Eli Manning Quotes

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.

Night is purer than day; it is better for thinking and loving and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of words that have been spoken during the day takes on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn't know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things at night that should only be said by day.

Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing... And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: "For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where--hanging here from this gallows..." That night, the soup tasted of corpses.

Life belongs to man, but the meaning of life is beyond him.

Even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. That it is possible to feel free inside a prison. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor. That one instant before dying, man is still immortal.

We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

A man can laugh while he suffers.

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

God made man because He loves stories.

Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? "I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why." After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!" "And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.

If life is not a celebration, why remember it ? If life --- mine or that of my fellow man --- is not an offering to the other, what are we doing on this earth?

Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

And I, the for­mer mys­tic, was think­ing: Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve de­ceived You, You chased them from par­adise. When You were dis­pleased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your fa­vour, You caused the heav­ens to rain down fire and damna­tion. But look at these men whom You have be­trayed, al­low­ing them to be tortured, slaugh­tered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray be­fore You! They praise Your name!

We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves. Or not.

Remember also that it is not knowledge but the yearning for knowledge that makes for a complete, accomplished man. Such a man does not stand still but perseveres in the face of adversity, nor does he remain untouched by the pain cause by absence. On the contrary, he recognizes himself in each cry, uttered or repressed, in the smallest rift, in the most pressing need.

What is man? Dust turned to hope.

A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.

I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position. The shadows on the walls, on the faces, are not the same.

I want to save her because..." Even though he was speaking to her, he never took his eyes off mine. "Because I'm a better man with her. Because I can't imagine going back to being who I was before I met her. Because I'm afraid...that I could be that monster again without her here loving me.

My own blood always tasted disappointing. I wondered if it tasted that way to God too.

His eyes met Victor’s, and for a second neither man moved. Run, thought Victor, and he could see the response in Eli’s coiled frame. Chase me.

You needed to be taught a lesson. The kind of lesson that binds one man to another man. You removed a valuable commodity from me. A commodity that was going to provide me with a new face.

Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than come to the conclusion that God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush every time I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.

A man who is fighting for the future of mankind is not waiting for torture, he's waiting for -- the Revolution.

Roman, it's all fine! Okay? You can top, bottom, or do it sideways, it doesn't matter." "You can do it sideways? Is that like spitting sideways?

How can one explain the attraction terror holds for some minds — and why for intellectuals? . . .In a totalitarian and terrorist regime, man is no longer a unique being with infinite possibilities and limitless choices but a number, a puppet, with just this difference — numbers and puppets are not susceptible to fear.

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion. ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source—if not the cause—of all our misfortune.

Usu­al­ly, very ear­ly in the morn­ing. Ger­man la­bor­ers were go­ing to work. They would stop and look at us with­out sur­prise. One day when we had come to a stop, a work­er took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it in­to a wag­on. There was a stam­pede. Dozens of starv­ing men fought des­per­ate­ly over a few crumbs. The work­er watched the spec­ta­cle with great interest. Years later, I witnessed a sim­ilar spec­ta­cle in Aden. Our ship’s pas­sen­gers amused them­selves by throw­ing coins to the “natives,” who dove to retrieve them. An el­egant Parisian la­dy took great plea­sure in this game. When I no­ticed two chil­dren des­perate­ly fighting in the wa­ter, one try­ing to stran­gle the oth­er, I implored the la­dy: “Please, don’t throw any more coins!” “Why not?” said she. “I like to give char­ity…

I took the pistol off the man and shot him with it in both of his eyes. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard a voice telling me that the blind would lead the blind.

Love is this and love is that; man is born to love; he is only alive when he is in the presence of a woman he loves or should love.

I bet Eli doesn't even have one touchdown today, ... I'm the best Manning

Man’s strength resides in his capacity and desire to elevate himself, so as to attain the good. To travel step by step toward the heights. And that is all he can do. To reach heaven and remain there is beyond his powers: Even Moses had to return to earth. Is it the same for evil?

Man asks and God replies but we don't understand his replies because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

A shadow moved in the street below and my mind became focused on the movement. This shadow caught my attention because it moved so quickly. Usually when people remained in the shadows they moved slowly, unless they were running from something and then the sound of running could be heard. I did

[The shock of finding a familiar word in an unfamiliar setting.] A SS man would examine us. Whenever he found a weak one, a musulman as we called them, he would write his number down: good for the crematory.

