“
I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.
”
”
Carlos Castaneda
“
I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
”
”
Howard Zinn
“
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strenghs; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
”
”
William Arthur Ward
“
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy.
”
”
Arthur Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1)
“
...I believe it important to emphasize how strongly I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.
”
”
Elie Wiesel (Night (The Night Trilogy, #1))
“
When you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel, so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby, imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life, rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.
[The New York Times interview, 2000]
”
”
Philip Pullman
“
The nobler sort of man emphasizes the good qualities in others, and does not accentuate the bad. The inferior does.
”
”
Confucius
“
The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?
”
”
Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation (Southern Reach #1))
“
I'm dead, not impotent. Nasty rumors like that must be squashed before they gain momentum. Feel free to emphasize how very functional I am.
”
”
Rachel Vincent (If I Die (Soul Screamers, #5))
“
Do the best you can. But I want to emphasize that it be the very best. We are too prone to be satisfied with mediocre performance. We are capable of doing so much better.
”
”
Gordon B. Hinckley
“
Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and practice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving.
”
”
bell hooks
“
For the time being—”He emphasized each word. “I’ll be the only one climbing through your window.
”
”
Piper Shelly (Play With Me (Grover Beach Team, #1))
“
Prediction Machines is not a recipe for success in the AI economy. Instead, we emphasize trade-offs. More data means less privacy. More speed means less accuracy. More autonomy means less control.
”
”
Ajay Agrawal (Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence)
“
I’m a teacher! A teacher, Potter! How dare yeh threaten ter break down my door!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Harry, emphasizing the last word.
Hagrid looked stunned. “Since when have yeh called me ‘sir’?”
“Since when have you called me ‘Potter’?
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6))
“
I'd like to emphasize that when a reader finishes a great novel, he will immediately begin looking for another. If someone loves your book, it increases the chance that he or she will look at mine. So there is no competition between writers. Another writer's success helps build a larger readership for all of us.
”
”
David Farland
“
We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22)
”
”
Karen Armstrong (Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life)
“
Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive.
”
”
A.S.A. Harrison (The Silent Wife)
“
A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith; sees your anxieties but frees your spirit; recognizes your disabilities but emphasizes your possibilities.
”
”
William Arthur Ward
“
He hesitated, then lifted his head and sniffed. “Have you been drinking?” The question was more curious than accusatory. “No,” Bast said. The innkeeper raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been tasting,” Bast said, emphasizing the word. “Tasting comes before drinking.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.
”
”
Audre Lorde (Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power)
“
Oh, hey. This looks promising. "
We came to a stop before a high, barbwire fence with an enormous
PRIVATE PROPERTY--NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ALLOWED sign on it.
The lettering was red, apparently to emphasize how serious they were. Personally, I would have added a skull and crossbones to really drive the message home.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
“
Emphasizing the crowd means de-emphasizing individual humans in the design of society, and when you ask people not to be people, they revert to bad, mob-like behaviors.
”
”
Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget)
“
Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she’s a woman. We know she’s a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the constant state of risk and danger they are living in.
”
”
bell hooks (Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism)
“
There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditiionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.
”
”
Margaret Thatcher (The Path to Power)
“
To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
”
”
Tom Robbins
“
Open your mind to the world and the many different ways that can be found in it, before making hasty judgments of others. After all, the very same thing that you judge from where you are— may very well be something totally different in meaning on the other side of the world. The problem with making hasty judgments is that it will emphasize your ignorance at the end of the day.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
Elodin looked at me. "What a remarkably honest threat," he said. "Normally they're much more growlish and gristly than that."
"Gristly?" I asked, emphasizing the 't.' "Don't you mean grisly?"
"Both," he said. "Usually there's a lot of, 'I'll break your knees. I'll break your neck.'" He shrugged. "Makes me think of gristle, like when you're boning a chicken.
”
”
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
“
I cannot emphasize enough how wrongheaded this is. Withholding criticism and ignoring differences are racism in its purest form. Yet these cultural experts fail to notice that, through their anxious avoidance of criticizing non-Western countries, they trap the people who represent these cultures in a state of backwardness. The experts may have the best of intentions, but as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
”
”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam)
“
I emphasize in it [my Orientalism] accortdingly that neither the term Orient nor the concept of the West has any ontological stability; each is made up of human effort, partly affirmation, partly identification of the Other.
”
”
Edward W. Said
“
for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?
”
”
Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1))
“
When I was seventeen you said you wanted to perform an autopsy on me, to crack open my ribcage and squeeze my heart until it burst between your fingers.” What is that—if not flirting? She lifts her head off a pillow to near me, propping her elbows on the mattress. “That was me hating you, Richard. I dreamed of your death.” “You dreamed of clutching my heart,” I rebut. “Of killing you,” she emphasizes. I lean closer to her, our eyes locking. “Vous m’aimiez.” You loved me.
”
”
Becca Ritchie (Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters, #3))
“
When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called "cathexis". I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feiling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.
”
”
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
“
Here's to responsibility," he toasted. "Twice a week."
"And recklessness every day in between," I emphasized.
He grinned and touched his can to mine.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
“
All joy... emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
Well I'll be honest...sometimes it's really hard-"
"I know." I smirked, feeling saucy. "I can tell. I'm pretty much straddling you right now."
"Really hard to stop, smart-ass," Brendan emphasized, giving me a playful squeeze before cocking an eyebrow at me.
”
”
Cara Lynn Shultz (Spellcaster (Spellbound, #2))
“
It's not really about the food. It's about family. Not necessarily the one we were born with, but the one we chose. This one," Nicky emphasized, gesturing between them. "The people we trust to be part of our lives. The people we care about.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The Raven King (All for the Game, #2))
“
Erase the parts that make me unhappy. I guess that means emphasizing the parts that do.
”
”
Cassie Mae (How to Date a Nerd (How To, #1))
“
While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family of the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaises. There is a saying cultura cura, culture cures. If the culture is a healer, the families learn how to heal; they will struggle less, be more reparative, far less wounding, far more graceful and loving. In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
“
I’m not saying you’re a slut. I’m just surprised Facebook hasn’t made your vagina a place to ‘check in’ yet.” Ember emphasized.
”
”
Lani Lynn Vale (Last Day of My Life (Freebirds, #4))
“
Gratitude only emphasized the depth of your lack, so she tried to hide it.
”
”
Brit Bennett (The Vanishing Half)
“
Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions. Jesus repeatedly emphasized the power of good thoughts and proper motives: 'Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not'
In Proverbs we read, 'For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he
”
”
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“
Those two in the antechamber," he added, eyes sparkling, "might not be on that list of people you should bother knowing, if they keep banging on the door like children."
Another pound, emphasized by the first male voice saying, "You know we can hear you, prick."
"Secondly," Rhys went on, "in regard to the two bastards at my door, it's up to you whether you want to meet them now, or head upstairs like a wise person, take a nap since you're still looking a little peaky, and then change into city- apropriate clothing while I beat the hell out of them for talking to his High Lord like that.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
One problem with our current society is that we have an attitude towards education as if it is there to simply make you more clever, make you more ingenious... Even though our society does not emphasize this, the most important use of knowledge and education is to help us understand the importance of engaging in more wholesome actions and bringing about discipline within our minds. The proper utilization of our intelligence and knowledge is to effect changes from within to develop a good heart.
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV
“
If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.
”
”
Howard Zinn
“
As cognitive scientists have emphasized in recent years, cognition is embodied; you think with your body, not only with your brain.
”
”
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
“
There are only two reactions to climate change: resignation or resistance. We can submit to death, or we can use the prospect of death to emphasize life.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer (We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast)
“
Let God make you fully you. Rejoice in your God-given temperament and use it for God's purposes. This point cannot be emphasized enough. We must be authentic. If we try to be someone we are not, people will see it instantly.
”
”
Adam S. McHugh (Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture)
“
Your coldness serves to emphasize my own inadequacy, and makes me feel that the best solution might be to expire.
”
”
Murasaki Shikibu (The Tale of Genji)
“
You are in trouble,' I said slowly, emphasizing each word. 'Enormous trouble. Angry grizzly bears are going to look tame next to what is waiting for you at home.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3))
“
I can't over-emphasize how important an exquisite perfume is, to be wrapped and cradled in an enchanting scent upon your skin is a magic all on its own! The notes in that precious liquid will remind you that you love yourself and will tell other people that they ought to love you because you know that you're worth it. The love affair created by a good perfume between you and other people, you and nature, you and yourself, you and your memories and anticipations and hopes and dreams; it is all too beautiful a thing!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
You don't care what people think," he said.
She couldn't tell from the way he emphasized the words if he was asking a question or making an observation. Still, she felt obliged to answer.
"Of course I care. To a certain extent we all care, but we can't care to the point that we live in fear of others' opinion, that we allow them to change who we are. We must be willing to stand up and defend what represents the very core of our being. Otherwise what is the purpose of individuality? We'd be nothing but imitations of each other, and I daresay we'd all be rather boring.
”
”
Lorraine Heath (In Bed with the Devil (Scoundrels of St. James, #1))
“
You married Elora?”
