“
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
”
”
Andrew Marvell (The Complete Poems)
“
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust;
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
”
”
Andrew Marvell (The Complete Poems)
“
The park sustained them, the green harbor they preserved as the town extended itself outward, block by block and house by house. Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was - a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
“
Now here it was after all, preserved by some considerate hand with varnisch and wax. Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which had surrounded and filled those days, so much of it that I hadn't even known it was there. Because, unfamiliar with the abscence of fear and what that was like, I had not been able to identify it's presence.
Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.
I felt fear's echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompanient and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern Lights across black sky
”
”
John Knowles (A Separate Peace)
“
Though the tendency to tic is innate in Tourette's, the particular form of tics often has a personal or historical origin. Thus a name, a sound, a visual image, a gesture, perhaps seen years before and forgotten, may first be unconsciously echoed or imitated and then preserved in the stereotypic form of a tic. Such tics are like hieroglyphic, petrified residues of the past and may indeed, with the passage of time, become so hieroglyphic, so abbreviated, as to become unintelligible (as 'God be with you' was condensed, collapsed, after centuries, to the phonetically similar but meaningless 'goodbye').
”
”
Oliver Sacks (An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales)
“
There is no one story that will replace the American dream, but stories
like this one—and there are thousands—can inform the myth or myths
we create for building and preserving the next culture. In order to do so,
however, we must recognize that we cannot live without myth, for it is an
essential part of our humanity. If we attempt to do so—given the fact that
something in us needs myth—we
will only create more myths that echo
the American dream—with themes of heroism, greed, entitlement, narcissism,
exploitation, exceptionalism, and myriad abuses of power. How we prepare for and navigate collapse will provide the raw materials for the myths we make and will live by in a postindustrial world.
”
”
Carolyn Baker (Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times (Sacred Activism))
“
Your sense of paralysis will be intensified if your family and friends are in the habit of pushing and cajoling you. Their nagging should statements reinforce the insulting thoughts already echoing through your head. Why is their pushy approach doomed to failure? It's a basic law of physics that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Any time you feel shoved, whether by someone's hand actually on your chest or by someone trying to boss you around, you will naturally tighten up and resist so as to maintain your equilibrium and balance. You will attempt to exert your self-control and preserve your dignity by refusing to do the thing that you are being pushed to do. The paradox is that you often end up hurting yourself.
”
”
David D. Burns
“
My goal is to act as a faithful interpreter, preserving as much of the original's nuances of meaning as possible without embellishment or omission. Yet a translator must also balance fidelity to the source, aptness of expression, and beauty of style. The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture's patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language's rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people's gestures and movements.
”
”
Ken Liu
“
I relinquished myself to existence pure and simple, thinking absolutely nothing—as if my mind were merely an echo chamber for the music, as if it contained only ether or at most a vaguely pleasant odor as of roses preserved between the pages of a book, their significance long forgotten. The tongue of the road gobbled me up and I allowed myself to sink like a tasty mouthful all the way to the bottom of a marvelous, rejuvenating vacuity. Later, it would occur to me it’s the emptiness we mistakenly call Innocence.
”
”
Sol Luckman (Beginner's Luke (Beginner's Luke, #1))
“
And here, right at the start, one encounters a new difficulty. For the task of reestablishing the notion of God's authority is obstructed not only by the depreciation of authority itself, but also by a false, pre-established picture of God- found even within the church.
Certainly, the church has preserved the concept of a loving God, a merciful God, a compassionate God. But have Christians generally themselves any vivid sense of God's power and dominion? Do we, when we worship God, or when we reflect on His nature, catch a clear echo of His resounding and indomitable majesty?... It cannot be denied that this is the God we are supposed to worship- not just a companionable God who is to be sidled up to and nestled against, but and awesome God before whom the worshipper prostrates himself, a wrathful God whose raised right arm can shake the universe.
”
”
Harry Blamires (The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think?)
“
The untried recruits learned about fear. It wasn't some occasional leap of terror, a startled response; it was the unbearable tension of being forced to remain in a terrifying place, your mind the only thing preventing you from throwing down your rifle and running, anywhere, a flight of atavistic self-preservation.
”
”
Joanne van Os (Ronan's Echo)
“
It’s important to preserve this precious understanding of mitakpa in your mind. It will significantly contribute to your happiness,” said the lama. He echoed the khenpo’s sentiment, explaining that ignoring mitakpa often leads a person to believe that “things will be better when I do x.” A false sense of permanence can cause a person to put off the things they truly want to do, thinking, “I can do that when I retire.