I hate this part,” I sighed in aggravation and jerked the sunglasses from my eyes, setting them atop my head into my hair. “What?” he said in a voice that clearly didn’t understand where I could be leading things. “This is where the leading man tries to save the girl from herself. She is willing to give up everything for him and he, in his misguided attempt to save her, tells her he’s skipping for the hills and she has to beg him to stay and convince him that her love is real and that she is sound of mind.

Minorities or women have never held a majority in either chamber of Congress, or on the Supreme Court, and there has been only one nonwhite president of the United States in American history. White people got so pissed off at that they replaced Barack Obama with a bigoted con man who questioned whether the Black president was even born in this country, and when their guy lost the next election, his people tried to start a coup.

Look, human men are either 'gay' or 'straight'. Well, there are other options, but let's not get into that right now.

man carries his fiercest enemy within himself. Hell isn’t others. It’s ourselves. Hell is the burning fever that makes you feel cold.

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him, he liked to say. Therein lies true dialogue. Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die. The real answers, Eliezer, you will find only within yourself.

It matters not what language a man speaks; he holds a pen, he holds a plow, he holds a gun in exactly the same manner. We are all children of our tools.

I may not be skilled at eloquent oratory , but for muttering angrily under one's breath, I have never met a more capable man.

Christian sighed. “The lesson is thus: man makes God’s law and shapes it to suit his purpose. I believe there is a God, but what he thinks of my desires, or those of any man, no one can tell. I am done listening to priests on the matter.” Eli Easton. The Lion and the Crow (Kindle Locations 950-952). Goodreads M/M Romance Group.

Is this spirited man the cook?" she shouted. "Are you responsible for this delightful feast? What a piece of luck! … What is it you say, Mr. Apples?" "Like shittin' with the pope." "No, the other thing, less vulgar." "Whistlin' donkey." "Quite! A surprise and a delight like a whistling … How is it that these phrases make sense when you say them? Anyway, bring him along.

But Christian… he was unique, a rose blooming in a frozen tundra. Had Christian been a woman, he might have married a king. As a man, he could have any woman’s bed, or all of them. He could inspire ballads. He could inspire wars.

This is who you are—the man I love.” A shuddering sigh filled his chest as he opened his lips beneath hers, simply breathing her in. Love me, he invited. Even though I don’t deserve it. Even though I’m afraid to accept it. I can’t stop myself from wanting it with every piece of my blackened soul. -Eli & Clara

In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous. We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark from the Shekhinah’s flame; that every one of us carries in his eyes and in his soul a reflection of God’s image. That was the source if not the cause of all our ordeals.

Tragedy often gives birth to courage, it offers man a platform to change what will be." Eli Storm, Emanuel Stone And The Phoenix Shadow

I fucking suck at this backing off thing. Eli and Heather are going to kill me, but I’ll go down a happy man.

The main theme remains constant: man owes it to himself to reject despair; better to rely on miracles than opt for resignation. By changing himself, man can change the world.

I saw a man whose suffering had become a kind of skeleton holding him upright.

A man who can laugh at himeself delivers all men from the burden of their vanity.

Had Christian been a woman, he might have married a king. As a man, he could have any woman’s bed—or all of them. He could inspire ballads. He could inspire wars. William

I learned that man lives differently, depending on whether he is in a horizontal or vertical position.

Whatever god he adores, or even if he rejects all the gods, the man who desires to create cannot express himself if he does not feel in his veins the flow of all the rivers- even those which carry along sand and putrefaction, he is not realizing his entire being if he does not see the light of all the constellations, even those which no longer shine, if the primeval fire, even when locked beneath the crust of the earth, does not consume his nerves, if the hearts of all men, even the dead, even those still to be born, do not beat in his heart, if abstraction does not mount from his senses to his soul to raise it to the plane of the laws which cause men to act, the rivers to flow, the fire to burn, and the constellations to revolve.

The best,” Eli finishes on a groan and eats one of the treats in two bites. He licks his lips, and my ninety-dollar black lace panties are soaking wet. This man should come with a warning label.

You are the sum total of all that we have been,” said the youngster who looked like my former self. “In a way we are the ones to execute John Dawson. Because you can’t do it without us. Now, do you see?” I was beginning to understand. An act so absolute as that of killing involves not only the killer but, as well, those who have formed him. In murdering a man I was making them murderers.