“Yes, briefly.” Oren emphasized how fleeting it had been. “We were wed because we thought it would be a good way to combine our respective kingdoms. Vittra and Trylle have had their disagreements over the years, and we wanted to create peace. Unfortunately, your mother is the most impossible, irrational, horrible woman on the planet.” He smiled at me. “Well, you know. You’ve met her.
”
”
Amanda Hocking (Torn (Trylle, #2))
“
The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.
”
”
David Bohm (The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory)
“
I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.
”
”
Anne Carson (If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho)
“
people do not emphasize with victims and give them limitless sympathy, but can very quickly switch to aggression and rejection
”
”
Natascha Kampusch (3096 Days)
“
Maybe Father thought I was bad girl enough and didn't need a slutty outfit to emphasize that further.
”
”
Cora Reilly (Bound by Hatred (Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles, #3))
“
The “Warrior Ethos” emphasizes placing the mission first, not accepting defeat, and being disciplined physically and mentally. Why? Because an American Soldier is a “guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
”
”
Dan Smee (Totally American: Harnessing the Dynamic Duo of Optimism and Resilience to Achieve Success)
“
The curse should no longer rest upon the world itself, but upon that which is sinful in it, and instead of monastic flight from the world the duty is now emphasized of serving God in the world, in every position in life.
”
”
Abraham Kuyper
“
Everything including your branding has to reinforce your message about your product.
”
”
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
The journey towards oneness emphasizes the opposites and we are caught in their conflict.
”
”
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover the Beloved)
“
Sorry,” Kiersten says to Lake and I. “Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cusswords just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cusswords anymore and no one would ever be offended by them”
This kid is hard to keep up with!
“Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says.
Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed up letters. Like, take the word “butterfly” for example. What if someone decided one day that butterfly is a cussword? People would eventually start using butterfly as an insult, and to emphasize things in a negative way. The actual WORD doesn’t mean anything. It’s the negative association people give these words that make them cusswords. So if we all just decided to keep saying butterfly all the time, eventually people would stop caring. The shock value would subside…and it would just become another word again. Same with every other so-called bad word. If we would all just start saying them all the time, They wouldn’t be bad anymore. That’s what my mom says anyway.”
“Kiersten?” Eddie says. “Will you be my new best friend?”
Lake grabs a french fry off her plate and throws it at Eddie, hitting her in the face with it. “That’s Bullshit,” Lake says.
“Oh, go BUTTERFLY yourself,” Eddie says. She returns a fry in Lakes direction.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Point of Retreat (Slammed, #2))
“
I should emphasize this, to keep well-meaning but misguided multiculturalists at bay: the theoretical entities in which these tribal people frankly believe — the gods and other spirits — don't exist. These people are mistaken, and you know it as well as I do. It is possible for highly intelligent people to have a very useful but mistaken theory, and we don't have to pretend otherwise in order to show respect for these people and their ways.
”
”
Daniel C. Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon)
“
Will you, or will you not, quit me?' I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to him.
'I would prefer not to quit you', he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
”
”
Herman Melville (Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street)
“
Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply. •
”
”
Pico Iyer (The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (TED Books))
“
When you want to encourage a greater sense of responsibility in others (and yourself), emphasize the anticipation of accomplishment, not the penalties for failure.
”
”
Roger Crawford
“
we must focus only on what we require, not on what we detest. By emphasizing what we need in our mind, we are, in a way, getting closer to realizing our ideas and desires.
”
”
Prem Jagyasi
“
Plato was the first to envisage the idea of timeless existence and to emphasize it—against reason—as a reality, more [real] than our actual experience…
”
”
Erwin Schrödinger
“
their eager eyes unlocking the secrets of the human form. who could just look at it as it is, without prettying it up or emphasizing its awfulness
”
”
Janet Fitch (Paint it Black)
“
To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves—unwittingly—to justify what was done.
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
“
By honoring each other’s ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, we become stronger and happier, brightening the cosmic masterpiece of artwork that is our world. Rather than emphasize differences, we should be looking for similarities. Our differences are ultimately superficial, and the best thing to do is celebrate them.
”
”
Tina Turner (Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good)
“
it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.
”
”
William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
“
We don't worship Satan, we worship ourselves using the metaphorical representation of the qualities of Satan. Satan is the name used by Judeo-Christians for that force of individuality and pride within us. But the force itself has been called by many names.We embrace Christian myths of Satan and Lucifer, along with Satanic renderings in Greek, Roman, Islamic, Sumerian, Syrian, Phrygian, Egyptian, Chinese or Hindu mythologies, to name but a few. We are not limited to one deity, but encompass all the expressions of the accuser or the one who advocates free thought and rational alternatives by whatever name he is called in a particular time and land. It so happens that we are living in a culture that is predominantly Judeo-Christian, so we emphasize Satan. If we were living in Roman times, the central figure, perhaps the title of our religion, would be different. But the name would be expressing and communicating the same thing. It's all context.
”
”
Anton Szandor LaVey (The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey)
“
We have emphasized sermon-preparation until we have lost sight of the important thing to be prepared—the heart. A prepared heart is much better than a prepared sermon. A prepared heart will make a prepared sermon.
”
”
E.M. Bounds (Power Through Prayer)
“
Observing her, I saw that she was made up, that she was in an evening gown, that mourning indecently emphasized her beauty.
”
”
Georges Bataille (My Mother/Madame Edwarda/The Dead Man)
“
Meditation may be done in silence & stillness, by using voice & sound, or by engaging the body in movement. All forms emphasize the training of attention.
”
”
Sharon Salzberg (The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Programme for Real Happiness)
“
Once a priest told us that no one gets up in the pulpit without promulgating a heresy. He was joking, of course, but what I suppose he meant was the truth was so pure, so holy, that it was hard to emphasize one aspect of the truth without underestimating another, that we did not see things as a whole, but through a glass darkly, as St. Paul said.
”
”
Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist)
“
The Frays had never been a religiously observant family, but Clary loved Fifth Avenue at Christmas time. The air smelled like sweet roasted chestnuts, and the window displays sparkled with silver and blue, green and red. This year there were fat round crystal snowflakes attached to each lamppost, sending back the winter sunlight in shafts of gold. Not to mention the huge tree at Rockefeller Center. It threw its shadow across them as she and Simon draped themselves over the gate at the side of the skating rink, watching tourists fall down as they tried to navigate the ice.
Clary had a hot chocolate wrapped in her hands, the warmth spreading through her body. She felt almost normal—this, coming to Fifth to see the window displays and the tree, had been a winter tradition for her and Simon for as long as she could remember.
“Feels like old times, doesn’t it?” he said, echoing her thoughts as he propped his chin on his folded arms.
She chanced a sideways look at him. He was wearing a black topcoat and scarf that emphasized the winter pallor of his skin. His eyes were shadowed, indicating that he hadn’t fed on blood recently. He looked like what he was—a hungry, tired vampire.
Well, she thought. Almost like old times. “More people to buy presents for,” she said. “Plus, the always traumatic what-to-buy-someone-for-the-first-Christmas-after-you’ve-started-dating question.”
“What to get the Shadowhunter who has everything,” Simon said with a grin.
“Jace mostly likes weapons,” Clary sighed. “He likes books, but they have a huge library at the Institute. He likes classical music …” She brightened. Simon was a musician; even though his band was terrible, and was always changing their name—currently they were Lethal Soufflé—he did have training. “What would you give someone who likes to play the piano?”
“A piano.”
“Simon.”
“A really huge metronome that could also double as a weapon?”
Clary sighed, exasperated.
“Sheet music. Rachmaninoff is tough stuff, but he likes a challenge.”
“Now you’re talking. I’m going to see if there’s a music store around here.” Clary, done with her hot chocolate, tossed the cup into a nearby trash can and pulled her phone out. “What about you? What are you giving Isabelle?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Simon said. They had started heading toward the avenue, where a steady stream of pedestrians gawking at the windows clogged the streets.
“Oh, come on. Isabelle’s easy.”
“That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.” Simon’s brows drew together. “I think. I’m not sure. We haven’t discussed it. The relationship, I mean.”
“You really have to DTR, Simon.”
“What?”
“Define the relationship. What it is, where it’s going. Are you boyfriend and girlfriend, just having fun, ‘it’s complicated,’ or what? When’s she going to tell her parents? Are you allowed to see other people?”
Simon blanched. “What? Seriously?”
“Seriously. In the meantime—perfume!” Clary grabbed Simon by the back of his coat and hauled him into a cosmetics store that had once been a bank. It was massive on the inside, with rows of gleaming bottles everywhere. “And something unusual,” she said, heading for the fragrance area. “Isabelle isn’t going to want to smell like everyone else. She’s going to want to smell like figs, or vetiver, or—”
“Figs? Figs have a smell?” Simon looked horrified; Clary was about to laugh at him when her phone buzzed. It was her mother.
where are you? It’s an emergency.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
“
The quantitative degeneration of all things is closely linked to that of money, as is shown by the fact that nowadays the ‘worth’ of an object is ordinarily ‘estimated’ only in terms of its price, considered simply as a ‘figure’, a ‘sum’, or a numerical quantity of money; in fact, with most of our contemporaries, every judgment brought to bear on an object is nearly always based exclusively on what it costs. The word ‘estimate’ has been emphasized because it has in itself a double meaning, qualitative and quantitative; today the first meaning has been lost to sight, or what amounts to the same thing, means have been found to equate it to the second, and thus it comes about that not only is the ‘worth’ of an object ‘estimated’ according to its price, but the ‘worth’ of a man is ‘estimated’ according to his wealth.