”
”
Michael Easter (The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self)
“
In translating, my goal is to act as a faithful interpreter, preserving as much of the original’s nuances of meaning as possible without embellishment or omission. Yet a translator must also balance fidelity to the source, aptness of expression, and beauty of style. The best translations into English do not, in fact, read as if they were originally written in English. The English words are arranged in such a way that the reader sees a glimpse of another culture’s patterns of thinking, hears an echo of another language’s rhythms and cadences, and feels a tremor of another people’s gestures and movements.
”
”
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
“
What if even then, God had plans for a second garden? Another tree, and another chance to reach out and accept the abundance of life? What if in Eden, God was planning Gethsemane?"
The question echoed through Lucy, growing in power with each reverberation within her soul.
She held a flower in her hands. The sweet, exotic perfume floated deep into Lucy's heart---carrying Ms. Beth's words right along beside it. Lucy hesitated, allowing the words to take effect. "Are you circling a closed Eden, or have you chosen to step into Gethsemane, through the open gate?"
Lucy blinked. She had never thought of it like that.
"Maybe what you thought was a closed gate meant to punish you is actually God's way of protecting you from remaining in a place where you won't and can't receive His life."
The truth washed Lucy's heart with color. As it brushed over the harsh edges with water, watercolor blooms began to blend one into the other, filling her with understanding.
Lucy's heart swelled as the long-dry soil soaked up this water.
"Where you're preoccupied with your failures and your fears and the desire to preserve all you might lose, God has a plan to preserve something else. To root you in a place where life can grow within you once more, freely and abundantly. A garden of death for a garden of life, where through His own resurrection Jesus returns all that was stolen.
”
”
Ashley Clark (Paint and Nectar (Heirloom Secrets, #2))
“
It is as if Protestantism by clinging to the Scripture wished to preserve the last faint echoes of God’s Word in a world that has fallen silent, a world where only things speak dumbly, a world delivered over to the silence and ruthlessness of the Absolute, - and in his fear of God the Protestant has realized that it is his own goal before which he cowers. For in excluding all other values, in casting himself in the last resort on an autonomous religious experience, he has assumed a final abstraction of a logical rigour that urges him unambiguously to strip all sensory trappings from his faith, to empty it of all content but the naked Absolute, retaining nothing but the pure form, the pure, empty and neutral form of a 'religion in itself', a 'mysticism in itself'.
”
”
Hermann Broch (The Sleepwalkers (The Sleepwalkers, #1-3))
“
Here is a life in still frames. Moments like Polaroids. Like paintings. Like flowers pressed between the pages of a book. Perfectly preserved. The three of them, napping in the sun. Addie, stroking Henry’s hair while she tells him stories, and he writes, and writes, and writes. Henry, pressing her down into the bed, their fingers tangled, their breath quick, her name an echo in her hair. Here they are, together in his galley kitchen, his arms threaded through hers, her hands over his as they stir béchamel, as they knead bread dough. When it is in the oven, he cups her face with floury hands, leaves trails everywhere he touches. They make a mess, as the room fills with the scent of freshly baking bread. And in the morning it looks like ghosts have danced across the kitchen, and they pretend there were two instead of one.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
The ordinary reader today knows about the Grail thanks only to Richard Wagner's Parsifal, which, in its Romantic approach, really deforms and twists the whole myth. Equally misleading is the attempt to interpret the mystery of the Grail in Christian terms: for Christian elements only play an accessory, secondary and concealing role in the saga. In order to grasp the true significance of the myth, it is necessary instead to consider the more immediate points of reference represented by the themes and echoes pertaining to the cycle of King Arthur, which survives in the Celtic and Nordic traditions. The Grail essentially embodies the source of a transcendent and immortalizing power of primordial origin that has been preserved after the 'Fall', degeneration and decadence of humanity. Significantly, all sources agree that the guardians of the Grail are not priests, but are knights and warriors - besides, the very place where the Grail is kept is described not as a temple or church, but as a royal palace or castle.
In the book, I argued that the Grail can be seen to possess an initiatory (rather than vaguely mystical) character: that it embodies the mystery of warrior initiation. Most commonly, the sagas emphasize one additional element: the duties deriving from such initiation. The predestined Knight - he who has received the calling and has enjoyed a vision of the Grail, or received its boons – or he who has 'fought his way' to the Grail (as described in certain texts) must accomplish his duty of restoring legitimate power, lest he forever be damned. The Knight must either allow a prostrate, deceased, wounded or only apparently living King to regain his strength, or personally assume the regal role, thus restoring a fallen kingdom. The sagas usually attribute this function to the power of the Grail. A significant means to assess the dignity or intentions of the Knight is to 'ask the question': the question concerning the purpose of the Grail. In many cases, the posing of this crucial question coincides with the miracle of awakening, of healing or of restoration.
