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Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel every particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share."---Forward to Kafka's Short stories
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Anne Rice
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I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.
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Chris Crutcher (Whale Talk)
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And yet not every sense of what's good and right can be trusted, for what else is war but two sides going to battle over what each thinks is right?
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald (I believe that is how he spells his name) seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
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Zelda Fitzgerald (Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)
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Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.
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Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The New Complete Edition)
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Don't sell yourself short. No one will value you. Set a fair price for you, your book, your services, whatever it is that you have to offer. Most of us set way too low a price. Put it a little higher than you would normally be inclined to do. The worst that can happen is someone will come along and steal it.
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John Kremer (1001 Ways to Market Your Books: For Authors and Publishers, 6th Edition)
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It was a strange ending to a voyage that had commenced in a most auspicious manner.
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Maurice Leblanc (The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar (Short Story Index Reprint Series) (English and French Edition))
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Give and you shall receive, much more than you ever thought possible. Give and give again. Keep hoping, keep trying, keep giving! People who give will never be poor!
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.
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Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3))
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Everyone is born equal; we will all die and shed our earthly glory. Riches, power and fame last for only a few short years. Why do we cling so desperately to these fleeting things? Why can't people who have more than enough for their own needs give the rest to their fellow human beings? Why should anyone have to have such a hard life for those few short years on earth?
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Minister's Black Veil - Original Edition)
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Knowledge has the power to destroy fear.
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Alexander James Guckenberger (50 Shades of Alex: Fourth Edition)
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Arsène Lupin, the eccentric gentleman who operates only in the chateaux and salons, and who, one night, entered the residence of Baron Schormann, but emerged empty-handed, leaving, however, his card on which he had scribbled these words: “Arsène Lupin, gentleman-burglar, will return when the furniture is genuine.
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Maurice Leblanc (The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar (Short Story Index Reprint Series) (English and French Edition))
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He kept looking for new experiences, and though he was very successful at everything he attempted, it did not bring him happiness. Remember this, success alone does not bring happiness. Nor does failure have to bring unhappiness.
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Rohinton Mistry (The Harbrace Anthology of Short Fiction - Fifth Edition)
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the fact of a leading organ of Evangelical thought being edited for two successive fortnights from Trouville and Monte Carlo was generally admitted to have been a mistake.
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Saki (The Complete Saki: 144 Collected Novels and Short Stories)
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Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn’t trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he’d been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
“Stories aren’t real,” he told me shortly. “They don’t feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding ‘family’ in the nearest gang.”
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. “Write down the names of some books,” she said. “Maybe we’ll read them.”
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young lives. Stories that use the power of myth to speak truth to the human heart.
Charles de Lint creates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people from troubled backgrounds say that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going.
Recently I saw that parole officer again, and I asked after his work. “Gets harder every year,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.” He stopped me as I turned to go. “That writer? That Charles de Lint? My wife got me to read them books…. Sometimes I pass them to the kids.”
“Do they like them?” I asked him curiously.
“If I can get them to read, they do. I tell them: Stories are important.”
And then he looked at me and smiled.
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Terri Windling
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He had only just made the Elysian deadline; hanging onto the typescript until the last moment in case there was something still to be done; two sentences turned into one, one sentence broken into two, the substitution of a slightly resistant adjective to engender a moment’s reflection, in short, the joys of editing, all carried out without forgetting the art that disguises art.
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Edward St. Aubyn (Lost for Words)
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People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter—another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough. Jealousy means that even just learning that Athena’s signing a six- figure option deal with Netflix means that I’ll be derailed for days, unable to focus on my own work, mired by shame and self-disgust every time I see one of her books in a bookstore display.
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R.F. Kuang (Yellowface)
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Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own (Vintage Feminism Short Edition) (Vintage Feminism Short Editions))
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But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!
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Jules Verne (The Collected Works of Jules Verne: 36 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics))
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The trick in any field - from finance to careers to relationships - is being able to survive the short-run problems so you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth.
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Morgan Housel (Same As Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes, Library Edition)
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One rule of the road not directly stated elsewhere in this book: “The editor is always right.” The corollary is that no writer will take all of his or her editor’s advice; for all have sinned and fallen short of editorial perfection. Put another way, to write is human, to edit is divine.
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Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)
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A woman is driving along when the car in front of her hits the brakes suddenly, and she plows into it. An extremely short man gets out, looks at the damage, and says, “I’m not happy ...” “Well, which one are you?
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Lawrence Dorfman (The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition: Comebacks, Taunts, and Effronteries (Snark Series))
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What's Facebook? It's where moms like me post about how much we love the husbands who annoy the living bejesus out of us, and share expertly edited photos of our kids and generally talk about our loves like we're living in an enchanted fairy tale blessed by rainbow angel unicorns. In short, it's for lying. But I'm addicted.
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Bunmi Laditan
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WHY DID THE rise of agriculture launch the evolution of our crowd infectious diseases? One reason just mentioned is that agriculture sustains much higher human population densities than does the hunting-gathering lifestyle—on the average, 10 to 100 times higher. In addition, hunter-gatherers frequently shift camp and leave behind their own piles of feces with accumulated microbes and worm larvae. But farmers are sedentary and live amid their own sewage, thus providing microbes with a short path from one person’s body into another’s drinking water.
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Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
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For it is essential to opinion that we assent to one of two opposite assertions with fear of the other, so that our adhesion is not firm: to science it is essential to have firm adhesion with intellectual vision, for science possesses certitude which results from the understanding of principles: while faith holds a middle place, for it surpasses opinion in so far as its adhesion is firm, but falls short of science in so far as it lacks vision.