”
”
René Guénon
“
As I wrote 'The Christmas Lamp' I realized that tradition is priceless, whether you have a small family, a large family, or no family.
Tradition doesn't have to be logical; it only has to emphasize the light of Christ and his everlasting love.
”
”
Lori Copeland (The Christmas Lamp: A Novella)
“
Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles)
“
In this sense, what Hakluyt foresaw in a colonized America was one giant workhouse. This cannot be emphasized enough.
”
”
Nancy Isenberg (White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America)
“
Indeed, all the great movements for social justice in our society have strongly emphasized a love ethic.
”
”
bell hooks (All About Love: New Visions)
“
No garment which distorts the shape and motion of the wearer is beautiful, nor s any garment beautiful which emphasizes more than one or at most two of your sexual characteristics.
”
”
Elizabeth Hawes (It's Still Spinach)
“
No matter how good a President you are, if the historian is hostile to you, he will emphasize your errors and break down your merits... without departing from the facts.
”
”
Teodoro A. Agoncillo (Talking History: Conversations with Teodoro A. Agoncillo)
“
Christianity teaches righteousness, not rights. It emphasizes honor, not equality. A Christian's concern is what is owed to the other, not what is owed to himself.
”
”
Elisabeth Elliot (Discipline: The Glad Surrender)
“
My peony," he emphasized. "And it's only for us, no one else." He liked the intimacy of having a special name for her no one else knew but the two of them.
”
”
Christine Feehan (Toxic Game (GhostWalkers, #15))
“
Isabelle's clothes looked ridiculous. Clary had to roll the legs on the jeans up several times before she stopped tripping on them, and the plunging neckline of the red tank top only emphasized her lack of what Eric would have called a "rack.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
“
Random mutations much more easily debilitate genes than improve them, and that this is true even of the helpful mutations. Let me emphasize, our experience with malaria’s effects on humans (arguably our most highly studied genetic system) shows that most helpful mutations degrade genes. What’s more, as a group the mutations are incoherent, meaning that they are not adding up to some new system. They are just small changes - mostly degradative - in pre-existing, unrelated genes. The take-home lesson is that this is certainly not the kind of process we would expect to build the astonishingly elegant machinery of the cell. If random mutation plus selective pressure substantially trashes the human genome, why should we think that it would be a constructive force in the long term? There is no reason to think so.
”
”
Michael J. Behe
“
I love you,” he whispered, rubbing his
jaw against her temple. “And you love me. I can feel it when you’re in my arms.” He felt her stiffen slightly
and draw a shaky breath, but she either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. She hadn’t thrown the words back in his face, however, so Ian continued talking to her, his hand roving over her back. “I can feel it, Elizabeth, but if you don’t admit it pretty soon, you’re going to drive me out of my mind. I can’t work. I can’t think. I make decisions and then I change my mind. And,” he teased, trying to lighten the mood by using the one topic sure to distract her, “that’s nothing to the money I squander whenever I’m under this sort of violent stress. It wasn’t just the gowns I bought, or the house on Promenade...”
Still talking to her, he tipped her chin up, glorying in the gentle passion in her eyes, overlooking the doubt in their green depths. “If you don’t admit it pretty soon,” he teased, “I’ll spend us out of house and home.” Her delicate brows drew together in blank confusion, and Ian grinned, taking her hand from his chest, the emerald betrothal ring he had bought her unnoticed in his fingers. “When I’m under stress,” he emphasized, sliding the magnificent emerald onto her finger, “I buy everything in sight. It took my last ounce of control not to buy one of these in every color.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
“
It must be emphasized that as a father, you are always teaching. For good or ill your family learns your ways, your beliefs, your heart, your ideas, your concerns. Your children may or may not choose to follow you, but the example you give is the greatest light you hold before your children, and you are accountable for that light.
”
”
Joseph Smith Jr.
“
Few realize that political action offers little solution to the world’s major problems. Few understand that the elite have created political parties in order to prevent real change from ever taking place. The political arena is merely the “sty” in which two or more mutually hostile agencies, created by the same hidden hand, get the chance to pummel one another. As alternative researcher Juri Lina so brilliantly put it: When the left wing Freemason is finished, the right-wing Freemason takes over The point has been emphasized by many an insider: The elementary principle of all deception is to attract the enemy’s attention to what you wish him to see and to distract his attention from what you so not wish him to see – General Sir Archibald Wavel The world’s power structures have always ‘divided to conquer’ and have always ‘kept divided to keep conquered.’ As a consequence the power structure has so divided humanity – not only into special function categories but into religious and language and color categories – that individual humans are now helplessly inarticulate in the face of the present crisis. They consider their political representation to be completely corrupted, therefore, they feel almost utterly helpless
”
”
R. Buckminster Fuller (Critical Path)
“
He tightened his arms, not wanting Ty to move away. “It’s more than just fucking around now,” he said. “Isn’t it?” He made sure the tone of his voice emphasized that it wasn’t really a question. Ty was motionless in response. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. The silence stretched on, edging toward tension. Finally, he let out his breath quietly and lowered his head. “No,” he lied blithely, just as he’d done in a hotel in New York City over a year ago. Zane chuckled. A classic Grady response, and definitely the one he preferred to hear. A “yes” just might have given him a heart attack. He held Ty close. “You owe me.” “Owe you?” Ty repeated in a rough, questioning voice as Zane felt his heartbeat begin to speed up. “Mm hmm. How I’ve wanted you,” Zane breathed. “It scares the hell out of me.” “I know,” Ty murmured as he turned in place and nuzzled against Zane’s neck.
”
”
Abigail Roux (Fish & Chips (Cut & Run, #3))
“
Jen snorted a laugh as she spoke out loud. "Gee thanks, so kind of you to chalk it up to me just being a dumb ass."
Decebel chuckled and his eyes had begun to get lighter. "You will stop undressing in front of other people."
Jen put a hand on her hip as she tipped her head to the side. She narrowed her eyes at her mate and tapped her lip with a finger.
"Now, I'm going to need you clarify that." When Decebel didn't respond, but continued to stare at her, Jen rolled her eyes.
"Clarify, elucidate, enlighten. Do. You. Understand. The. Words. That. Are…," Jen emphasized each word.
"Jennifer," Decebel growled.
"Comingoutofmymouth," Jen finished quickly making Sally giggle.
"Only undress in our bedroom."
"Nope, na-ah. There's waaaay too many loop holes in that little decree. Seriously Dec, you can do better than that," Jen told him with a single eyebrow raised. Decebel growled at the challenge in her words and the tone of her voice. Damn, when am I going to learn not to poke the angry wolf. The thought ran through her mind before she could censor it from a now wickedly smiling Alpha.
”
”
Quinn Loftis
“
No, I’m a vampire.” Matthew stepped forward, joining Chris under the projector’s light. “And before you ask, I can go outside during the day and my hair won’t catch fire in the sunlight. I’m Catholic and have a crucifix. When I sleep, which is not often, I prefer a bed to a coffin. If you try to stake me, the wood will likely splinter before it enters my skin.” He bared his teeth. “No fangs either. And one last thing: I do not, nor have I ever, sparkled.” Matthew’s face darkened to emphasize the point. I
”
”
Deborah Harkness (The Book of Life (All Souls Trilogy, #3))
“
Any problem, and I emphasize "any" problem, represents our inability to consciously connect to our Source in the moment.
”
”
Wayne W. Dyer (Inspiration)
“
Because if I fell any deeper for the way his eyes crinkled with his smile or his habit of tapping on his nose to emphasize a point, my ship would be sunk.
”
”
Katherine McIntyre (By the Sea)
“
What I do know is that love, real love, true unconditional love, transcends age, race, and religious beliefs. It sees the good, focuses on the good, and constantly emphasizes it.
”
”
Cupcake Brown (A Piece of Cake)
“
Genius, that one,” Harper mutters. Cotton glares at her. “Don’t worry, bro,” Jaxon tells Cotton. “She’s spicy. That’s why we make a great couple. I like my women with a little …” He shivers to emphasize his point.
”
”
Victoria Scott (Salt & Stone (Fire & Flood, #2))
“
Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don’t refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it’s so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren’t especially interested in viewing them as people — just as objects representing their culture.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin
“
Judged by the evolving nineteenth-century ideology of femininity, which emphasized women’s roles as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husbands, Black women were practically anomalies. Though
”
”
Angela Y. Davis (Women, Race, & Class)
“
Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.
”
”
Dennis Prager (The Rational Bible: Exodus)
“
But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory--humorous, poignant, humane allegory--disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge.
”
”
Robertson Davies (A Mixture of Frailties (Salterton Trilogy, #3))
“
here. I would like to emphasize this last point and really drive it home as it is the key: When you get to a point where you feel so good about your unmanifest desires such that manifestation would make you feel no different… you’re on the brink of a physical manifestation.
”
”
Richard Dotts (Come and Sit with Me: How to Desire Nothing and Manifest Everything)
“
Early on, to arouse a sense of belonging, of “community,” the party began to emphasize the importance, above everything else, of ritual and propaganda—the flags, the insignia, the uniforms, the pageantry, the standard greetings, the declarations of loyalty, and the endless repetition of slogans. Nazism was a cult. The appeal was strictly to emotion.