”
”
Julius Evola (The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography)
“
History is a ribbon, always unfurling; history is a journey. And as we continue our journey, we think of those who traveled before us. We stand together again at the steps of this symbol of our democracy--or we would have been standing at the steps if it hadn't gotten so cold. Now we are standing inside this symbol of our democracy. Now we hear again the echoes of our past: a general falls to his knees in the hard snow of Valley Forge; a lonely President paces the darkened halls, and ponders his struggle to preserve the Union; the men of the Alamo call out encouragement to each other; a settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air.
It is the American sound. It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That's our heritage; that is our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old, as we raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music. And may He continue to hold us close as we fill the world with our sound--sound in unity, affection, and love--one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world.
”
”
Ronald Reagan
“
The Israelites called Yahweh “the God of our fathers,” yet it seems that he may have been quite a different deity from El, the Canaanite High God worshipped by the patriarchs. He may have been the god of other people before he became the God of Israel. In all his early appearances to Moses, Yahweh insists repeatedly and at some length that he is indeed the God of Abraham, even though he had originally been called El Shaddai. This insistence may preserve the distant echoes of a very early debate about the identity of the God of Moses. It has been suggested that Yahweh was originally a warrior god, a god of volcanoes, a god worshipped in Midian, in what is now Jordan.17 We shall never know where the Israelites discovered Yahweh, if indeed he really was a completely new deity. Again, this would be a very important question for us today, but it was not so crucial for the biblical writers. In pagan antiquity, gods were often merged and amalgamated, or the gods of one locality accepted as identical with the god of another people. All we can be sure of is that, whatever his provenance, the events of the Exodus made Yahweh the definitive God of Israel and that Moses was able to convince the Israelites that he really was one and the same as El, the God beloved by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
”
”
Karen Armstrong (A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam)
“
Between concentric pavement ripples glide errant echoes originating from beyond the Puddled Metropolis. Windowless blocks and pickle-shaped monuments demarcate the boundaries of patternistic cycles from those wilds kissed neither by starlight nor moonlight. Lethal underbrush of razor-like excrescence pierces at the skins of night, crawls with hyperactive sprouts and verminous vines that howl with contempt for the wicked fortunes of Marshland Organizers armed with scythes and hoes and flaming torches who have only succeeded in crafting their own folly where once stood something of glorious and generous integrity. There are familiar whispers under leaves perched upon by flapping moths. They implore the spirit again to heed the warnings of the vines and to not be swayed by the hubris of these organizing opportunists. One is to stop moving at frantic zigzags through gridlocked streets, stop climbing ladders altogether, stop relying on drainage pipes where floods should prevail, stop tapping one’s feet in waiting rooms expecting to be seen and examined and acknowledged. Rather, one is to eschew unseemly fabrications and conceal oneself beneath the surface of leaves—perhaps even inside the droplets of dew—one is, after all, to feel shameful of the form, of all forms, and seek instead to merge with whispers which do not shun or excoriate, for they are otherwise occupied in the act of designating meaning. Yet, what meaning stands beyond the rectitude of angles and symmetry, but rather in wilds among agitated insects and resplendent bogs and malicious spiders and rippling mosses pronouncing doom upon their surroundings? One is said to find only the same degree of opportunism, and nothing greatly edifying that could serve to extend beyond the banalities of self-preservation. But no, surely there is something more than this—there absolutely must be something more, and it is to be found! Forget what is said about ‘opportunism’—this is just a word and, thusly, a distraction. The key issue is that there are many such campaigns of contrivance mounted by the taxonomic self-interest of categories and frameworks ‘who’ only seek primacy and authority over their consumers. The ascription of ‘this’ may thusly be ascribed also with that of ‘this other’ and so it cannot be ‘that precisely’ because ‘this’ contradicts another ‘that other’ with which ‘this other’ surely claims affiliation. Certainly, in view of such limiting factors, there is a frustration that one is bound to feel that the answers available are constrained and formulaic and insufficient and that one is simply to accept the way of things as though they are defined by the highest of mathematics and do not beget anything higher. One is, thusly, to cease in one’s quest for unexplored possibility. The lines have been drawn, the contradictions defined and so one cannot expect to go very far with these mathematical rules and boundaries in place. There are ways out: one might assume the value of an imaginary unit and bounce out of any restrictive quadrant as with the errant echoes against the rippling pavement of this Puddled Metropolis. One will then experience something akin to a bounding and rebounding leap—iterative, but with all subleaps constituting a more sweeping trajectory—outward to other landscapes and null landscapes, inward through corridors and toward the centroid of circumcentric chamber clusters, into crevices and trenches between paradigms and over those mountain peaks of abstruse calculation.