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Thomas Aquinas (The Summa Theologica: Complete Edition)
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Many a time Russ reached up and pinched my cheek and said, “You should’ve been Italian.” He’s the one named me “The Irishman.” Before that they used to call me “Cheech,” which is short for Frank in Italian — Francesco. After
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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Y-Y-Yeah, and I d-do my own carpentry work, too.” I was embarrassed because I was stammering. “That’s what I wanted to hear. I understand you’re a brother of mine.” “That’s right.” I was keeping my sentences short and my words few. “Local 107. Since 1947.” “Our friend speaks very highly of you.
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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Some literary recommendations: James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime; Anais Nin’s collections of short stories Delta of Venus and Little Birds; the erotic novels Emanuelle by Emanuelle Arsan and Story of O by Pauline Réage; Harold Brodkey’s sexual saga “Innocence”—perhaps the greatest depiction of a session of cunnilingus ever penned; novels by Jerzy Kosinski such as Passion Play and Cockpit; Henry Miller’s Under the Roofs of Paris and Quiet Days in Clichy; My Secret Life by Anonymous and The Pure and the Impure by Colette; Nancy Friday’s anthology of fantasies, Secret Garden (filled with the correspondence of real people’s fantasies); stories from The Mammoth Book of Erotica or one of the many erotic anthologies edited by Susie Bright. For those with a taste for poetry, try Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) by Charles Baudelaire or Flesh Unlimited by Guillaume Apollinaire. And for those who like comic books (kinky ones, that is), try the extra-hot works of writer/illustrator Eric Stanton, who specializes in female-domination fantasies.
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Ian Kerner (She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (Kerner))
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So far, all those who have tried to impose their version of what's right on others have failed. After a few years, or even longer, people always want their freedom and their own rights back. This is because having to obey one concept of right is inherently unjust. God has given each of us a unique sense of right, so when we are forced to live under someone else's for years and years, we run the risk of losing our own. But not everyone can be crushed. Sooner or later the longing for freedom is bound to assert itself. “Without realizing it, I've gone from justice to freedom, but I believe that it is only when these two are combined that something great will happen. “Who knows, perhaps one day people will listen more to that ‘little bit of God—known as a conscience—than to their own desires!
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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the men went downstairs to see if the outside door was still locked, but all was well! Of course, we gave the entire office staff a blow-by-blow account of the incident, which had been far from pleasant. It’s much easier to laugh at these kinds of things after they’ve happened, and Bep was the only one who took us seriously.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Whispers was one of these short Italian guys in his early thirties that you’d see all around South Philly, just trying to get by with one hustle or another. This is not the same Whispers they blew up when they bombed his car around the same time. This is the other Whispers. I didn’t know the one they blew up; I just heard about it. I
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word “why” not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Friday, December 10, 1942
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Wednesday, July 7, 1943
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Miss Biegel of Biology (gone are the days when it was called Natural History):
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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I thanked the interesting old lady and I now know that so-called interesting men owe their reputation to their looks alone.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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After that I was free to enjoy the rest of my unforgettable vacation, and now that I had seen the life of the stars up close, I was cured once and for all of my delusions of fame.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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If all the ice sheets melted, sea levels would rise by 60 metres.
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Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything - Illustrated Edition - IN CHINESE - Wan Wu Jian Shi - 万物简史)
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Okay; get out of here. Scram. Farewell . . . Go be short somewhere else.
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Maggie Stiefvater (Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3) (Free Preview Edition))
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Our physical lives are too short in duration to waste any part of them not enjoying the gift of life.
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Harley L Zephier (Warrior Is: First Edition)
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We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.
Arthur Balfour, The Foundations of Belief, eighth edition, pp. 30-31.
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Arthur Balfour
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Everyone is born equal; we all come into the world helpless and innocent. We all breathe the same air, and many of us believe in the same God. And yet … and yet, to many people this one small difference is a huge one! It's huge because many people have never realized what the difference is, for if they had they would have discovered long ago that there's actually no difference at all!
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Anne Frank is best known as the writer of her world-famous diary, though she tried her hand at other genres as well. Between September 1943 and May 1944, Anne wrote numerous stories, fairy tales, essays and personal reminiscences in a stiff-backed notebook reserved for that purpose. She did her utmost to make it resemble a real book, copying her stories neatly into the notebook and adding a title page, a table of contents, page numbers and so forth. Her collection of tales is now reproduced here in full, in a new translation, in the exact order in which she wrote them in her notebook.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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First documented in the late 1800s, then “codified as an independent diagnostic entity” a century later, though largely comorbid with panic disorder. You can read all about it, if you like, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. DSM-5 for short. It’s always amused me, that title; it sounds like a movie franchise. Liked Mental Disorders 4? You’ll love the sequel!
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A.J. Finn (The Woman in the Window)
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At the time when everyone in Syracuse desired the death of Dionysius, an elderly woman prayed over and over that he would be unharmed and outlive her. And after the tyrant learned about this, he asked her why she did so. Then the woman said: 'When I was a girl, we had an oppressive tyrant, and I wished for another ruler. And after the tyrant was killed, a harsher one succeeded the latter shortly afterwards, and I thought that it would be a great blessing if the successor's rule would also be terminated. We then had a still harsher ruler, yourself. And so if you were removed, a worse tyrant will replace you'.