”
”
Modris Eksteins (Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age)
“
Today...no performance can be without its control screen video...its goal is to be hooked up to itself...the mirror phase has given way to the video phase. What develops around the video or stereo culture is not a narcissistic imaginary, but an effect of frantic self-referentiality, a short-circuit which immediately hooks up like with like, and, in doing so, emphasizes their surface intensity and deeper meaninglessness.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (America)
“
It was an old fear, a fear that has never left me: the fear that, in losing pieces of her life, mine lost intensity and importance. And the fact that she didn’t answer emphasized that preoccupation. However hard I tried in my letters to communicate the privilege of the days in Ischia, my river of words and her silence seemed to demonstrate that my life was splendid but uneventful, which left me time to write to her every day, while hers was dark but full.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend (The Neapolitan Novels, #1))
“
Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevski’s conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness.
”
”
Jim Thompson (The Grifters)
“
The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.
Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender.
”
”
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times)
“
Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly".
”
”
Jostein Gaarder (Sophie's World)
“
Oh,” she said. “You can rest assured that I will kill him. Mostly this is to emphasize what I said before: no more time to lounge around and decide with no consequences. For every moment you waste deliberating today, the Oak King will be in the hands of my torturers, experiencing the most excruciating pain. Your delay extends that agony.”
“Oh, irony,” murmured Dorian.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Shadow Heir (Dark Swan, #4))
“
The inward man is faced with a new and often dramatic task: He must come to terms with the inner tremendum. Since the God 'out there' or 'up there' is more or less dissolved in the many secular structures, the God within asks attention as never before. And just as the God outside could be experienced not only as a loving father but also as a horrible demon, the God within can be not only the source of a new creative life but also the cause of a chaotic confusion.
The greatest complaint of the Spanish mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross was that they lacked a spiritual guide to lead them along the right paths and enable them to distinguish between creative and destructive spirits. We hardly need emphasize how dangerous the experimentation with the interior life can be. Drugs as well as different concentration practices and withdrawal into the self often do more harm than good. On the other hand it also is becoming obvious that those who avoid the painful encounter with the unseen are doomed to live a supercilious, boring and superficial life.
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (The Wounded Healer : Ministry in Contemporary Society)
“
. . . I still hold two truths with equal and fundamental certainty. One: the British did terrible things to the Irish. Two: the Irish, had they the power, would have done equally terrible things to the British. And so also for any other paired adversaries I can imagine. The difficulty is to hold on to both truths with equal intensity, not let either one negate the other, and know when to emphasize one without forgetting the other. Our humanity is probably lost and gained in the necessary tension between them both. I hope, by the way, that I do not sound anti-British. It is impossible not to admire a people who gave up India and held on to Northern Ireland. That shows a truly Celtic sense of humor.
”
”
John Dominic Crossan
“
His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
”
”
Lois McMaster Bujold (Memory (Vorkosigan Saga, #10))
“
Modern education does no favour to the children it is supposed to teach when it de-emphasizes facts; although facts are not the only important things in life, in science, and in the arts, they nevertheless constitute the absolutely essential substructure without which nothing worthwhile can be built.
”
”
Hans Jürgen Eysenck (Inequality of Man)
“
The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won't sue.
”
”
Wallace Stegner (On Teaching and Writing Fiction)
“
In the United States we think we have at our disposal virtually everything—and I emphasize the word “think.” We have big houses and cars, good medical treatment, jets, trains and monorails; we have computers, good communications, many comforts and conveniences. But where have they gotten us? We have an abundance of material things, but a successful society produces happy people, and I think we produce more miserable people than almost anyplace on earth. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never seen people who are quite as unhappy as they are in the United States. We have plenty, but we have nothing, and we always want more. In the pursuit of material success as our culture measures it, we have given up everything. We have lost the capacity to produce people who are joyful. The pursuit of the material has become our reason for living, not enjoyment of living itself.
”
”
Marlon Brando (Songs My Mother Taught Me)
“
Again I want to emphasize that the study of propaganda must be conducted within the context of a technological society. Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments, and to integrate the individual into a technological world.
”
”
Jacques Ellul (Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes)
“
When I looked up 'rococo' in the dictionary a while back it was defined as 'an ornamental style emphasizing the florid and the gorgeous, but lacking substance', and I couldn't help but laugh. It was so perfect. How could anything beautiful have 'substance' anyway? Pure beauty is always without meaning or morality.
”
”
Osamu Dazai
“
When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong—and that is simply not the case. Usually, when people talk about the “strength” of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.
”
”
bell hooks (Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism)
“
The incident emphasizes once more that beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered, that it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea on the hull of a yacht, or the contrast between the color of a jockey’s coat and his face.
”
”
Alain de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life (Vintage International))
“
Gideon could not imagine any other young unmarried woman of his acquaintance passing up the opportunity to snare, if not himself, then the Carradice fortune. In any case, the number of women who’d rejected him in any way was gratifyingly small. Yet Miss Prudence Merridew had most unmistakably rejected him. Several times. Wielding that damned lethal reticule like a little Amazon, to emphasize her point.
”
”
Anne Gracie (The Perfect Rake (The Merridew Sisters, #1))
“
The Cynics emphasized that true happiness is not found in external advantages such as material luxury, political power, or good health. True happiness lies in not being dependent on such random and fleeting things. And because happiness does not consist in benefits of this kind, it is within everyone's reach. moreover, having once been attained, it can never be lost.
”
”
Jostein Gaarder (Sophie's World)
“
The problem is that our world and our education remain focused exclusively on external, materialistic values. We are not concerned enough with inner values. Those who grow up with this kind of education live in a materialistic life and eventually the whole society becomes materialistic. But this culture is not sufficient to tackle our human problems. The real problem is here," the Dalai Lama said, pointed to his head.
The Archbishop tapped his chest with his fingers to emphasize the heart as well.
"And here," the Dalai Lama echoed. "Mind and heart..
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World)
“
If there is anything Zen strongly emphasizes it is the attainment of freedom; that is, freedom from all unnatural encumbrances. Meditation is something artificially put on; it does not belong to the native activity of the mind. Upon what do the fowls of the air meditate? Upon what do the fish in the water meditate? They fly; they swim. Is not that enough? Who wants to fix his mind on the unity of God and man, or on the nothingness of life? Who wants to be arrested in the daily manifestations of his life-activity by such meditations as the goodness of a divine being or the everlasting fire of hell?
”
”
D.T. Suzuki (An Introduction to Zen Buddhism)
“
It is true that historic Christianity is in conflict at many points with the collectivism of the present day; it does emphasize, against the claims of society, the worth of the individual soul. It provides for the individual a refuge from all the fluctuating currents of human opinion, a secret place of meditation where a man can come alone into the presence of God. It does give a man courage to stand, if need be, against the world; it resolutely refuses to make of the individual a mere means to an end, a mere element in the composition of society. It rejects altogether any means of salvation which deals with men in a mass; it brings the individual face to face with his God.
”
”
J. Gresham Machen (Christianity and Liberalism)
“
Love is subversive, undermining the propaganda of narrow self-interest. Love emphasizes connection, responsibility and the joy we take in each other. Therefore love (as opposed to unthinking devotion) is a danger to the status quo and we have been taught to find it embarrassing.
”
”
Aurora Levins Morales (Medicine Stories: History, Culture and the Politics of Integrity)
“
Every Spring, nature teaches a class on business entrepreneurship. ....We see how capital is re-allocated, currencies are re-directed, growth is re-emphasized, and numerous life forms promote their value with re-vitalized marketing programs that implement flowers or seeds or aromas or habitability or pollination in an effort demonstrate a unique value proposition in a busy economy.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr
“
Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs”—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.3 More broadly, they believe, schools should downplay technical skills and emphasize general-purpose life skills. Most important of all will be the ability to deal with change, learn new things, and preserve your mental balance in unfamiliar situations.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
“
The intelligentsia in the media can decide what to emphasize, what to downplay and what to ignore entirely when it comes to race. These may be individual choices, rather than a conspiracy, but individual choices growing out of a common vision of the world can produce results all too similar to what is produced by centralized censorship or propaganda.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Race)
“
Do we emphasize behavior over character? Because good behavior won’t guarantee anything. If they don’t love Jesus and people, it matters zero if they remain virgins and don’t say the F-word. We must shepherd their hearts, not just their hemlines. Jesus operates beyond the tidy boundaries of good behavior.
”
”
Jen Hatmaker (For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards)
“
In this sense, science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God. Without science, everything is a miracle. With science, there remains the possibility that nothing is. Religious belief in this case becomes less and less necessary, and also less and less relevant.
”
”
Lawrence M. Krauss (A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing)
“
In our day, the Holy Spirit is emphasizing the anointing that was upon Mary of Bethany, which is the anointing to "waste" our lives on one thing: extravagant devotion to Jesus Christ. It is the anointing to linger long with an engaged spirit in the presence of the Lord. This is impossible to do with religious self-determination and the power of the flesh. We can't will ourselves to be more resolute and say, 'I will, I will, I will.' The abandonment flows out of a lovesick heart.