”
”
Ashim Shanker (Inward and Toward (Migrations, #3))
“
The room had been picked and stripped till only the bare walls and floor remained. Here where they had been married, where the wedding supper had taken place, where Trina had bade farewell to her father and mother, here where she had spent those first few hard months of her married life, where afterward she had grown to be happy and contented, where she had passed the long hours of the afternoon at her work of whittling, and where she and her husband had spent so many evenings looking out of the window before the lamp was lit—here in what had been her home, nothing was left but echoes and the emptiness of complete desolation. Only one thing remained. On the wall between the windows, in its oval glass frame, preserved by some unknown and fearful process, a melancholy relic of a vanished happiness, unsold, neglected, and forgotten, a thing that nobody wanted, hung Trina’s wedding bouquet.
”
”
Frank Norris (Mcteague)
“
DEFENDING A RAPIST What is the character of a person who becomes a sexual enabler? We get an early glimpse into this question from 1975, when Hillary Clinton defended a man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, who was accused of beating and raping a twelve-year-old girl. A virgin prior to the attack, she spent five days in a coma, several months recovering from her injuries, and years in therapy. Even people who are accused of heinous crimes deserve criminal representation. Hillary’s strategy in defending Taylor, however, was to blame the teenage victim. According to an affidavit filed by Hillary, children who come from “disorganized families such as the complainant” sometimes “exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.” Hillary suggested the girl was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing.” Here Hillary seems to be echoing what Bernie Sanders wrote in his rape fantasy essay. In this case, however, the girl certainly didn’t dream up the assault and rape. There was physical evidence that showed she had been violated, and she was beaten so badly she was in a coma. Prosecutors had in their possession a bloodied pair of Taylor’s underwear. But fortunately for Hillary and her client, the forensic lab mishandled the way that evidence was preserved. At the time of trial, the state merely had a pair of Taylor’s underwear with a hole cut in it. Hillary plea bargained on behalf of Taylor and got him released without having to do any additional time. A tape unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon has Hillary celebrating the outcome. “Got him off with time served in the county jail,” she says. Did Hillary believe that, in this case, justice was done? Certainly not. On the tape, Hillary admits she never trusted her client. “Course he claimed he didn’t, and all this stuff.” So she decided to verify his story. “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed—which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” Clearly Hillary knows her client is guilty, and this fact doesn’t bother her. The most chilling aspect of Hillary’s voice is her indifference—even bemusement—at getting a man off after he raped a twelve-year-old. The episode is a revealing look into the soul of an enabler. In fact, it reminds me of Alinsky protesting to Frank Nitti about the wasted expense of importing an out-of-town-killer. Hillary, like Alinsky, seems to be a woman without a conscience.9
”
”
Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
“
Star, fate, and breath,” he croaked, licking his lips, “be kind to me, preserve me from the pride of the hand. Star, source of all life, to which I will return to be remade, erase my sins...” My eyes moistened again, hearing the old prayer, and I echoed the old man. Together: “...and purify, bind my atoms to something higher, send my light far to others who truly see. In the arms of great galaxies there lies salvation, and we there will go, to dance in endless joy the innocent dance free of the hand.” The old man's voice faded, and I finished, “In the name of the Good Man, the secrets of Logos, of Fate and Breath and Soul, so be it through deep time.
”
”
Greg Bear (The Eon Series: Legacy, Eon, and Eternity (The Way, #1-3))
“
But one thought does break through.
It has the echo of something familiar.
The thought is: I don’t need to come back to this elevator at all, do I? I don’t need to ever come back to this hotel. I could just leave. I could set up this bank account and leave. Leave my life. What if I just disappeared? Just left Mark in a hotel room in Geneva. I could slip off now, bag in hand, and melt away. Never even go to the bank. No one would really miss me, really, would they? Would they? Life goes on. Life always just goes on. I’m sure I’d make a good life for myself, somewhere. They never find me——Mark, our friends, the plane people, the police. They’d never find me or the money, or our unborn child.