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Thomas Aquinas (On Law, Morality and Politics, 2nd Edition (Hackett Classics))
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This short novel is the opening work of the Scènes de la vie privée, the first volume of La Comédie humaine. The novella was originally entitled Gloire et Malheur (Glory and Misfortune) when it was written in 1829. Published by Mame-Delaunay in the following year, it was followed by four revised editions. The final edition was published by Furne in 1842, appearing under the title of La Maison du chat-qui-pelote.
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Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
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From there we’d go over to the Friendly Lounge at Tenth and Washington, owned by a guy named John who went by the nickname of Skinny Razor. At first I didn’t know anything about John, but some of the guys from Food Fair pushed a little money on their routes for John. A waitress, say, at a diner would borrow $100 and pay back $12 a week for ten weeks. If she couldn’t afford the $12 one week she’d just pay $2, but she’d still owe the $12 for that week and it would get added on at the end. If it wasn’t paid on time the interest would keep piling up. The $2 part of the debt was called the “vig,” which is short for vigorish. It was the juice. My
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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The winning formulation was to say, “Nine out of ten people in the UK pay their tax on time. You are currently in the very small minority of people who have not paid us yet.” Notice this short message conveys (truthfully) both that most people pay on time and that you are in the minority of those who don’t. A follow-up experiment found that the message could be further strengthened by making it local, as in “Nine out of ten taxpayers in Manchester pay on time.” The impact of these letters was substantial, increasing the number of people paying within the first twenty-three days by as much as five percentage points.24 That may not sound like a large
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Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: The Final Edition)
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The human Heart to be allegorized as a cavern; at the entrance there is sunshine, and flowers growing about it. You step within, but a short distance, and begin to find yourself surrounded with a terrible gloom, and monsters of divers kinds; it seems like Hell itself. You are bewildered and wander long without hope. At last a light strikes upon you. You press towards it yon, and find yourself in a region that seems, in some sort, to reproduce the flowers and sunny beauty of the entrance, but all perfect. These are the depths of the heart, or of human nature, bright and peaceful; the gloom and terror may lie deep; but deeper still is this eternal beauty.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (The American Notebooks: The Centenary Edition (Volume 8))
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Now that the war has long been over, I know why my fear vanished beneath that spacious sky. You see, once I was alone with nature I realized, without actually being aware of it, that fear doesn't help, that it doesn't get you anywhere. Anyone who's as frightened as I was should look to nature and realize that God is much closer than most people think. From that moment on, though countless bombs fell close by, I was never truly afraid again.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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The work I do is not exactly respectable. But I want to explain how it works without any of the negatives associated with my infamous clients. I’ll show how I manipulated the media for a good cause. A friend of mine recently used some of my advice on trading up the chain for the benefit of the charity he runs. This friend needed to raise money to cover the costs of a community art project, and chose to do it through Kickstarter, the crowdsourced fund-raising platform. With just a few days’ work, he turned an obscure cause into a popular Internet meme and raised nearly ten thousand dollars to expand the charity internationally. Following my instructions, he made a YouTube video for the Kickstarter page showing off his charity’s work. Not a video of the charity’s best work, or even its most important work, but the work that exaggerated certain elements aimed at helping the video spread. (In this case, two or three examples in exotic locations that actually had the least amount of community benefit.) Next, he wrote a short article for a small local blog in Brooklyn and embedded the video. This site was chosen because its stories were often used or picked up by the New York section of the Huffington Post. As expected, the Huffington Post did bite, and ultimately featured the story as local news in both New York City and Los Angeles. Following my advice, he sent an e-mail from a fake address with these links to a reporter at CBS in Los Angeles, who then did a television piece on it—using mostly clips from my friend’s heavily edited video. In anticipation of all of this he’d been active on a channel of the social news site Reddit (where users vote on stories and topics they like) during the weeks leading up to his campaign launch in order to build up some connections on the site. When the CBS News piece came out and the video was up, he was ready to post it all on Reddit. It made the front page almost immediately. This score on Reddit (now bolstered by other press as well) put the story on the radar of what I call the major “cool stuff” blogs—sites like BoingBoing, Laughing Squid, FFFFOUND!, and others—since they get post ideas from Reddit. From this final burst of coverage, money began pouring in, as did volunteers, recognition, and new ideas. With no advertising budget, no publicist, and no experience, his little video did nearly a half million views, and funded his project for the next two years. It went from nothing to something. This may have all been for charity, but it still raises a critical question: What exactly happened? How was it so easy for him to manipulate the media, even for a good cause? He turned one exaggerated amateur video into a news story that was written about independently by dozens of outlets in dozens of markets and did millions of media impressions. It even registered nationally. He had created and then manipulated this attention entirely by himself.
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Ryan Holiday (Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator)
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Ego serves me well when I surrender the need to be right, to win, feel superior or seek approval. Let me see past what might be called failings, achievement or status...so that I may know many hearts and love unconditionally.
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Joy Ross (EARTH ANGELS – Edition #1: 13 Journeys of Triumph - Wisdom with Wings (EARTH ANGELS: 13 Journeys of Triumph))
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Dear Ms. Dunne,
I was hoping that you could come to the school to discuss Katie’s rapidly deteriorating behavior in class. Her attention span is short and she distracts other students by her note-passing. How does Wednesday after school sound? You can reach me at the school. You know the number.
Ms. Casey
To Katie,
What do you mean your mum just laughed?
From Toby
Ahern, Cecelia (2005-02-01). Love, Rosie (p. 99). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.