”
”
Mike Bickle
“
At Mayflower-Plymouth, our investment approach is based on Permaculture Economics. We invest based on what we learn from nature and universal principles. We also emphasize the spiritual, ecological and physical impact of our investments. It’s a holistic approach. When you put your money with us, you can rest assured knowing your money is growing, but not at the expense of your values. In fact, you know with us your money is actually making the world a better place because we invest in alignment with natural, spiritual and cosmic law.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr
“
Experience has proven that the SIMPLEST METHOD of securing a silent weapon and gaining control of the public is to KEEP THE PUBLIC UNDISCIPLINED AND IGNORANT of basic systems principles on the one hand, WHILE KEEPING THEM CONFUSED, DISORGANIZED, AND DISTRACTED with matters of no real importance on the other hand. [WC all emphases.
”
”
Milton William Cooper (Behold a Pale Horse)
“
I told her that we go to work to provide for our families, attend school functions that our children are involved in, take a few pieces of cake we just baked over to our neighbor next door, drive our children to school in the morning. “No! No!” She said. “How do you worship?” I said we make love to our spouses, smile and greet someone we pass on the street, help our children with their homework, hold open a door for someone behind us. “Worship! I’m asking about worship!” She exclaimed. I asked her exactly what she had in mind. “You know-Rituals!” She insisted. I answered her that we practice those also and that they are a very important part of Muslim worship. I was not trying to frustrate her, but I answered her in this way in order to emphasize Islam’s comprehensive conception of worship.
”
”
Jeffrey Lang (Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America)
“
If you live with fear and consider yourself as something special then automatically, emotionally, you are distanced from others. You then create the basis for feelings of alienation from others and loneliness. So, I never consider, even when giving a talk to a large crowd, that I am something special, I am 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama' . . . I always emphasize that when I meet people, we are all the same human beings. A thousand people -- same human being. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand -- same human being -- mentally, emotionally, and physically. Then, you see, no barrier. Then my mind remains completely calm and relaxed. If too much emphasis on myself, and I start to think I'm something special, then more anxiety, more nervousness.
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World)
“
A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray.
Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present.
”
”
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
“
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings.
I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouin muktar to another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea, and in the mid-nineteenth century, on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
He emphasized the word toes, stretching out his feet a little more. This was now officially getting weird.
Jack's voice buzzed in my head more forcefully. Compliment. His. Feet.
"You have beautiful feet, Grand- er, Njord."
The god beamed. "Oh, these old things? Well, you're kind. Did you know I once won a beauty contest with my feet? The prize was my wife!"
I glanced at Blitz and Hearth, to see if I was imagining this entire conversation.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Ship of the Dead (Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, #3))
“
As I’ve mentioned, I am an only child. This makes me a member of the worldwide super-smart-afraid-of-conflict narcissist club. And let me emphasize: afraid of conflict. Since I had no siblings to routinely challenge/hit me and equally no interest in playing sports, I had grown up without any experience in conflict. I therefore had no reason to imagine that confrontation of any kind, ranging from fighting to kissing, was not probably fatal.
”
”
John Hodgman (Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches)
“
If capitalist realism is so seamless, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless and impotent, where can an effective challenge come from? A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism's ostensible 'realism' turns out to be nothing of the sort.
”
”
Mark Fisher (Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?)
“
Our spiritual purpose is to overcome both sin and the desire to sin, both the taint and the tyranny of sin. Prophets throughout the ages have emphasized the dual requirements of (1) avoiding and overcoming bad and (2) doing good and becoming better...it is possible for us to have clean hands but not have a pure heart. Please notice that both clean hands and a pure heart are required to ascend into the hill of the Lord and to stand in His holy place.
”
”
David A. Bednar
“
I am a Dancer; rehearsing the steps of our unheard song with utmost perfection.
Never will you tap your feet consciously.
I am a Singer; singing the tune of the song I always wanted you to hear.
Never will the melody bring back our memories to you.
I am an Orator; emphasizing and emoting what I feel for you.
Never will you hear your name throughout.
I am a Writer; penning all the unsaid intentions with sincerity.
Never will you see your name at the top.
Because at the end of it all I am Actor;
Nevertheless you taught me how well to pretend!
”
”
Ranjani Ramachandran
“
The Game of Go was one of the 4 Arts of China. It spread to all over Asia and was even mentioned in the Japanese novel, Tales of Genji. More than an ancient board game, the Game of Go is an analogy of life and emphasize balance, challenge, and fun. Not only does my name Kailin Gow has the word "Go" in it, but my philosophy on life of balance, challenge, and fun is similar to the Game. Thus, Kailin Gow's Go Girl TV Series, books, and overall brand reflects this philosophy as well. - Kailin Gow in interview about Kailin Gow's Go Girl Books and TV Series.
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
Every Spring, nature teaches a class on business entrepreneurship. ....We see how capital is re-allocated, currencies are re-directed, growth is re-emphasized, and numerous life forms promote their value with re-vitalized marketing programs that implement flowers or seeds or aromas or habitability or pollination in an effort demonstrate a unique value proposition in a busy economy.
Smart entrepreneurs enroll in this class every Spring and take good notes. Whether you're an entrepreneur of a small business or an entrepreneur of a line of business within a large company... learn from nature.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr
“
The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus.
The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities."
Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy."
But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.
”
”
Alexander Lowen (Fear of Life)
“
I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water.
Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles.
”
”
Malak El Halabi
“
To emphasize how truly backward our society is...let's finish with a little quiz. Let's do it like Jeopardy.
In 1990, this government required companies to give a new mother a year's leave at 90% pay.
Answer: What was Sweden?
This country provided nurseries for most children over eighteen months.
Answer: What was Sweden?
Nearly half of the children under three in this country were in publicly financed nurseries, and nearly 95% of children three to six were (and are).
Answer: What is Denmark?
In this country, 95% of children aged three to five are in preschool.
Answer: What is France?
This country provides care for one quarter of children under three in wholly or partially subsidized nurseries.
Answer: What is France?
In 1984, this country gave workers twelve weeks of maternity leave with pay.
Answer: What is Brazil? (Yes, Brazil!)
This country mandated eight weeks of maternity leave WITH PAY.
Answer: What is Kenya? (You heard us, Kenya!)
This country provided none of these things; instead, to help mothers and small children, its magazines featured profiles of rich celebrity moms who could show women how to do it all.
Answer: What was the United States?
”
”
Susan J. Douglas (The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women)
“
Sometimes after dinner, he would walk into the woods that began behind the house. He would stretch down on the ground on his stomach, his elbows, planted before him, his hands propping his chin and he would watch the patterns of veins on the green blades of grass under his face, he would blow at them and watch the blades tremble then stop again. He would roll over on his back and lie still, feeling the warmth of the earth under him. Far above, the leaves were still green as if the color were condensed in the last effort before the dusk coming to dissolve it. The leaves hung without motion against a sky of polished lemon yellow, its luminous pallor emphasized that its light was failing. He pressed his hips, his back into the earth under him, the earth resisted, but it gave way; it was a silent victory; he felt a dim, sensuous pleasure in the muscles of his legs.
”
”
Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)
“
Patients with complex trauma may at times develop extreme reactions to something the therapist has said or not said, done or not done. It is wise to anticipate this in advance, and perhaps to note this anticipation in initial communications with the patient. For example, one may say something like, "It is likely in our work together, there will be a time or times when you will feel angry with me, disappointed with me, or that I have failed you. We should except this and not be surprised if and when it happens, which it probably will." It is also vital to emphasize to the patient that despite the diagnosis and experience of dividedness, the whole person is responsible and will be held responsible for the acts of any part. p174
”
”
Elizabeth F. Howell (The Dissociative Mind)
“
Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom—in anarchy—such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor—raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is—and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss accumulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws—the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side—are slightly different; that's all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us," he concluded, strongly emphasizing the last clause, staring at Drake, not at the professor.
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (The Golden Apple (Illuminatus, #2))
“
But I'm afraid it can't be done."
"Certainly not; it can't be done," repeated the Humbug.
"Why not?" asked Milo.
"Why not indeed?" exclaimed the bug, who seemed equally at home on either side of an argument.
"Much too difficult," replied the king.
"Of course," emphasized the bug, "much too difficult."
"You could if you really wanted to," insisted Milo.
"By all means, if you really wanted to, you could," the Humbug agreed.
"How?" asked Azaz, glaring at the bug.
"How?" inquired Milo, looking the same way.
"A simple task," began the Humbug, suddenly wishing he were somewhere else, "for a brave lad with a stout heart, a steadfast dog, and a serviceable small automobile.
”
”
Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)
“
Early one morning words were missing. Before that, words were not. Facts were, faces were. In a good story, Aristotle tells us, everything that happens is pushed by something else. Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue-green shoots and the plant called “audacity,” which poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. The marks construct an instant of nature gradually, without the boredom of a story. I emphasize this. I will do anything to avoid boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.
