvie Lainé (Voyage à Marseille, an easy French story)
of them (pron. used with expressions of quantity) panne d’essence (f.) : panne d’essence station-service (f.) : petrol station, gas station Louis trouve que Melba exagère˚. Ce n’est pas la haute saison. Tous les hôtels ne sont pas complets. Mais il connaît Melba : quand elle est fatiguée, elle s’inquiète facilement˚. Un panneau annonce une "auberge-château". C’est à un kilomètre. Louis dit, enthousiaste : « Un château, c’est magnifique ! J’aime bien cette idée. Ma chérie, je t’offre˚ une nuit˚ dans un château ! » exagérer : to exaggerate facilement : easily offrir : to give, to offer nuit (f.) : night Plus loin, il y a un autre panneau : il faut tourner à gauche. La route est très sinueuse
Sylvie Lainé (Voyage à Marseille, an easy French story)
Langley felt the airport was too controlled and therefore too easy for the Chinese to tilt in their favor. The CIA wanted a public location with multiple evacuation routes. They had cars, safe houses, changes of clothes, medical equipment, fake passports, and even a high-speed boat on standby. They had thought of every contingency and had built plans for each. That was how worried they were. Stepping inside, Harmon scanned the café. The air-conditioning felt like being hooked up to a bottle of pure, crisp oxygen. He grabbed a paper napkin and starting at the top of his shaved head, wiped all the way down the back of his thick neck. He ordered a Coke in a can, no ice. He had learned the hard way about ice in foreign countries
Brad Thor (Act of War (Scot Harvath, #13))
I might be a fan of Audubon, I suppose." "Ah, birds. I can tell a lot about a person by the type of art they're drawn to. You say Audubon, and I think of someone with a meticulous eye for detail. But that's an easy assumption, isn't it? Not the sort of thing that impresses someone like you much." "Like me?" "Uh-huh. Skeptic." He studied her intently, and she was surprised to find herself unaffected, buffered from his scrutiny by her coat and her mittens, her ugly shoes and her padded socks, her warm cup of coffee and her anonymity. He rubbed his chin with his knuckle. "I would say a person who hangs Audubon on her walls is a person who believes in God, but not necessarily religion. A person who believes in free will, but also in the existence of a natural pecking order, pardon the pun, in all societies. Aware of it, and accepts it. I would say such a person has the capacity to be awed by nature and horrified by it, in equal amounts. A scientist's brain, but an artist's soul. How am I doing?" Alice smiled. "Remarkable." "You're not impressed. I see I'll have to up my game." He looked at her face, her eyes, and she looked back at him blandly, keeping her sharp corners hidden. She had little practice talking to strangers but embraced the thought that she could play the role of anyone she chose, trying on imagined identities to see what fit: businesswoman here for a meeting, opera impresario, wealthy collector, lover en route to a secret assignation. "Hmm," he said, narrowing his eyes while he watched her. "It's not so much an admiration for the artist as it is for the subject matter, correct? What is it about birds? People envy them the ability of flight, of course, but it must be more. Maybe not just their ability to fly, but to fly away 'from', is that it? To leave trouble behind, be free from boundaries, from expectations.
Tracy Guzeman (The Gravity of Birds)
Good neighbors: The successful export-driven development of Taiwan, South Korea, and especially Japan gave Chinese policymakers an easy-to-follow template for industrial development. •  Hong Kong: When China started its reforms, Hong Kong was already a world-class port and trading hub with modern legal and financial systems. This gave Chinese manufacturers quick access not only to global trade routes but also to much of the “soft” infrastructure needed for a modern economy.5 •  Timing: China was fortunate to open up to trade just at the moment when the shipping container, invented in the 1950s, was beginning to make possible the creation of global production chains, spanning multiple countries, through steep reductions in long-distance shipping costs. •  A “killer app”: By the late 1980s, culturally similar Taiwan had established a sophisticated electronics industry, which moved en masse to China in the late 1990s, creating a world-class electronics manufacturing base almost overnight.
Arthur R. Kroeber (China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know)
As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart. Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.
Albert Camus
Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.
Eric Jorgenson (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
Whatever its European credentials, Russia is not an Asian power for many reasons. Although 75 percent of its territory is in Asia, only 22 percent of its population lives there. Siberia may be Russia’s “treasure chest,” containing the majority of the mineral wealth, oil, and gas, but it is a harsh land, freezing for months on end, with vast forests (taiga), poor soil for farming, and large stretches of swampland. Only two railway networks run west to east—the Trans-Siberian and the Baikal-Amur Mainline. There are few transport routes leading north to south and so no easy way for Russia to project power southward into modern Mongolia or China: it lacks the manpower and supply lines to do so.
Tim Marshall (Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World)
Like the characters in the short novel Men in the Sun, by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, however, they did not always find this route easy, for it often involved alienation, isolation, and, as when Palestinians attempted to cross frontiers with their refugee papers, even tragedy
Rashid Khalidi (The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017)
In a research study called “How today’s fastest growing B2B businesses found their first ten customers,” startup veteran Lenny Rachitsky interviewed early members of teams from Slack, Stripe, Figma, and Asana. In studying how these earliest companies found their first customers, it was concluded that a significant number came from the founders tapping their personal networks: Only three sourcing strategies account for every B2B company’s very early growth. [These are: Personal network, Seek out customers where they are, Get press.] Thus, your choices are easy, yet limited. Almost every B2B business both hits up their personal network and heads to the places their potential customers were spending time. The question isn’t which of these two routes to pursue, but instead how far your own network will take you before you move on. It’s a huge advantage to have a strong personal network in B2B, which you can also build by bringing a connector investor or joining an incubator such as YC. Getting press is rarely the way to get started.44 Just as Uber’s ops hustle worked for solving the city-by-city Cold Start Problem, B2B startups have an equivalent card to play: they can manually reach out and onboard teams from their friends’ startups, building atomic networks quickly, as Slack did in their early launch. Or, many productivity products begin by launching within online communities—like Twitter, Hacker News, and Product Hunt—where dense pockets of early adopters are willing to try new products. In recent years, B2B products have started to emphasize memes, funny videos, invite-only mechanics, and other tactics traditionally associated with consumer startups. I expect that this will only continue, as the consumerization of enterprise products fully embraces meme-based go-to-market early on, instead of leading with direct sales.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
What most people fail to realize is that you have the wheel. You are the captain of your ship for life. The easy road is self pity and complaining.
Wallace Miles (UNDERR8TED: The Route That Caught an NFL Dream)
Sometimes we need to hear our deficiencies, plain and straight. If we always hear how great we are it’s easy to become complacent.
Wallace Miles (UNDERR8TED: The Route That Caught an NFL Dream)
When you are new to succeeding, it’s easy to fall back into the old losing habits. You have to continue the positive self-talk. Most importantly we have to continue intense preparation and focus. If you don’t, you’ll end up allowing the doubt to conquer.
Wallace Miles (UNDERR8TED: The Route That Caught an NFL Dream)