Sirs, I am but a nameless man, A rhymester without a home, Yet since I come of the Wessex clay And carry the cross of Rome, I will even answer the mighty earl That asked of Wessex men Why they be meek and monkish folk, And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke; What sign have we save blood and smoke? Here is my answer then. That on you is fallen the shadow, And not upon the Name; That though we scatter and though we fly, And you hang over us like the sky, You are more tired of victory, Than we are tired of shame. That though you hunt the Christian man Like a hare on the hill-side, The hare has still more heart to run Than you have heart to ride. That though all lances split on you, All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose Than you to win again. Your lord sits high in the saddle, A broken-hearted king, But our king Alfred, lost from fame, Fallen among foes or bonds of shame, In I know not what mean trade or name, Has still some song to sing. Our monks go robed in rain and snow, But the heart of flame therein, But you go clothed in feasts and flames, When all is ice within; Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb Men wandering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery. Nor monkish order only Slides down, as field to fen, All things achieved and chosen pass, As the White Horse fades in the grass, No work of Christian men. Ere the sad gods that made your gods Saw their sad sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale, That you have left to darken and fail, Was cut out of the grass. Therefore your end is on you, Is on you and your kings, Not for a fire in Ely fen, Not that your gods are nine or ten, But because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things. For our God hath blessed creation, Calling it good. I know What spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand; Yet by God's death the stars shall stand And the small apples grow.

As soon as the cold became uncomfortable, Eli had opened his shirt and had a nice long chat with the burn on his chest. Karon was happy to help them stick it to the ice and wind spirits, and he cheerfully kept the air around Eli as warm and dry as a smokehouse. “I only wish it didn’t reek of sulfur,” Josef said, pressing up the mountainside. “I’d almost rather deal with the cold.” “Well, don’t let me stop you,” Eli huffed, though even he looked a little green. “Who am I to stand between a man and his frostbite?

The condemned man’s traditional last meal is a joke,” I said loudly, “a joke in the worst possible taste, an insult to the corpse that he is about to be. What does a man care if he dies with an empty stomach?” The

But now, I no longer pleaded for anything. I was no longer able to lament. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes had opened and I was alone, terribly alone in a world without God, without man. Without love or mercy. I was nothing but ashes now, but I felt myself to be stronger than this Almighty to whom my life had been bound for so long. In the midst of these men assembled for prayer, I felt like an observer, a stranger.

The guys from the board are at a smaller bonfire near the tree line. They’re laughing. Talking shit. Enjoying the fact that they’ve tried to play with my life. Yelling. Loud shouts. It’s near me, but the chaos controlling me makes it incoherent.

Watching him walk over, Alex mused that Eli Cooper was the sort of man who knew how to use his physicality. Beneath his handmade shirts and tailored suits, a street fighter hummed through every loose-limbed motion. But that impression did not extend to his face, which was structurally perfect. Skyscraper-high cheekbones. Superhero jaw. A mouth that should have a government warning. There were no signs of past trouble with a jealous husband or an abandoned girlfriend. No one had ever broken his nose. No one had busted his lip. Strange, because her first instinct on seeing him was to roundhouse kick him into the next millennium.

I remember a young Hungarian Jew, his shoulders stooped like an old man's, who confessed to some infraction so as to be beaten in his uncle's stead. "I am young", he said, "and stronger than he." He was young but no less weak. He did not survive the beating

One German officer lived in the house opposite ours. He had a room with the Kahn family. They said he was a charming man - calm, likable, polite, and sympathetic. Three days after he moved in he brought Madame Kahn a box of chocolates. The optimists rejoiced.

Russell is reputed at a dinner party once to have said, ‘Oh, it is useless talking about inconsistent things, from an inconsistent proposition you can prove anything you like.’ Well, it is very easy to show this by mathematical means. But, as usual, Russell was much cleverer than this. Somebody at the dinner table said, 'Oh, come on!’ He said, 'Well, name an inconsistent proposition,’ and the man said, 'Well, what shall we say, 2 = 1.’ 'All right,’ said Russell, 'what do you want me to prove?’ The man said, 'I want you to prove that you’re the pope.’ 'Why,’ said Russell, 'the pope and I are two, but two equals one, therefore the pope and I are one.

[Tuco is in a bubble bath. The One Armed Man enters the room.] One Armed Man: I've been looking for you for 8 months. Whenever I should have had a gun in my right hand, I thought of you. Now I find you in exactly the position that suits me. I had lots of time to learn to shoot with my left. [Tuco kills him with the gun he has hidden in the foam.] Tuco: When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk.