”
”
Anne Carson (Short Talks)
“
One in two recently evicted mothers reports multiple symptoms of clinical depression, double the rate of similar mothers who were not forced from their homes. Even after years pass, evicted mothers are less happy, energetic, and optimistic than their peers. When several patients committed suicide in the days leading up to their eviction, a group of psychiatrists published a letter in Psychiatric Services, identifying eviction as a “significant precursor of suicide.” The letter emphasized that none of the patients were facing homelessness, leading the psychiatrists to attribute the suicides to eviction itself. “Eviction must be considered a traumatic rejection,” they wrote, “a denial of one’s most basic human needs, and an exquisitely shameful experience.” Suicides attributed to evictions and foreclosures doubled between 2005 and 2010, years when housing costs soared.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
Every reader’s experience of every work is unique, largely because each person will emphasize various elements to differing degrees, and those differences will cause certain features of the text to become more or less pronounced. We bring an individual history to our reading, a mix of previous readings, to be sure, but also a history that includes, but is not limited to, educational attainment, gender, race, class, faith, social involvement, and philosophical inclination. These factors will inevitably influence what we understand in our reading, and nowhere is this individuality clearer than in the matter of symbolism.
”
”
Thomas C. Foster (How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines)
“
The Church has celebrated the place of the spirit. It has emphasized the need for a healthy body, but it has totally ignored the place of the mind. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee. Proverbs 23:7 The mind can be likened to the control room of life because it co-ordinates and controls the activities of a man. Call it the headquarters of a man’s existence, if you like. That is why scriptures say, as a man thinks in his heart (heart here meaning mind), so is he.
”
”
David Oyedepo (Think And Make Impact: Use Your Mind And Everyone Will Mind You (Making Maximum Impact Book 4))
“
In the Israeli army, soldiers are divided into those who think with a rosh gadol—literally, a “big head”—and those who operate with a rosh katan, or “little head.” Rosh katan behavior, which is shunned, means interpreting orders as narrowly as possible to avoid taking on responsibility or extra work. Rosh gadol thinking means following orders but doing so in the best possible way, using judgment, and investing whatever effort is necessary. It emphasizes improvisation over discipline, and challenging the chief over respect for hierarchy.
”
”
Dan Senor (Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle)
“
Hitherto, the Palestinians had been relatively immune to this Allahu Akhbar style. I thought this was a hugely retrograde development. I said as much to Edward. To reprint Nazi propaganda and to make a theocratic claim to Spanish soil was to be a protofascist and a supporter of 'Caliphate' imperialism: it had nothing at all to do with the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Once again, he did not exactly disagree. But he was anxious to emphasize that the Israelis had often encouraged Hamas as a foil against Fatah and the PLO. This I had known since seeing the burning out of leftist Palestinians by Muslim mobs in Gaza as early as 1981. Yet once again, it seemed Edward could only condemn Islamism if it could somehow be blamed on either Israel or the United States or the West, and not as a thing in itself. He sometimes employed the same sort of knight's move when discussing other Arabist movements, excoriating Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party, for example, mainly because it had once enjoyed the support of the CIA. But when Saddam was really being attacked, as in the case of his use of chemical weapons on noncombatants at Halabja, Edward gave second-hand currency to the falsified story that it had 'really' been the Iranians who had done it. If that didn't work, well, hadn't the United States sold Saddam the weaponry in the first place? Finally, and always—and this question wasn't automatically discredited by being a change of subject—what about Israel's unwanted and ugly rule over more and more millions of non-Jews?
I evolved a test for this mentality, which I applied to more people than Edward. What would, or did, the relevant person say when the United States intervened to stop the massacres and dispossessions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo? Here were two majority-Muslim territories and populations being vilely mistreated by Orthodox and Catholic Christians. There was no oil in the region. The state interests of Israel were not involved (indeed, Ariel Sharon publicly opposed the return of the Kosovar refugees to their homes on the grounds that it set an alarming—I want to say 'unsettling'—precedent). The usual national-security 'hawks,' like Henry Kissinger, were also strongly opposed to the mission. One evening at Edward's apartment, with the other guest being the mercurial, courageous Azmi Bishara, then one of the more distinguished Arab members of the Israeli parliament, I was finally able to leave the arguing to someone else. Bishara [...] was quite shocked that Edward would not lend public support to Clinton for finally doing the right thing in the Balkans. Why was he being so stubborn? I had begun by then—belatedly you may say—to guess. Rather like our then-friend Noam Chomsky, Edward in the final instance believed that if the United States was doing something, then that thing could not by definition be a moral or ethical action.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
It’s wonderful to finally meet you,’ Scarlett managed.
He smiled, wide and sincere. ‘I’m tempted to say you’re even prettier than I imagined, but I would hate you to think me unoriginal.’
‘Too late,’ Julian coughed.
A wrinkle formed between Nicolas’s thick brows as he noticed Scarlett’s companion. ‘And you are?’
‘Julian.’ He offered his hand.
But Nicolas refused to let go of Scarlett’s. ‘I wasn’t aware Scarlett had a brother.’
‘I’m not her brother.’ Julian kept his tone friendly, but Scarlett felt a surge of bruising purple panic as devilry sparked in Julian’s eyes. ‘I’m not related to her at all. I’m an actor she played with during Caraval.’
He emphasized the words played with, and Scarlett could have choked him. Julian would choose now to finally be honest.
Not that Nicolas appeared disturbed. The young count’s broad smile remained even as he petted Timber with his free hand.
But Julian wasn’t finished.
‘I’m not surprised she’s never mentioned me. At the start of Caraval I don’t think she liked me much. But then we were given the same bedroom—’
‘Julian, enough,’ Scarlett cut in.
”
”
Stephanie Garber (Finale (Caraval, #3))
“
Psychology’s service to U.S. national security has produced a variant of what the psychiatrist Robert Lifton has called, in his study of Nazi doctors, a “Faustian bargain.” In this case, the price paid has been the American Psychological Association’s collective silence, ethical “numbing,” and, over time, historical amnesia. 3 Indeed, Lifton emphasizes that “the Nazis were not the only ones to involve doctors in evil”; in defense of this argument, he cites the Cold War “role of …American physicians and psychologists employed by the Central Intelligence Agency…for unethical medical and psychological experiments involving drugs and mind manipulation.” 4
”
”
Alfred W. McCoy (Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation)
“
The significant difference between Proust and Faulkner, for Sartre, is that where Proust discovers salvation in time, in the recovery of time past, for Faulkner time is never lost, however much he may want, like a mystic, to forget time. Both writers emphasize the transitoriness of emotion, of the condition of love or misery, or whatever passes because it is transitory in time. "Proust really should have employed a technique like Faulkner's," Sartre legislates, "that was the logical outcome of his metaphysic. Faulkner, however, is a lost man, and because he knows that he is lost he risks pushing his thoughts to its conclusion. Proust is a classicist and a Frenchman; and the French lose themselves with caution and always end by finding themselves.
”
”
John McCormick
“
There are two girls around my age, maybe a little older, checking them out. I can’t blame them, but they’re pretty obvious about it, just watching them and talking in low voices to one another. One, a dark-haired girl whose tight clothes do a lot to emphasize the curves she has, even comes over and pushes what looks like a slip of paper into Drew’s hand. They both walk off then, giggling.
“What just happened?” I ask.
Nat shakes his head with a smile. “Just the Drew effect. I’ll be back in a second. I just need one more ingredient.”
He heads off, leaving me with Drew. I look at him. “The Drew effect? Seriously?”
“I get it most places,” he says, starting to grin but then stopping himself. “Honestly, it can get pretty annoying.”, Loving Summer by Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow (Loving Summer (Loving Summer, #1))
“
All Christian preachers have to face this issue. Either we preach that human beings are rebels against God, under his just judgment and (if left to themselves) lost, and that Christ crucified who bore their sin and curse is the only available Saviour. Or we emphasize human potential and human ability, with Christ brought in only to boost them, and with no necessity for the cross except to exhibit God’s love and so inspire us to greater endeavour. The former is the way to be faithful, the latter the way to be popular. It is not possible to be faithful and popular simultaneously.
”
”
John R.W. Stott (The Cross of Christ)
“
Romero never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like cork-screws, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Romero’s bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. Brett saw how something that was beautiful done close to the bull was ridiculous if it were done a little way off. I told her how since the death of Joselito all the bull-fighters had been developing a technic that simulated this appearance of danger in order to give a fake emotional feeling, while the bull-fighter was really safe. Romero had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable, while he prepared him for the killing.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises)
“
To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves—unwittingly—to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)—that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.
”
”
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
“
...pointed out that the corporation enjoys the same rights as a living person under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This concept was upheld in 1886 by the Supreme Court in 'Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company' and has been a fact of law ever since. I emphasized to those executives that the corporation should also be required to accept the same responsibilities as those expected of a person; it too should be a good citizen, an honorable, ethical member of the community. In the case of international corporations, that community has to be defined as the world.
”
”
John Perkins (The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals & the Truth about Global Corruption)
“
I’ve been looking at all the ordinary staples of flirting," says Julia, "like biting your lip and looking away just a second too late, and laughing a lot and finding every excuse to touch, light fingertips on a forearm or a thigh that emphasize and punctuate the laughter. I’ve been thinking about what a comfort these things are, these textbook methods, precisely because they need no decoding, no translation. Once, a long time ago, you could probably bite your lip and it would mean, I am almost overcome with desiring you. Now you bite your lip and it means, I want you to see that I am almost overcome with desiring you, so I am using the plainest and most universally accepted symbol I can think of to make you see. Now it means, Both of us know the implications of my biting my lip, and what I am trying to say. We are speaking a language, you and I together, a language that we did not invent, a language that is not unique to our uttering. We are speaking someone else’s lines. It’s a comfort.