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Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
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To most people today, the name Snow White evokes visions of dwarfs whistling as they work, and a wide–eyed, fluttery princess singing, "Some day my prince will come." (A friend of mine claims this song is responsible for the problems of a whole generation of American women.) Yet the Snow White theme is one of the darkest and strangest to be found in the fairy tale canon — a chilling tale of murderous rivalry, adolescent sexual ripening, poisoned gifts, blood on snow, witchcraft, and ritual cannibalism. . .in short, not a tale originally intended for children's tender ears. Disney's well–known film version of the story, released in 1937, was ostensibly based on the German tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm. Originally titled "Snow–drop" and published in Kinder–und Hausmarchen in 1812, the Grimms' "Snow White" is a darker, chillier story than the musical Disney cartoon, yet it too had been cleaned up for publication, edited to emphasize the good Protestant values held by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. (...) Variants of Snow White were popular around the world long before the Grimms claimed it for Germany, but their version of the story (along with Walt Disney's) is the one that most people know today. Elements from the story can be traced back to the oldest oral tales of antiquity, but the earliest known written version was published in Italy in 1634.
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Terri Windling (White as Snow)
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From books, the Spaniards knew of many contemporary civilizations remote from Europe, and about several thousand years of European history. Pizarro explicitly modeled his ambush of Atahuallpa on the successful strategy of Cortés. In short, literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and history. By contrast, not only did Atahuallpa have no conception of the Spaniards themselves, and no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas, but he also had not even heard (or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history. That gulf of experience encouraged Pizarro to set his trap and Atahuallpa to walk into it.
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Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition))
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The Strategic Bombing Survey estimates that “probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man.” The fire storm at Dresden may have killed more people but not in so short a space of time. More than 100,000 men, women and children died in Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945; a million were injured, at least 41,000 seriously; a million in all lost their homes. Two thousand tons of incendiaries delivered that punishment—in the modern notation, two kilotons. But the wind, not the weight of bombs alone, created the conflagration, and therefore the efficiency of the slaughter was in some sense still in part an act of God.
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Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
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effort was made to select short pieces, quotes, and art that represent the diversity of trans communities. We have inevitably failed at this goal. Most of the authors live in the United States or Canada. Many are middle or upper class, and many are white. There are stories that are not told here—voices that are not heard. If one of these voices is yours, please consider completing our online survey or sending your suggestions for the next edition of this book to info@transbodies.com
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Laura Erickson-Schroth (Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community)
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We tend to think of the brain in terms of its other critical physical and chemical domains. But its plasticity, its ability to change and to learn, seems to lay primarily in its electrical, oscillatory properties—in short, in the way it fires. As
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Sebern F. Fisher (Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain (10th Anniversary Edition))
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Take a look,” I said. “If you want to find inner happiness, go outside on a nice day with lots of sun and blue sky. Even if you stand at a window and look out over the city at the cloudless sky, like we're doing now, you'll eventually find happiness.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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People always describe jealousy as this sharp, green, venomous thing. Unfounded, vinegary, mean-spirited. But I’ve found that jealousy, to writers, feels more like fear. Jealousy is the spike in my heart rate when I glimpse news of Athena’s success on Twitter—another book contract, awards nominations, special editions, foreign rights deals. Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough.
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R.F. Kuang (Yellowface)
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Yes, in the sense that I felt a certain contentment. Not always, mind you. I moaned and groaned from time to time. But I was never downright depressed again, probably because I realized that sadness comes from feeling sorry for yourself and happiness from joy.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Yet it would be nearly impossible to overstate Lyell’s influence. The Principles of Geology went through twelve editions in his lifetime and contained notions that shaped geological thinking far into the twentieth century. Darwin took a first edition with him on the Beagle voyage and wrote afterwards that ‘the great merit of the Principles was that it altered the whole tone of one’s mind, and therefore that, when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes22.’ In short, he thought him nearly a god, as did many of his generation. It is a testament to the strength of Lyell’s sway that in the 1980s, when geologists had to abandon just a part of his theory to accommodate the impact theory of extinctions, it nearly killed them. But that is another chapter.
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Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything)
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Not only the portraits on the walls, but also the shelves in the library were thinned out. The disappearance of certain books and brochures happened discretely, usually the day after the arrival of a new message from above. Rubashov made his sarcastic commentaries on it while dictating to Arlova, who received them in silence. Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves – their author, the People’s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history and antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors on problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People’s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People’s State; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopedia published by the Academy – a new revised edition being promised shortly.
New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.
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Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
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I remember you organized the big laundry party and all of our friends took their dirty clothes to the laundromat and drank wine out of a wineskin until the manager threw us out because you kept yelling that there ought to be a prize given to the owner of the biggest pair of boxer shorts.
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Guy Vanderhaeghe (My Present Age)
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That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement upon the work of the Roman augurs. Has the trade of interpreting the Lord’s matters gone out, discouraged by the time-worn fact that nobody succeeds at it? No, it still flourishes; there was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it. Whenever there has been an opportunity to attribute to Him reasonings and conduct which would make a half-witted human being ridiculous, there has always been an expert ready and glad to take advantage of it.
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Mark Twain (Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition (Autobiography of Mark Twain series))
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...the process of truly learning is laborious, monotonous, and at times down right bitter and boring. Therefore, obtaining a truly higher education will require of you a determined mind and a will to stick and stay. In short, it will take discipline. But in the end, it will be worth it all.