Cyrus may have been voted in by the members as president, but everyone knows that Eli is the chief of this tribe. Not because that’s how he wants it, it’s because every man who wears a Terror cut respects the hell out of him. But because of Eli’s stint in prison, he can’t hold an official office.

Once a man has mastered himself, he has no king, no conqueror, no predator but himself.

He explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer … Man

I speak from experience that even in darkness, it is possible to create light and encourage compassion. There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man.

man is born to love; he is only alive when he is in the presence of a woman he loves or should love. I

When a man is a hero, he deserves to be sexed in the ass.

All this under a magnificent blue sky.

Ames, will you please keep an eye on this man?" Ambrose slid off the counter and opened the door for them. Eli passed him with a wink, and he bit down a smile. "If I must.

Man asks and God replies. But we don’t understand His replies. We cannot understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and remain there until we die.

Man walks the moon but his soul remains riveted to earth. Once upon a time it was the opposite.

Where is God to be found? In suffering or in rebellion? When is a man most truly a man? When he submits or when he refuses? Where does suffering lead him? To purification or to bestiality?

You are in a concentration camp. In Auschwitz..." A pause. He was observing the effect his words had produced. His face remains in my memory to this day. A tall man, in his thirties, crime written all over his forehead and his gaze. He looked at us as one would a pack of leprous dogs clinging to life. "Remember," he went on. "Remember it always, let it be graven in your memories. You are in Auschwitz. And Auschwitz is not a convalescent home. It is a concentration camp. Here, you must work. If you don't you will go straight to the chimney. Work or crematorium--the choice is yours.

I glanced back at Oren and one of his men- not Eli. This man was older. Oren had called him the team's arctic specialist. Because every Texas billionaire needed an arctic specialist on their security team.

No one is Sighet suspected that our fate was already sealed. In Berlin we had been condemned, but we didn't know it. We didn't know that a man called Adolf Eichmann was already in Budapest weaving his black web, at the head of an elite, efficient detachment of thirty-five SS men, planning the operation that wold crown his career; or that all the necessary means for "dealing with" us were already at hand in a place called Birkenau.

Yes, man is stronger, greater than God. When Adam and Eve deceived You, You chased them from paradise. When You were displeased by Noah’s generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name! “All

Man prefers to blame himself for all possible sins and crimes rather than coe to the conclussion tat God is capable of the most flagrant injustice. I still blush everytime I think of the way God makes fun of human beings, his favorite toys.

Judge God. He created the universe and made justice stem from injustices. He brought it about that a people should attain happiness through tears, that the freedom of a nation, like that of a man, should be a monument built upon a pile, a foundation of dead bodies…

Years ago, a member of Congress slipped a laminated quote into my hand that he must have thought I would find meaningful. I paid little attention at first and unfortunately I don’t recall just who gave me the quote. I placed it next to my voting card and have carried it ever since. The quote came from Elie Wiesel’s book One Generation After. The quote was entitled “Why I Protest.” Author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the one righteous man of Sodom, who walked the streets protesting against the injustice of this city. People made fun of him, derided him. Finally, a young person asked: “Why do you continue your protest against evil; can’t you see no one is paying attention to you?” He answered, “I’ll tell you why I continue. In the beginning, I thought I would change people. Today, I know I cannot. Yet, if I continue my protest, at least I will prevent others from changing me.” I’m not that pessimistic that we can’t change people’s beliefs or that people will not respond to the message of liberty and peace. But we must always be on guard not to let others change us once we gain the confidence that we are on the right track in the search for truth.

Watching him climb, William’s perception shifted again with a bone-rattling jolt. Christian was not soft, he realized. There was nothing of the coddled child in him. He was hard and tough as sinew. Refined? Refined as a purebred stallion, perhaps, or an elemental sprite. But not weak, no. He was a powerful and strong man. For

It was impossible to imagine a time when [Fielding's] dry wit wouldn't be around to make me laugh, or to imagine someone else being the one to see the joy on his face when he learned something new. I thought about all of that, and then I thought about never holding him again, never kissing him again, never again experiencing Fielding pushy and demanding and needing me so bad he trembled with it. And man, it fucking hurt. "Okay," I said out loud, swallowing hard. "Okay, I give. Uncle." It was time to admit defeat, to lay down my cards, and concede the game. For the first time in my life, I was in love. I was in love with a guy. I was in love with Fielding Monroe.