”
”
Eleanor Catton (The Rehearsal)
“
Due to Jade's fortresslike manner, which, like any well-built castle, made access challenging, girls found her existence not only threatening but flat-out wrong. Although Bartelby Athletic Center featured the latest advertising campaign of Ms. Sturd's three member Benevolent Body-Image Club (laminated Vogue and Maxim covers above captions, “You Can't Have Thighs Like This and Still Walk" and "All Airbrushing"), Jade would only have to swan by, munching on a Snickers to reveal a disturbing truth: You could have thighs like that and still walk. She emphasized what few wanted to accept, that some people did win Trivial Pursuit: The Deity Looks Edition, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it, except come to terms with the fact that you'd only played Trivial Pursuit: John Doe Genes and come away with three pie pieces.
”
”
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
“
No one could simply overturn the tide. Thanks to that, even if someone had their misgivings, they wouldn’t do anything about it.
You can’t overturn popular opinion. There are times when you have no choice but to act against your true feelings.
Because “everyone” said so, “everyone” was doing it, so if you didn’t do it too, you wouldn’t be one of “everyone” anymore.
But no one person is “everyone”. They don’t speak and they don’t beat you up. They don’t get angry and they don’t laugh. “Everyone” is an illusion created by the magic of group-think. It is an apparition born without anyone’s knowledge. It is a ghostly spirit created for the sake of shrouding the individual’s miniscule evils. Through a monstrous transformation, it would devour anyone outside their circle of friends and even scatter curses on its own friends. Former members would also become obstacles to it. That’s why I despise it.
I despise a world that emphasizes “everyone”. I despise the vulgar peace built upon the backs of scapegoats. I despise the empty ideas created solely through lies, blotting away even kindness and justice, making them out to be mere opportunism, a thorn in your side with the passing of time.
You cannot change the past nor the world. You cannot change what has happened, nor can you change “everyone”. But like I said before, it’s not as if you are obligated to enslave yourself to the system.
”
”
Wataru Watari (やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。4)
“
We have to emphasize to the gay community that opposition to same-sex marriages is not about hate, but about debate. Opposition to what some of us see as a devastating move that will further weaken the family and harm children--such opposition is not hateful. Morality is not bigotry.
In their book The Homosexual Agenda, authors Alan Sears and Craig Osten give this illustration, which I've summarized: Imagine that you are standing at the bottom of a cliff and you are watching as someone on the ledge above you is walking backwards, and in a few steps he will surely fall over the precipice. You shout, warning him to stop, and before you know it, a crowd gathers around you, snapping your picture and accusing you of "hate speech." You are being warned to keep your prejudices to yourself. After all, who are you to tell someone where they can and can't walk? Who are you to say that someone can't walk backwards? You are dumbfounded, but there you are, the object of everyone's wrath.
”
”
Erwin W. Lutzer (The Truth About Same Sex Marriage: 6 Things You Need to Know About What's Really at Stake)
“
Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do _that_? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan...Can _you_ take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? It's like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. "Nothing the matter with _that_ boy, is there? Would you let your daughter marry that man? Ohhhh, war is _good_ for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it.
"I mean, you _know_ that it just _can't be done!_" We both shrugged and laughed, and Page looked very thoughtful for a moment. "The very _idea!_" he said. "Ohhh, what a laugh! Take the bloody _glamour_ out of bloody _war!
”
”
Michael Herr (Dispatches)
“
It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing — even fugitively — in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant.
”
”
Mircea Eliade
“
Perhaps the reader is astonished by the frankness with which I expose and emphasize my mediocrity; let him remember that frankness is the virtue most appropriate to a defunct. In life, the watchful eye of public opinion, the conflict of interests, the struggle of greed against greed oblige a man to hide his old rags, to conceal the rips and patches, to withhold from the world the revelations that he makes to his own conscience; and the greatest reward comes when a man, in so deceiving others, manages at the same time to deceive himself, for in such case he spares himself shame, which is a painful experience, and hypocrisy, which is a hideous vice. But in death, what a difference! what relief! what freedom! How glorious to throw away your cloak, to dump your spangles in a ditch, to unfold yourself, to strip off all your paint and ornaments, to confess plainly what you were and what you failed to be! For, after all, you have no neighbors, no friends, no enemies, no acquaintances, no strangers, no audience at all. The sharp and judicial eye of public opinion loses its power as soon as we enter the territory of death. I do not deny that it sometimes glances this way and examines and judges us, but we dead folk are not concerned about its judgment. You who still live, believe me, there is nothing in the world so monstrously vast as our indifference.
”
”
Machado de Assis (Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas)
“
The vastly different sentences afforded drunk drivers and drug offenders speaks volumes regarding who is viewed as disposable—someone to be purged from the body politic—and who is not. Drunk drivers are predominantly white and male. White men comprised 78 percent of the arrests for this offense in 1990 when new mandatory minimums governing drunk driving were being adopted.65 They are generally charged with misdemeanors and typically receive sentences involving fines, license suspension, and community service. Although drunk driving carries a far greater risk of violent death than the use or sale of illegal drugs, the societal response to drunk drivers has generally emphasized keeping the person functional and in society, while attempting to respond to the dangerous behavior through treatment and counseling.66 People charged with drug offenses, though, are disproportionately poor people of color. They are typically charged with felonies and sentenced to prison.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
I went first. The card I drew was "Watergate." "Oh, come on," I said. "This is ridiculous."
"Don't whine," said Carter, his grin annoyingly smug. "We all take a random chance here."
They started the timer. I drew some remedial waves that immediately got a "Water!" from Cody. That was promising. Then, I drew what I hoped looked like a wall with a door in it. Apparently, I did too good a job.
"Wall," said Hugh.
"Door," said Cody.
I added some vertical lines to the door to emphasize the gate aspect. After a moment's thought, I drew a plus sign between the water and wall to show their connection.
"Aqueduct," said Cody.
"A bridge over troubled water," guessed Hugh.
"Oh my God," I groaned.
Unsurprisingly, my time ran out before my teammates could figure it out, though not before they guessed "Hoover Dam" and "Hans Brinker." With a groan, I flounced onto the couch. The other team then got a shot at it.
"Watergate," said Carter right away.
Hugh turned on me, face incredulous. "Why didn't you just draw a gate?
”
”
Richelle Mead (Succubus Shadows (Georgina Kincaid, #5))
“
Along with the sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and the father who proffer it. "I" want none of that element, sign of their desire; "I" do not want to listen, "I" do not assimilate it. "I" expel it. But since the food is not an "other" for "me," who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself with the same motion through which "I" claim to establish myself. That detail, perhaps an insignificant one, but one that they ferret out, emphasize, evaluate, that trifle turns me inside out, guts sprawling; it is thus that they see the "I" am in the process of becoming an other at the expense of my own death, During that course I'm which "I" become, I give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. Mute protest of the symptom, shattering the violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it abreacts. It abjects
”
”
Julia Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection)
“
Here we come to the central question of this book: What, precisely,
does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has been so shaped by the market? On one level the difference between an obligation and a debt is simple and obvious. A debt is the obligation to pay a certain sum of money. As a result, a debt, unlike any other form of obligation, can be precisely quantified. This allows debts to become simple, cold, and impersonal-which, in turn, allows them to be transferable. If one owes a favor, or one’s life, to another human being-it is owed to that person specifically. But if one owes forty thousand dollars at 12-percent interest, it doesn’t really matter who the creditor is; neither does either of the two parties have to think much about what the other party needs, wants, is capable of doing-as they certainly would if what was owed was a favor, or respect, or gratitude. One does not need to calculate the human effects; one need only calculate principal, balances, penalties, and rates of interest. If you end up having to abandon your home and wander in other provinces, if your daughter ends up in a mining camp working as a prostitute, well, that’s unfortunate, but incidental to the creditor. Money is money, and a deal’s a deal. From this perspective, the crucial factor, and a topic that will be explored at length in these pages, is money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic-and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. The factor of violence, which I have been emphasizing up until now, may appear secondary. The difference between a “debt” and a mere moral obligation is not the presence or absence of men with weapons who can enforce that obligation by seizing the debtor’s possessions or threatening to break his legs. It is simply that a creditor has the means to specify, numerically, exactly how much the debtor owes.
”
”
David Graeber (Debt: The First 5,000 Years)
“
The great masses, who have never been, in the history of mankind, more subject to hypnotic suggestion than they are right now, have become the puppets of the "public opinion" that is engineered by the newspapers in the service, it need hardly be emphasized, of the reigning powers of finance. What is printed in the morning editions of the big city newspapers is the opinion of nine out of ten readers by nightfall. The United States of America, whose more rapid "progress" enables us to predict the future on a daily basis, has pulled far ahead of the pack when it comes to standardizing thought, work, entertainment, etc.