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Daniel Whyte III (Letters to Young Black Men: Advice and Encouragement for a Difficult Journey, 10th Anniversary Edition)
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The next year, Kroger refused to negotiate a new contract, and Hoffa’s victory was short-lived. But on the strength of his stand with the Strawberry Boys, Jimmy Hoffa was recruited by Detroit’s Teamsters Local 299 as an organizer. Hoffa’s job was to encourage men to join the union and through solidarity and organization to better their lives and the lives of their families. Detroit was home to America’s auto industry. As the auto industry’s chief spokesman, Henry Ford’s position on the labor movement in general was that “labor unions are the worst thing that ever struck the earth.” In
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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In the old days, when I was a little girl, Pim used to tell me stories about “Der bösen Paula.”* He had a whole collection of Paula stories, and I adored them all. Now, whenever I go to him for comfort in the middle of the night, he's started telling me Paula stories again, so I've written down the latest one.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Most people are blinded by the outer glow. If they'd been allowed to vote, very few people would have picked the rose. The rose is majestic and beautiful, and just as in the real world, no one asks the flowers whether a bloom which is outwardly less pretty might actually be inwardly more beautiful and more fit to rule.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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They were pale, and didn't say a word when Cady entered the room. Had they been sitting like this every night for months? Seeing all those pale and frightened faces was awful. With each bang of an outside door, a shock went through everyone in the room, as if the door to life itself were symbolically being slammed shut.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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They had discovered the reason no elements beyond uranium exist naturally in the world: the two forces working against each other in the nucleus eventually cancel each other out. They pictured the uranium nucleus as a liquid drop gone wobbly with the looseness of its confinement and imagined it hit by even a barely energetic slow neutron. The neutron would add its energy to the whole. The nucleus would oscillate. In one of its many random modes of oscillation it might elongate. Since the strong force operates only over extremely short distances, the electric force repelling the two bulbs of an elongated drop would gain advantage. The two bulbs would push farther
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Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
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Now a kangaroo has short arms, so I’m figuring I’ll knock his ass out. They put gloves on me and I start jabbing away at him, but what I didn’t know is that a kangaroo has a loose jaw so when you hit them it doesn’t go to their brain and knock them out. I’m only jabbing at him, because who wants to hurt a kangaroo? But when I couldn’t’ get anywhere with him with my jab I let loose with an overhand right, a real haymaker. Down the kangaroo goes and I feel this hard whack on the back of my head where my old man used to whack me. I shake it off and go back to jabbing the kangaroo who’s hopping all over the place, and I’m trying to figure out who the S.O.B. was who clipped me from behind. You
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Charles Brandt ("I Heard You Paint Houses", Updated Edition: Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa)
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Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. ALBERT EINSTEIN
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Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion: 10th Anniversary Edition)
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As Eva grew older, she did a lot of good things for those around her. At the age of sixteen (four years after meeting the elf), she was generally acknowledged to be a friendly, gentle and helpful girl. Every time she did something good, she felt happy and warm inside, and she gradually came to understand what the elf had meant by “the song in her heart.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Doubtless there are people who continue to consider love above dollars and cents. Particularly is this true or that class whom economic necessity has forced to become self-supporting. The tremendous change in woman's position, wrought by that might factor, is indeed phenomenal when we reflect that it is but a short time since she has entered the industrial arena. Six million women wage workers; six million women, who have equal rights with men to be exploited, to be robbed, to go on strike; aye, to starve even. Anything more, my lord? Yes, six million wage workers in every walk of life, from the highest brain work to the mines and railroad tracks; yes, even detectives and policemen. Surely the emancipation is complete.
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Emma Goldman (Marriage and Love [Illustrated edition])
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Do any of those people in their warm and cozy living rooms have any idea what kind of life a beggar leads? Do any of those “good” and “kind” people ever wonder about the lives of so many of the children and adults around them? Granted, everyone has given a coin to a beggar at some time or another, though they usually just shove it into his hand and slam the door.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Over the past 30 years, approximately 300 million people have moved into China’s middle class. And according to the OECD Development Centre, the forecast is for another 200 million people to move into the middle class by 2026. This means the Asia Pacific region, which in 2009 represented 18% of the world’s middle class, will reach 66 percent by 2030. Let’s repeat that. Over the next 15 years, Asia will go from 20 percent to 66 percent of the world’s middle class. At the same time, the developed markets of North America and Europe, which held a combined 54 percent of the global middle class in 2009, are forecast to drop to only 21 percent by 2030. Basically, follow the money. Asia’s middle class consumers are the future. Learn Mandarin.
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Jeffrey Towson (The One Hour China Book (2017 Edition): Two Peking University Professors Explain All of China Business in Six Short Stories)
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My gentle Reader, I perceive,
How patiently you've waited,
And now I fear that you expect
Some tale will be related.
O Reader! had you in your mind
Such stores as silent thought can bring,
O gentle Reader! you would find
A tale in every thing.
What more I have to say is short,
And you must kindly take it:
It is no tale; but, should you think,
Perhaps a tale you'll make it.
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William Wordsworth (The Complete Lyrical Ballads: Original 1798 Edition)
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Actually, what you're hoping to find when you're depressed is happiness. Even if you miss a lot because you have no one to talk to, once you've found your own inner happiness, you'll never lose it. I don't mean this in terms of material things, but in a spiritual sense. I believe that once your own inner happiness has been found, it might go underground for a while, but it will never be lost!
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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Most of the houses were of logs—all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adze. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all.