”
”
Catherine Steadman (Something in the Water)
“
Their thesis in this book is that the advice given to American women by male health professionals, particularly in the areas of marital sex, maternity, and child care, has echoed the dictates of the economic marketplace and the role capitalism has needed women to play in production and/or reproduction. Women have become the consumer victims of various cures, therapies, and normative judgements in different periods (including the prescription to middle-class women to embody and preserve the sacredness of the home—the “scientific” romanticiza-tion of the home itself). None of the “experts’” advice has been either particularly scientific or women-oriented; it has reflected male needs, male fantasies about women, and male interest in controlling women—particularly in the realms of sexuality and motherhood—fused with the require-ments of industrial capitalism.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence)
“
Adorno has here articulated the central contradiction—he calls it an “aporia”—inherent in all Holocaust memorials: legitimate art after Auschwitz must represent, translate, or in some way evoke the violence done to victims in a form that is legible to posterity. But to instrumentalize or aestheticize the victims’ memory is necessarily to violate it. In these terms a “true” memorial must accomplish the impossible: communicate the event while preserving its utter inscrutability, honor the victims while rejecting any and all ascriptions of meaning.
”
”
Jeremy Eichler (Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance)
“
Nothing in this mountain town looked as well preserved as that box had been. The strangest thing about the place was the disjunction between the town itself—the desolate, vacant space—and the crowd of impressions that surrounded it. To me, it was almost a roar, the sheer volume of lives that had shared this space. Their absence was as vivid as their presence. It didn’t feel like my visions—not even my visions of the blast. It was more like a residue. It was the resonance of a bell, echoing long after the bell itself has stopped.
”
”
Francesca Haig (The Fire Sermon (The Fire Sermon, #1))
“
Nothing in this mountain town looked as well preserved as that box had been. The strangest thing about the place was the disjunction between the town itself—the desolate, vacant space—and the crowd of impressions that surrounded it. To me, it was almost a roar, the sheer volume of lives that had shared this space. Their absence was as vivid as their presence. It didn’t feel like my visions—not even my visions of the blast. It was more like a residue. It was the resonance of a bell, echoing long after the bell itself has stopped. I was surprised to look up and see Zoe and Kip unaffected. Both were moving warily among the rubble, and Kip kept looking over his shoulder, but it was evident that neither of them felt the same silent cacophony that was besieging me. Kip noticed me, though, and the way my hands had moved, instinctively and uselessly, to cover my ears. He moved to my side, stepping over a twisted metal beam.
”
”
Francesca Haig (The Fire Sermon (The Fire Sermon, #1))
“
FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
We must fight for the true freedom the founders of this great nation fought for.
And our sons and daughters spilled their blood for.
We must fight for our next generation - our children.
We must fight for our values.
We must fight to preserve our way of life that has taken over two hundred years to establish.
We must fight against the external forces that vowed in their dark minds, to exterminate our foundation to extinction.
The American Constitution has endured for generations, and I echo the same sentiment of Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death”.
Give us the same freedom our founding fathers established generations past.
We as a people have to take back what our enemies are trying to steal from us.
This fight has to be on our knees in prayer.
This is our Country!
This is our future!
This is our freedom!
God bless America!
©joaministries All rights reserved.
”
”
Josephine Akhagbeme
“
FIGHT FOR FREEDOM"
We must fight for the true freedom the founders of this great nation fought for.
And our sons and daughters spilled their blood for.
We must fight for our next generation - our children.
We must fight for our values.
We must fight to preserve our way of life that has taken over two hundred years to establish.
We must fight against the external forces that vowed in their dark minds, to exterminate our foundation to extinction.
The American Constitution has endured for generations, and I echo the same sentiment of Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death”.
Give us the same freedom our founding fathers established generations past.
We as a people have to take back what our enemies are trying to steal from us.
This fight has to be on our knees in prayer.
This is our Country!
This is our future!
This is our freedom!
God bless America!
©joaministries All rights reserved.
”
”
Josephine Akhagbeme
“
FIGHT FOR FREEDOM”
We must fight for the true freedom the founders of this great nation fought for.
And our sons and daughters spilled their blood for.
We must fight for our next generation - our children.
We must fight for our values.
We must fight to preserve our way of life that has taken over two hundred years to establish.
We must fight against the external forces that vowed in their dark minds, to exterminate our foundation to extinction.
The American Constitution has endured for generations, and I echo the same sentiment of Patrick Henry “Give me liberty or give me death”.
Give us the same freedom our founding fathers established generations past.
We as a people have to take back what our enemies are trying to steal from us.
This fight has to be on our knees in prayer.
This is our Country!
This is our future!
This is our freedom!
God bless America!
©joaministries All rights reserved.