You mustn't forget laughter either. Do you know what laughter is? It's God's mistake. When God made man in order to bend him to his wishes he carelessly gave him the gift of laughter. Little did he know that later that earthworm would use it as a weapon of vengeance. When he found out, there was nothing he could do; it was too late to take back the gift. And yet he tried his best. He drove man out of paradise, invented an infinite variety of sins and punishments, and made him conscious of his own nothingness, all in order to prevent him from laughing. But, as I say, it was too late. God made a mistake before man made his. What they have in common is that they are both irreparable.

Listen. There is a light that includes our darkness. A day that shines down even on the clouds. A man of faith believes that the man in the well is not lost. He does not believe this easily, or without pain, but he believes it. His belief is a kind of knowledge beyond any way of knowing. He believes that the child in the womb is not lost, nor is the man whose work has come to nothing, nor is the old woman forsaken in a nursing home in California. He believes that those who make their bed in hell are not lost, or those who dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, or the lame man at Bethesda pool, or Lazarus in the grave, or those who pray "Eli, Eli, lema sabacthani". Lord have mercy.

social power is power over—the capacity to control others’ states and behaviors. Personal power is power to—the ability to control our own states and behaviors. This is the kind of power Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was referring to when he wrote, “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.” Ideally, we want both kinds of power, but, as Wiesel suggests, personal power—the state of being in command of our most precious and authentic inner resources—is uniquely essential. Unless and until we feel personally powerful, we cannot achieve presence, and all the social power in the world won’t compensate for its absence.

Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of the King's Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the city of London. After his earlier education at St. Anthony's School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to be so established together in a relation of patron and client. The youth wore his patron's livery, and added to his state. The patron used, afterwards, his wealth or influence in helping his young client forward in the world. Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy afterwards in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in 1486 made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are recollections in "Utopia"—delighted in the quick wit of young Thomas More. He once said, "Whoever shall live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man.

The individual is not a cog in a monstrous machine; it is within his power to modify the very laws which imprison him and the very relationship maintained by the Judge with the accused and witnesses. If it is true, as the Baal Shem says, that it is possible for man to hide the light of dawn emanating from the forest simply by shielding his eyes with his hands, still it is no less true that he can rediscover it by merely moving his hands.

Bradshaw’s threats, Timmons’s questions, Billy’s missing family, any and all worries from before are absolved between the lines of the football field. It should be illegal, Trent thinks, the power the game has over men, a blinding, burning feeling—a drug—that’s what football is. And for the winners there are no warning labels, no side effects or hangovers, nothing except the pure, undiluted knowledge that you are superior to your fellow man.

What Zograffi would have to realize was that Elie had come to the end, and there was no farther-on for him. Nothing. Emptiness. They could do anything to him they liked. They could prescribe any punishment. But they mustn't force him to leave. That was beyond him. he would rather sit down on the curbstone and let himself die there in the sun. He was tired. For the others, for a man like Zograffi, did that word have the terrible significance it had for him?

I wanted to weep. Everywhere I went, it seemed that people wanted to discuss slavery, yet they talked about it as if it was an abstract concept. It wasn’t abstract to me. Slaves were real-life people with individual faces and souls. I knew some of those faces, loved some of those souls, and it broke my heart to be reminded of the truth about them—that Josiah and Tessie weren’t allowed to be man and wife; that Grady had been torn without warning from his mother’s arms; that Eli could be whipped for secretly preaching about Jesus in the pine grove or killed for knowing how to read.

The First Amendment was never going to lose this battle on Kennedy’s desk. But the way Kennedy decided to make it win solved nothing. Kennedy refused to decide whether Phillips had a constitutional right to bigotry under the free exercise clause. Instead, he ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which punished Phillips under the CADA, was insufficiently respectful of Phillips’s religious objections. That’s right: Kennedy wouldn’t call Phillips illegally bigoted against gay couples; instead he called the Colorado board illegally bigoted against religious people. It was a punk move, done by a man who was sick of history having its eyes on him. Kennedy peaced out less than two months later and gave Brett Kavanaugh his job.