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Mark Twain (Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition, Volume 1)
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First, there's the rose— the queen of the flowers; she's so beautiful and her fragrance is so intoxicating that it goes to everyone's head, most of all her own. The rose is beautiful, sweet-smelling and elegant, but if things aren't going her way, she shows her thorns. She's like a spoiled child—beautiful, elegant and seemingly nice as can be, but if you touch her or talk to someone else so that she's no longer the center of attention, out come her claws.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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described approached so nigh as to receive some interruption from the warders, he dashed his dusky green turban from his head, showed that his beard and eyebrows were shaved like those of a professed buffoon, and that the expression of his fantastic and writhen features, as well as of his little black eyes, which glittered like jet, was that of a crazed imagination. "Dance, marabout," cried the soldiers, acquainted with the manners of these wandering enthusiasts, "dance, or we will scourge thee with our bow-strings till thou spin as never top did under schoolboy's lash." Thus shouted the reckless warders, as much delighted at having a subject to tease as a child when he catches a butterfly, or a schoolboy upon discovering a bird's nest. The marabout, as if happy to do their behests, bounded from the earth, and spun his giddy round before them with singular agility, which, when contrasted with his slight and wasted figure, and
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Walter Scott (The Complete Works of Sir Walter Scott: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Plays, Journal, Letters, Articles and much more (Illustrated Edition): The Entire ... Guy Mannering, The Antiquary and many more)
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I believe that God speaks ‘through me’ because He gives each person a little bit of Himself before sending them into the world. It's this part of us that distinguishes between good and evil and answers our questions. This little bit of God is just as much a part of nature as the blossoming of flowers and the singing of birds. “But God has also given people passions and desires, and these desires are in conflict with goodness and justice. As Hans said, Our sense of what's good and right also comes from God.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains. Because of the change in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure, and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room that looked across all the roofs and the chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplace drew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work.
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Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition)
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I must confess that I am not at all partial to the fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to make their journey through life without a Baedeker of that kind to give them information on every subject. Let us humbly accept the contempt with which they look down on us from the vatnage-ground of their superior needs. But since we cannot forgot our narcissistic pride either, we will draw comfort from the reflection that such 'Handbooks to Life' soon grow out of date and that it is precisely our short-sighted, narrow, and finicky work which obliges them to appear in new editions, and that even the most up-to-date of them are nothing but attempts to find a substitute for the ancient, useful and all-sufficient Church Catechism. We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change. The benighted traveller may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but, for all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.
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Sigmund Freud
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Germany had been united in empire for only eight years when Einstein was born in Ulm on March 14, 1879. He grew up in Munich. He was slow to speak, but he was not, as legend has it, slow in his studies; he consistently earned the highest or next-highest marks in mathematics and Latin in school and Gymnasium. At four or five the “miracle” of a compass his father showed him excited him so much, he remembered, that he “trembled and grew cold.” It seemed to him then that “there had to be something behind objects that lay deeply hidden.”624 He would look for the something which objects hid, though his particular genius was to discover that there was nothing behind them to hide; that objects, as matter and as energy, were all; that even space and time were not the invisible matrices of the material world but its attributes. “If you will not take the answer too seriously,” he told a clamorous crowd of reporters in New York in 1921 who asked him for a short explanation of relativity, “and consider it only as a kind of joke, then I can explain it as follows. It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would be left. According to the relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with the things.
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Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 25th Anniversary Edition)
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The British Bible translator J. B. Phillips, after completing his work on this section of Scripture, could not help reflecting on what he had observed. In the 1955 preface to his first edition of Acts, he wrote: It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book … without being profoundly stirred and, to be honest, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ…. Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by overorganization. These men did not make ‘acts of faith,’ they believed; they did not ‘say their prayers,’ they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naive by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.1
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Jim Cymbala (Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire: What Happens When God's Spirit Invades the Heart of His People)
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Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.
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Gary Thorp (Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks)
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At last she's through, her baskets are full. In the meantime the sun has set. Krista lies down in the grass, with her hands cupped behind her head and her eyes open, and looks at what's left of the pale-blue sky. This is the finest fifteen minutes of her day. You mustn't think that the little flower girl, who's worked so hard, is unhappy. She's never unhappy, and as long as she has these few moments every day, she never will be. There in the meadow, among the flowers and the grass, beneath the wide-open sky, Krista is content. Gone is her exhaustion, gone are the market and the people; she thinks and dreams only of the present. If only she can have this every day, a whole fifteen minutes of doing nothing, alone with God and nature.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
“
Shortly after finding Phantastes, Jack ordered a copy of British Ballads in the Everyman edition with a chocolate binding, a style of book binding that Arthur liked but Jack formerly did not. He joked to Arthur about being converted to all of Arthur’s views and then, adding to the joke, suggested that Arthur might even make a Christian of him.107 Jack’s jokes had a way of being prophetic. The extent to which his lust for beautiful editions of books had gotten the better of him is evident from an episode shortly after he had promised himself to read one of William Morris’s translations of the Icelandic sagas as soon as he finished The Faerie Queene. He found the very book he wanted in the cheap Walter Scott Library edition, but decided not to buy it because the edition simply was not pretty enough.