”
”
Josephine Akhagbeme
“
sn The twofold appearance of the statement “a remnant will come back” (שְׁאָר יָשׁוּב, she’ar yashuv) in vv. 21-22 echoes and probably plays off the name of Isaiah’s son Shear-jashub (see 7:3). In its original context the name was meant to encourage Ahaz (see the note at 7:3), but here it has taken on new dimensions. In light of Ahaz’s failure and the judgment it brings down on the land, the name Shear-jashub now foreshadows the destiny of the nation. According to vv. 21-22, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that a remnant of God’s people will return; the bad news is that only a remnant will be preserved and come back. Like the name Immanuel, this name foreshadows both judgment (see the notes at 7:25 and 8:8) and ultimate restoration (see the note at 8:10).
”
”
Anonymous (NET Bible (with notes))
“
The Champs-Elysées...It's like that pond a British novelist talks about, at the bottom of which, in layered deposits, lie the echoes of the voices of every passerby who has daydreamed on its banks.The shimmering water preserves those echoes forever and, on quiet evenings, they all blend together...
”
”
Patrick Modiano (Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas (The Margellos World Republic of Letters))
“
King Solomon comes in because he built the first temple in Jerusalem for the sole purpose of housing the Tabot, or Ark, to preserve and worship both its importance and its power. That is, until it up and vanished.
”
”
Michael C. Grumley (Echo (Breakthrough #6))
“
Fossils, like preserved bones, tell you about form. Trace fossils, like these footprints, tell you a little about form and a lot about behavior. It was clear that this was a big group of people. For some reason, a very tall man was running on the peripheries. One person had a big deformed toe, while another tiny-footed person walked a bit like a duck, with feet splayed outward. The mix of individuals in the group—mostly women and adolescents, with just a few men—suggests this may have been a party of foragers, looking for food and resources along the lake’s shore. This group has echoes in the behavior of the region’s still-extant Hadza people.
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Robin George Andrews (Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond)
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That's his perception of reality," Nenad responded. "He has adopted it as his interpretation and cannot break free from it, and probably doesn't even consider doing so. In fact, we too are unable to escape his worldview as it partly is our own. However, when faced with the choice between the cat and the belt, I choose the cat. It's not doomed, it's not poisoned, and it can be easily removed by hand from the engine, even if it comes at a financial cost. I have enough space in my cage for its rescue. I can imagine that within its mind, this engine has become a prison for his hopes of salvation. Overcoming our phobias of losing money in the pursuit of something else, even in small amounts, is healthy. A ground strap costs nothing, and though it may require a bit of time in a repair shop, in this day and age, we are used to wasting our time for far less. The reality of our daily lives is filled with every online distraction, like a sheet riddled with holes from moths that we wrap ourselves in out of habit without even noticing. It’s so comforting. At first, you embrace what everyone else does, what you are told to think. But eventually, you come to the realization that you have the power to dictate your thought patterns and become the architect of your ideology. You can construct a personal propaganda machine that aligns with your values and desires, creating a unique model of the world that is entirely your own. Your mind is still going to be a box in one of the billions of drawers, but it’s going to be YOUR box. Your true home. Manipulate yourself. We should manipulate ourselves towards common sense, compassion, and hope that we’ll get a good batch of people at some point so we can live among more like-minded peers. Now it’s up to our online feed. Now the education in our phone holds the reins, encapsulated in the three-second video of someone's take on history, the five-second clip of fitness models or investment strategies. And if we're fortunate, some famous person would quote Epictetus' Discourses, perhaps echoing the wisdom of Dostoevsky, Camus, Kafka, Marcus Aurelius, Sartre, etc. This is our chance for us to avoid descending into mere survival instincts without the tempering influence of morality and an understanding of the absurdity that we have created around us. To get addicted to the freedom in our minds. OR to choose the ground strap, choose to sacrifice someone else’s life so we can preserve our resources, because that’s what greed is, on a deep ancient level it’s you hoarding resources the same way a squirrel does with its winter supplies. Choose to be a squirrel rather than a human and live off your acorns. Choose to kill the cat. Choose not to ruin your precious machine. Choose the current model of society and disappear in it like a pelican getting caught in an airplane engine. Perhaps responsibility is the first and maybe even the only synonym for human purpose. Of course, there is value in the small moments we experience, but they lack foundation if they don’t fit into the break from working on something meaningful.
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Hristiyan Ivanov (All the cages we live in)
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Theism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively, point, when we take them prospectively, to wholly different outlooks of experience. For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and for all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have once evolved. You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees. I cannot state it better than in Mr. Balfour's words:
That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic weather, tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved—even as our world now lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely NOTHING remains, of represent those particular qualities, those elements of preciousness which they may have enshrined. Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being. Without an echo; without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for similar ideals. This utter final wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism as at present understood. The lower and not the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last surviving forces within the only cycle of evolution which we can definitely see. Mr. Spencer believes this as much as anyone; so why should he argue with us as if we were making silly aesthetic objections to the 'grossness' of 'matter and motion,' the principles of his philosophy, when what really dismays us is the disconsolateness of its ulterior practical results?