So what's going on with you and your boyfriend?" Eli asked me right before he shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth during breakfast the next morning. I made a face in the direction of my plate before shooting a glance upward to find Gordo’s eyes on me, a smirk on his face. "Mason?" I asked, going back to my food. Eli made a gagging noise, elbowing me hard in the ribs. "I'm not gonna go into details on how disturbing it is that I say ‘your boyfriend’ and you automatically think of fucking Mase." "He's always calling me his wife, or telling people I don't know that we're getting married," I replied, elbowing him back as hard as he got me. It was partially the truth… but mostly, I didn’t want to talk about the man who had been kissing my shoulder hours ago. "I love Mase, but it'll be a sunny day in my asshole before you and him get together," he mumbled. I snorted, biting into my biscuit. "Who the heck else would you be talking about?" I asked, but I knew. Oh, I knew damn well he was referring to Sacha. Freaking Gordo snickered from across the table before putting his hands up in surrender when I glared at him. "I didn’t say anything." "Sacha, Flabby. Sacha. Your boyfriend. Your snuggle bug." Eliza finally answered. Suddenly the half-eaten biscuit on my plate needed to be eaten immediately. I shoved the entire piece into my mouth to avoid the conversation my brother was trying to edge into. I'd had talks about boys with Eli in the past, and they never ended—or started—well. "There's nothing going on between us. We're just friends." Because we were. Eli made a noise that sounded like “hmmph” deep in his throat. It was incredulous and disbelieving. Then he asked the question to prove it, his attention back on his band mate. "Gordo, do you think I'm blind?" Gordo shook his head. "Gaby, do you think I'm blind?" he asked. "Not blind, just dumb.” I smiled. He shot me a frown. A moment later, he threw his arm over my shoulders and started shoving his plate away with his free hand. "Flabby Gaby, that kid is in love with you." In love. With me? I leaned forward and tried to sniff his breath. “Are you still drunk?” But my brother kept talking before I could keep going. "Anyone with eyes and ears knows that guy thinks you shit out Lucky Charms." Gordo and I burst out laughing. "Is that a good thing?" I asked him. Eliza shoved my face away with his palm, ignoring my commentary again. "And I think that you love him, too." The noise that came out of my mouth sounded like a hybrid “moo” and squawk at the same time. "I—,” I slammed my mouth shut before opening it again with a sputter. “What?

Love's mystery resides in oneness, and so does God's. "Whatever is above is also down below." Between the present concrete world and the other, the one to come, there is a link as between source and reflection. God does not oppose humanity, and man, though vulnerable and ephemeral, can attain immortality in the passing moment. In man's universe, everything is connected because nothing is without meaning. Thence the tolerance the Baal Shem exhibited toward sinners. He refused to give them up as lost. If need be, he could understand - though not accept - evil in others. But evil without consciousness of evil he deemed inadmissible. ...To realize himself, the Baal Shem's Hasidism teaches us, man must first of all remain faithful to his most intimate, truest self; he cannot help others if he negates himself. Any man who loves God while hating or despising His creation, will in the end hate God. A Jew who rejects his origins, his brothers, to make a so-called contribution to mankind, will in the end betray mankind. That is true for all men.

The Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel had lived only for God during his childhood in Hungary; his life had been shaped by the disciplines of the Talmud, and he had hoped one day to be initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah. As a boy, he was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. During his first night in the death camp, watching the black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were to be thrown, he knew that the flames had consumed his faith forever. He was in a world which was the objective correlative of the Godless world imagined by Nietzsche. “Never should I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live,” he wrote years later. “Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.”33 One day the Gestapo hanged a child. Even the SS were disturbed by the prospect of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators. The child who, Wiesel recalled, had the face of a “sad-eyed angel,” was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Wiesel, one of the other prisoners asked: “Where is God? Where is He?” It took the child half an hour to die, while the prisoners were forced to look him in the face. The same man asked again: “Where is God now?” And Wiesel heard a voice within him make this answer: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”34 Dostoevsky had said that the death of a single child could make God unacceptable, but even he, no stranger to inhumanity, had not imagined the death of a child in such circumstances. The horror of Auschwitz is a stark challenge to many of the more conventional ideas of God. The remote God of the philosophers, lost in a transcendent apatheia, becomes intolerable. Many Jews can no longer subscribe to the biblical idea of God who manifests himself in history, who, they say with Wiesel, died in Auschwitz. The idea of a personal God, like one of us writ large, is fraught with difficulty. If this God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he is impotent and useless; if he could have stopped it and chose not to, he is a monster. Jews are not the only people who believe that the Holocaust put an end to conventional theology.