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Harry Lee Poe (Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898–1918))
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This bluebell is simple and kind. It brings joy to the world. It chimes for flowers, just as church bells chime for people. It helps lots of flowers and is a comfort to them. The bluebell is never lonely; there's music in its heart. It's a much happier creature than the rose. The bluebell isn't interested in the praise of others. The rose lives and thrives on admiration. When that's missing, the rose has nothing to make her happy. Her outward appearance is for other people, but her heart is empty and therefore cheerless. The bluebell, on the other hand, may not be as beautiful, but she has ‘real’ friends who value her melodies; those friends live in the flower's heart.” “But the bluebell is also a pretty flower, isn't it?” “Yes, but not as eye-catching as the rose. Unfortunately, most people only notice the most obvious things.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
“
What then? Are we only to buy the books that we read? The question has merely to be thus bluntly put, and it answers itself. All impassioned bookmen, except a few who devote their whole lives to reading, have rows of books on their shelves which they have never read, and which they never will read. I know that I have hundreds such. My eye rests on the works of Berkeley in three volumes, with a preface by the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour. I cannot conceive the circumstances under which I shall ever read Berkeley; but I do not regret having bought him in a good edition, and I would buy him again if I had him not; for when I look at him some of his virtue passes into me; I am the better for him. A certain aroma of philosophy informs my soul, and I am less crude than I should otherwise be. This is not fancy, but fact.
[…..]
"Taking Berkeley simply as an instance, I will utilise him a little further. I ought to have read Berkeley, you say; just as I ought to have read Spenser, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Victor Hugo. Not at all. There is no ‘ought’ about it. If the mass of obtainable first-class literature were, as it was perhaps a century ago, not too large to be assimilated by a man of ordinary limited leisure _in_ his leisure and during the first half of his life, then possibly there might be an ‘ought’ about it. But the mass has grown unmanageable, even by those robust professional readers who can ‘grapple with whole libraries.’ And I am not a professional reader. I am a writer, just as I might be a hotel-keeper, a solicitor, a doctor, a grocer, or an earthenware manufacturer. I read in my scanty spare time, and I don’t read in all my spare time, either. I have other distractions. I read what I feel inclined to read, and I am conscious of no duty to finish a book that I don’t care to finish. I read in my leisure, not from a sense of duty, not to improve myself, but solely because it gives me pleasure to read. Sometimes it takes me a month to get through one book. I expect my case is quite an average case. But am I going to fetter my buying to my reading? Not exactly! I want to have lots of books on my shelves because I know they are good, because I know they would amuse me, because I like to look at them, and because one day I might have a caprice to read them. (Berkeley, even thy turn may come!) In short, I want them because I want them. And shall I be deterred from possessing them by the fear of some sequestered and singular person, some person who has read vastly but who doesn’t know the difference between a J.S. Muria cigar and an R.P. Muria, strolling in and bullying me with the dreadful query: ‘_Sir, do you read your books?_
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Arnold Bennett (Mental Efficiency)
“
Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason
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Louise Erdrich (The Sentence)
“
There is one point of phraseology which I ought to explain here to forestall any misunderstanding. I use throughout the term "liberal" in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that "liberal" has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control. I am still puzzled why those in the United States who truly believe in liberty should not only have allowed the left to appropriate this almost indispensable term but should even have assisted by beginning to use it themselves as a term of opprobrium. This seems to be particularly regrettable because of the consequent tendency of many true liberals to describe themselves as conservatives.
It is true, of course, that in the struggle against the believers in the all-powerful state the true liberal must sometimes make common cause with the conservative, and in some circumstances, as in contemporary Britain, he has hardly any other way of actively working for his ideals. But true liberalism is still distinct from conservatism, and there is danger in the two being confused. Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of established privilege and to lean on the power of absolute government for the protection of privilege. The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms to others
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Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents - the Definitive Edition)
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I've been thinking about God quite a bit lately, though I've never told anyone before. When I was a little girl, my parents taught me to say a prayer every night before I went to bed. It became a habit, like brushing my teeth. I took God for granted. I mean, I never thought about Him, because all my wants and needs were taken care of. Now that I've had this accident and I'm often alone, I've had more than enough time to ponder all kinds of things. One of the first nights I was here, I got halfway through my prayers and realized that my mind was on very different matters. So I did something I'd never done before. I started thinking about the underlying meaning of the words and discovered that there's much more to this supposedly simple child's prayer than I ever suspected. Since that night, I've been saying other prayers, things that I myself thought were beautiful, not just a standard prayer. But a few weeks ago, I was halfway through my prayers again when a thought struck me like a bolt of lightning: ‘Why should God help me now, in my hour of need, when I all but ignored Him in better days?’ This question kept haunting me, because I knew that it would only be fair if God were to ignore my prayers in return.