No the true objection to materialism is not positive but negative. It would be farcical at this day to make complaint of it for what it IS for 'grossness.' Grossness is what grossness DOES—we now know THAT. We make complaint of it, on the contrary, for what it is NOT—not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes.
The notion of God, on the other hand, however inferior it may be in clearness to those mathematical notions so current in mechanical philosophy, has at least this practical superiority over them, that it guarantees an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. A world with a God in it to say the last word, may indeed burn up or freeze, but we then think of him as still mindful of the old ideals and sure to bring them elsewhere to fruition; so that, where he is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution not the absolutely final things. This need of an eternal moral order is one of the deepest needs of our breast. And those poets, like Dante and Wordsworth, who live on the conviction of such an order, owe to that fact the extraordinary tonic and consoling power of their verse. Here then, in these different emotional and practical appeals, in these adjustments of our concrete attitudes of hope and expectation, and all the delicate consequences which their differences entail, lie the real meanings of materialism and spiritualism—not in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's inner essence, or about the metaphysical attributes of God. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough, for anyone who feels it; and, as long as men are men, it will yield matter for a serious philosophic debate.
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William James
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Hello, friend. How I’ve missed Your honest echo I hold so dear. Hello, foe. How I resist Your graceless way of drawing fear. Hello, demon. Glad I’ve found you. The angel takes my breath away. She pretends, while you’re hell-bent on preserving true decay.
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Alyson Santos (Breaking South (Save Me #3))
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You then challenged him, to—” He halted suddenly and stared hard at Grey. “Ostensibly,” he said, more slowly, “ye challenged him to preserve your honor, to refute the slur of sodomy.” His lips compressed into a tight line. “Ostensibly,” Grey echoed. “Why the bloody hell else would I have done it?” Fraser’s eyes searched his face. Grey felt the touch of the other man’s gaze, an odd sensation, but kept his own face composed. Or hoped he did. “Her Grace says that ye did it for the sake of your friendship with me,” Fraser said at last, quietly. “And I am inclined to think her right.
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Diana Gabaldon (The Scottish Prisoner (Lord John Grey, #3))
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Stirling, Scotland, October 1619
"Kristina, wake up and ready yourself for a journey!"
In her bedchamber, Kristina MacQueen jolted awake. Had she just heard her mother's voice? 'Twas impossible. Her mother had passed many years ago. The voice had been inside her dream. What had Ma meant about a journey? Kristina had not left the vicinity of her aunt and uncle's manor house in many months.
Hearing the faint hoofbeats of many horses galloping in the distance, she sat up and listened. As each moment passed, the horses' hooves pounded closer and closer until they echoed off the cobblestones just outside the window. Her heart thumping and an eerie feeling prickling along her skin, she swung her feet toward the floor and sat on the edge of the bed.
A fist battered violently at the home's entrance door below.
"Saints. Who could that be?" she whispered. It had to be the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morn, for she heard no one moving about the house and her room was chilly. The visitor couldn't be the physician calling to treat Uncle Gilbert, who suffered from gout, rheumatism and various other ailments. Nay, he wouldn't bring that many horses with him on a house call. Maybe 'twas the creditors, come to expel them from their home. When her uncle's health had declined, so had his funds.
Could it be news of her older sister? She had not heard from Anna in many months.
Ready yourself for a journey, her mother had said in the dream.
Good heavens! Had someone come for her, to take her to Anna?
Heart hammering, Kristina leapt from the warm bed. Though she couldn't see, she knew the placement of the furniture in her room and could easily navigate the space without bumping into anything. After tiptoeing across the cold wooden floor in her stockings, she approached the door and turned the knob to open it a crack, then listened. The maids were in an uproar on the ground floor below.
"What's the racket?" Aunt Matilda yelled as she tromped by Kristina's chamber and down the stairs. "Who is it?" she demanded near the front door.
"Chief Blackburn MacCromar!" The snarled response was bellowed from outside, just below her window.
A chill of terror and revulsion flashed through Kristina. "Saints, preserve us." She shut the door and barred it, her fingers trembling. She had not been near the malicious bastard in two years. He had finally come for her.
Anxiety and nausea froze her to the spot. What would he do? Would he kill her for a certainty this time?