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Anne Frank (Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings, Revised Edition)
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There is an excellent short book (126 pages) by Faustino Ballvè, Essentials of Economics (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education), which briefly summarizes principles and policies. A book that does that at somewhat greater length (327 pages) is Understanding the Dollar Crisis by Percy L. Greaves (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1973). Bettina Bien Greaves has assembled two volumes of readings on Free Market Economics (Foundation for Economic Education). The reader who aims at a thorough understanding, and feels prepared for it, should next read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1949, 1966, 907 pages). This book extended the logical unity and precision of economics beyond that of any previous work. A two-volume work written thirteen years after Human Action by a student of Mises is Murray N. Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (Mission, Kan.: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1962, 987 pages). This contains much original and penetrating material; its exposition is admirably lucid; and its arrangement makes it in some respects more suitable for textbook use than Mises’ great work. Short books that discuss special economic subjects in a simple way are Planning for Freedom by Ludwig von Mises (South Holland, 111.: Libertarian Press, 1952), and Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). There is an excellent pamphlet by Murray N. Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money? (Santa Ana, Calif.: Rampart College, 1964, 1974, 62 pages). On the urgent subject of inflation, a book by the present author has recently been published, The Inflation Crisis, and How to Resolve It (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978). Among recent works which discuss current ideologies and developments from a point of view similar to that of this volume are the present author’s The Failure of the “New Economics”: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies (Arlington House, 1959); F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1945) and the same author’s monumental Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). Ludwig von Mises’ Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936, 1969) is the most thorough and devastating critique of collectivistic doctrines ever written. The reader should not overlook, of course, Frederic Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms (ca. 1844), and particularly his essay on “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Those who are interested in working through the economic classics might find it most profitable to do this in the reverse of their historical order. Presented in this order, the chief works to be consulted, with the dates of their first editions, are: Philip Wicksteed, The Common Sense of Political Economy, 1911; John Bates Clark, The Distribution of Wealth, 1899; Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, 1888; Karl Menger, Principles of Economics, 1871; W. Stanley Jevons, The Theory of Political Economy, 1871; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848; David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817; and Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
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Henry Hazlitt (Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics)
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She clicks on the last slide, and that’s when it happens. “Me So Horny” blasts out of the speakers and my video, mine and Peter’s, flashes on the projector screen. Someone has taken the video from Anonybitch’s Instagram and put their own soundtrack to it. They’ve edited it too, so I bop up and down on Peter’s lap at triple speed to the beat.
Oh no no no no. Please, no.
Everything happens at once. People are shrieking and laughing and pointing and going “Oooh!” Mr. Vasquez is jumping up to unplug the projector, and then Peter’s running onstage, grabbing the microphone out of a stunned Reena’s hand.
“Whoever did that is a piece of garbage. And not that it’s anybody’s fucking business, but Lara Jean and I did not have sex in the hot tub.”
My ears are ringing, and people are twisting around in their seats to look at me and then shifting back around to look at Peter.
“All we did was kiss, so fuck off!” Mr. Vasquez, the junior class advisor, is trying to grab the mic back from Peter, but Peter manages to maintain control of it. He holds the mic up high and yells out, “I’m gonna find whoever did this and kick their ass!” In the scuffle, he drops the mic. People are cheering and laughing. Peter’s being frog-marched off the stage, and he frantically looks out into the audience. He’s looking for me.
The assembly breaks up then, and everyone starts filing out the doors, but I stay low in my seat. Chris comes and finds me, face alight. She grabs me by the shoulders. “Ummm, that was crazy! He freaking dropped the F bomb twice!”
I am still in a state of shock, maybe. A video of me and Peter hot and heavy was just on the projector screen, and everyone saw Mr. Vasquez, seventy-year-old Mr. Glebe who doesn’t even know what Instagram is. The only passionate kiss of my life and everybody saw.
Chris shakes my shoulders. “Lara Jean! Are you okay?” I nod mutely, and she releases me. “He’s kicking whoever did it’s ass? I’d love to see that!” She snorts and throws her head back like a wild pony. “I mean, the boy’s an idiot if he thinks for one second it wasn’t Gen who posted that video. Like, wow, those are some serious blinders, y’know?” Chris stops short and examines my face. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Everybody saw us.”
“Yeah…that sucked. I’m sure that was Gen’s handiwork. She must’ve gotten one of her little minions to sneak it onto Reena’s PowerPoint.” Chris shakes her head in disgust. “She’s such a bitch. I’m glad Peter set the record straight, though. Like, I hate to give him credit, but that was an act of chivalry. No guy has ever set the record straight for me.
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Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
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Our critique is not opposed to the *dogmatic procedure* of reason in its pure knowledge as science (for science must always be dogmatic, that is, derive its proof from secure *a priori* principles), but only to *dogmatism*, that is, to the presumption that it is possible to make any progress with pure (philosophical) knowledge from concepts according to principles, such as reason has long been in the habit of using, without first inquiring in what way, and by what right, it has come to posses them. Dogmatism is therefore the dogmatic procedure of pure reason, *without a preceding critique of its own powers*; and our opposition to this is not intended to defend that loquacious shallowness which arrogates to itself the name of popularity, much less that skepticism which makes short work of the whole of metaphysics. On the contrary, our critique is meant to form a necessary preparation in support of metaphysics as a thorough science, which must necessarily be carried out dogmatically and strictly systematically, so as to satisfy all the demands, no so much of the public at large, as of the Schools. This is an indispensable demand for it has undertaken to carry out its work entirely *a priori*, and thus to carry it out to the complete satisfaction of speculative reason. In the execution of this plan, as traced out by the critique, that is, in a future system of metaphysics, we shall have to follow the strict method of the celebrated Wolff, the greatest of all dogmatic philosophers. He was the first to give an example (and by his example initiated, in Germany, that spirit of thoroughness which is not yet extinct) of how the secure course of a science could be attained only through the lawful establishment of principles, the clear determination of concepts, the attempt at strictness of proof and avoidance of taking bold leaps in our inferences. He was therefore most eminently qualified to give metaphysics the dignity of a science, if it had only occurred to him to prepare his field in advance by criticism of the organ, that is, of pure reason itself―an omission due not so much to himself as to the dogmatic mentality of his age, about which the philosophers of his own, as well as of all previous times, have no right to reproach one another. Those who reject both the method of Wolff and the procedure of the critique of pure reason can have no other aim but to shake off the fetters of *science* altogether, and thus to change work into play, certainty into opinion and philosophy into philodoxy."
―from_Critique of Pure Reason_. Preface to the Second Edition. Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Marcus Weigelt, based on the translation by Max Müller, pp. 28-29
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Immanuel Kant