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Vonda Sinclair (Highlander Entangled (Highland Adventure, #9))
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Poetry and Genre The hallmark of rhetoric in ancient Near Eastern literature is repetition; in poetry, this takes the form of what scholars call “parallelism.” Frequently, the first line of a verse is echoed in some way by the second line. The second line might repeat the substance of the first line with slightly different emphasis, or perhaps the second line amplifies the first line in some fashion, such as drawing a logical conclusion, illustrating or intensifying the thought. At times the point of the first line is reinforced by a contrast in the second line. Occasionally, more than two lines are parallel. Each of these features, frequently observed in Biblical psalms, is represented in songs from Egypt, Mesopotamia and Ugarit. Unlike English poetry, which often depends on rhyme for its effect, these ancient cultures attained impact on listeners and readers with creative repetition. Psalms come in several standard subgenres, each with standard formal elements. Praise psalms can be either individual or corporate. Over a third of the psalms in the Psalter are praise psalms. Corporate psalms typically begin with an imperative call to praise (e.g., “Shout for joy to the LORD” [Ps 100:1]) and describe all the good things the Lord has done. Individual praise often begins with a proclamation of intent to praise (e.g., “I will praise you, LORD” [Ps 138:1]) and declare what God has done in a particular situation in the psalmist’s life. Mesopotamian and Egyptian hymns generally focus on descriptive praise, often moving from praise to petition. Examples of the proclamation format can be seen in the Mesopotamian wisdom composition, Ludlul bel nemeqi. The title is the first line of the piece, which is translated “I will praise the lord of wisdom.” As in the individual praise psalms, this Mesopotamian worshiper of Marduk reports about a problem that he had and reports how his god brought him deliverance. Lament psalms may be personal statements of despair (e.g., Ps 22:1–21, dirges following the death of an important person (cf. David’s elegy for Saul in 2Sa 1:17–27) or communal cries in times of crisis (e.g., Ps 137). The most famous lament form from ancient Mesopotamia is the “Lament Over the Destruction of Ur,” which commemorates the capture of the city in 2004 BC by the Elamite king Kindattu. For more information on this latter category, see the article “Neo-Sumerian Laments.” In the book of Psalms, more than a third of the psalms are laments, mostly by an individual. The most common complaints concern sickness and oppression by enemies. The lament literature of Mesopotamia is comprised of a number of different subgenres described by various technical terms. Some of these subgenres overlap with Biblical categories, but most of the Mesopotamian pieces are associated with incantations (magical rites being performed to try to rid the person of the problem). Nevertheless, the petitions that accompany lament in the Bible are very similar to those found in prayers from the ancient Near East. They include requests for guidance, protection, favor, attention from the deity, deliverance from crisis, intervention, reconciliation, healing and long life. Prayers to deities preserved
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Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
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Adams drew from the War of 1812 the disconcerting conclusion that occasional wars are indispensable for the inculcation of civic virtue and hence long-term health of republican government.
Adams to Rush, "Wars at times are as necessary for the preservation and perfection, the prosperity, Liberty, happiness, Virtue, & independence of Nations as Gales of wind to the Saluburity of the Atmosphere, or the agitations of the Ocean to prevent its stagnation and putrefaction."
There is a definite echo here of Jefferson's famous claim that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical," as well well as Adam's own hope during the Revolution that "the Furnace of Affliction" would help to purify the nation, ridding it of its softness and selfishness."
Adams, "We all regret or affect to regret War...There never was a Republick; no nor any other People, under whatever Government, that could maintain their Independence, much less grow and propser, without it." ...
"What horrid Creatures we Men are," he mused, " that we cannont be virtuous without murdering one another."
Chapter 9, page 139-140
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Dennis C. Rasmussen (Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders)
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Predators preserve an echo of the isotopic ratios of their prey, so they can be included in the calculation, too. Carbon-isotope studies have shown, for example, that some very early human relatives were quite likely eating more meat than had been suspected. Similarly, the further up the food chain you are, the greater the ratio in your bones and teeth will be between the stable nitrogen isotopes 15N and 14N. On this basis, it has been suggested that our close relatives the Neanderthals were highly carnivorous: that, indeed, they may have specialized, at least regionally, in hunting extremely large-bodied prey, such as woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos.
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Ian Tattersall (Paleontology: A Brief History of Life (Templeton Science and Religion Series))
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There are far better distractions than putting up preserves,” he whispered to her. Her entire face heated even as a tiny smile echoed from her heart. “Do you never stop flirting, Tavish O’Connor?” “Of course. But I needed to see that smile of yours, Sweet Katie.” He spoke quietly, his breath tickling the hair near her temple. “Everything’s right in my world when you smile.
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Sarah M. Eden (Hope Springs (Longing for Home, #2))