Thus, the United States in 1917 went to war against Germany in sincere indignation because the newspapers had told them that Prussian "militarism" was rioting in devilish atrocities as it attempted to conquer the world. Of course, these transparent lies were published in the daily rags because the ruling lords of Mammon knew that American intervention in Europe would fatten their coffers. Thus, whereas the Americans thought that they were fighting for such high-minded
slogans as "liberty" and "justice," they were actually fighting to stuff the money bags of the big bankers. These "free citizens" are, in fact, mere marionettes; their freedom is imaginary, and a brief glance at American work-methods and leisure-time entertainments is enough to prove conclusively that l’homme machine is not merely imminent: it is already the American reality.
”
”
Ludwig Klages (Cosmogonic Reflections: Selected Aphorisms from Ludwig Klages)
“
Because we weren’t taught by either our parents or society to access our inner stillness and find the roots of our pain and pleasure within ourselves, we are reactive to external circumstances. Since we didn’t learn to simply observe our emotions, honor them, sit with them, and grow from them, our response to external stimuli became increasingly emotionally toxic, which is the root of our cyclones of drama. When we are raised to suppress our darker emotions, these emotions form a shadow from which we are cut off. When emotions are split from our consciousness, they lie dormant, ready to be activated at a moment’s notice, which is why so many of us erupt out of the blue. Whenever these emotions are triggered by another’s shadow, we find ourselves upset with the person who evoked these emotions in us. Again, let me emphasize that no one could evoke such emotions in us were they not already part of our shadow.
”
”
Shefali Tsabary (The Conscious Parent)
“
The words "everyone get along" were the main culprit in and of itself. It was an accursed phrase.
Those words emphasized the problem. They were Geass.
It was an evil law imposed by teachers in a narrow-minded world. For the sake of complying with that law, they forcefully established the tactic known as “turning a blind eye” to the friction that inevitably ensued. It showed in how they handled personality types that didn’t adhere to the mainstream. There were cases when you have to deal with those you hated, too. In those situations, if you spelled out “I hate you” or “I don’t want to put up with you” to them, things could possibly change. There was also a chance things could improve or open up to negotiation. But that became impossible when you stifled your problems and only smoothed over the surface issues.
It was tacit approval of the lazy deceit known as ‘tone policing’. That’s why I shot down Hayama’s words.
”
”
Wataru Watari (やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。4)
“
If we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for in them we find at work the same process of simplification or selection as in the imagination. Artistic accounts include severe abbreviations of what reality will force upon us. A travel book may tell us, for example, that the narrator journeyed through the afternoon to reach the hill town of X and after a night in its medieval monastery awoke to a misty dawn. But we never simply 'journey through an afternoon'. We sit in a train. Lunch digests awkwardly within us. The seat cloth is grey. We look out the window at a field. We look back inside. A drum of anxieties resolves in our consciousness. We notice a luggage label affixed to a suitcase in a rack above the seats opposite. We tap a finger on the window ledge. A broken nail on an index finger catches a thread. It starts to rain. A drop wends a muddy path down the dust-coated window. We wonder where our ticket might be. We look back at the field. It continues to rain. At last, the train starts to move. It passes an iron bridge, after which it inexplicably stops. A fly lands on the window And still we may have reached the end only of the first minute of a comprehensive account of the events lurking within the deceptive sentence 'He journeyed through the afternoon'.
A storyteller who provides us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearking us out with repetitions, misleading emphases[,] and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Burdak Electronics, the safety handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card[,] and a fly that lands first on the rim and then the centre of a laden ashtray.
Which explains the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.
”
”
Alain de Botton (The Art of Travel)
“
I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests…
I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. “And I,” he said despairingly, “am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, “he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: “Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!” And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment—a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: “We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm.”
By this time I was convinced of it—and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked me whether I thought that words had a magic and music quite independent of their meaning. I said I certainly thought so, and I quoted as a classic though familiar instance the first lines that came into my head.
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
His eyes blazed with excitement. “Say that again,” he said, “say it again—it is marvelous!” “But I objected, “You know these lines. You know the ‘Ode to a Nightengale.’ ” He had apparently never read or heard of it before (I must, however, add that next time I met him he had not learned not merely this but all of the odes to Keats by heart—and he recited them quite mercilessly from start to finish, not sparing me a syllable).
Finding that he liked poetry, I quoted to him from one of my own favorite poets, Blake. He listened avidly, repeating some lines to himself with varying emphases and stresses, then added meditatively: “I never knew that old Admiral had found so much time to write such good poetry.” I was astounded that he, with his acute susceptibility to words and power of using them, should have left such tracts of English literature entirely unexplored. But however it happened he had lost nothing by it, when he approached books it was “with a hungry, empty mind and with fairly srong jaws, and what I got I *bit*.” And his ear for the beauty of language needed no tuning fork.
Until the end of dinner I listened to him spellbound. I can remember thinking: This is what people mean when they talk of seeing stars. That is what I am doing now. I do not to this day know who was on my other side. Good manners, social obligation, duty—all had gone with the wind. I was transfixed, transported into a new element. I knew only that I had seen a great light. I recognized it as the light of genius…
I cannot attempt to analyze, still less transmit, the light of genius. But I will try to set down, as I remember them, some of the differences which struck me between him and all the others, young and old, whom I have known.
First and foremost he was incalculable. He ran true to no form. There lurked in his every thought and world the ambush of the unexpected. I felt also that the impact of life, ideas and even words upon his mind, was not only vivid and immediate, but direct. Between him and them there was no shock absorber of vicarious thought or precedent gleaned either from books or other minds. His relationship wit
”
”
Violet Bonham Carter
“
Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets. Moreover, the effects of injustices in the political system are much more grave and long lasting than market imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a favored position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented. These questions, however, belong to political sociology. 116 I mention them here as a way of emphasizing that our discussion is part of the theory of justice and must not be mistaken for a theory of the political system. We are in the way of describing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it.
”
”
John Rawls (A Theory of Justice)
“
That dominance came to an abrupt end with the creation and implementation of what has come to be known as the Southern Strategy. The success of law and order rhetoric among working-class whites and the intense resentment of racial reforms, particularly in the South, led conservative Republican analysts to believe that a “new majority” could be created by the Republican Party, one that included the traditional Republican base, the white South, and half the Catholic, blue-collar vote of the big cities.50 Some conservative political strategists admitted that appealing to racial fears and antagonisms was central to this strategy, though it had to be done surreptitiously. H.R. Haldeman, one of Nixon’s key advisers, recalls that Nixon himself deliberately pursued a Southern, racial strategy: “He [President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”51 Similarly, John Ehrlichman, special counsel to the president, explained the Nixon administration’s campaign strategy of 1968 in this way: “We’ll go after the racists.”52 In Ehrlichman’s view, “that subliminal appeal to the anti-black voter was always present in Nixon’s statements and speeches.”53
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
Much to my surprise, church has become a spiritual, even a theological struggle for me. I have found it increasingly difficult to sing hymns that celebrate a hierarchical heavenly realm, to recite creeds that feel disconnected from life, to pray liturgies that emphasize salvation through blood, to listen to sermons that preach an exclusive way to God, to participate in sacraments that exclude others, and to find myself confined to a hard pew in a building with no windows to the world outside. This has not happened because I am angry at the church or God. Rather, it has happened because I was moving around in the world and began to realize how beautifully God was everywhere: in nature and in my neighborhood, in considering the stars and by seeking my roots. It took me five decades to figure it out, but I finally understood. The church is not the only sacred space; the world is profoundly sacred as well. And thus I fell into a gap - the theological ravine between a church still proclaiming conventional theism with its three-tiered universe and the spiritual revolution of God-with-us.
”
”
Diana Butler Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World-A Spiritual Revolution)
“
Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression.
The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion.
This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man.
Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective.
His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy.
Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind -- exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.
”
”
Albert Einstein (Man and His Gods)
“
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.
”
”
Terri Windling (White as Snow)
“
The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell. It is far from certain that the typical investor should regularly hold off buying until low market levels appear, because this may involve a long wait, very likely the loss of income, and the possible missing of investment opportunities. On the whole it may be better for the investor to do his stock buying whenever he has money to put in stocks, except when the general market level is much higher than can be justified by well-established standards of value. If he wants to be shrewd he can look for the ever-present bargain opportunities in individual securities. Aside from forecasting the movements of the general market, much effort and ability are directed on Wall Street toward selecting stocks or industrial groups that in matter of price will “do better” than the rest over a fairly short period in the future. Logical as this endeavor may seem, we do not believe it is suited to the needs or temperament of the true investor—particularly since he would be competing with a large number of stock-market traders and first-class financial analysts who are trying to do the same thing. As in all other activities that emphasize price movements first and underlying values second, the work of many intelligent minds constantly engaged in this field tends to be self-neutralizing and self-defeating over the years. The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down. He would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.” An
”
”
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
In the course of your life you will be continually encountering fools. There are simply too many to avoid.
We can classify people as fools by the following rubric: when it comes to practical life, what should matter is getting long term results, and getting the work done in as efficient and creative a manner as possible.
That should be the supreme value that guides people’s action. But fools carry with them a different scale of values.
They place more importance on short-term matters – grabbing immediate money, getting attention from the public or media, and looking good. They are ruled by their ego and insecurities.
They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. When they criticize, they always emphasize matters that are irrelevant to the overall picture or argument.
They are more interested in their career and position than in the truth. You can distinguish them by how little they get done, or by how hard they make it for others to get results.
They lack a certain common sense, getting worked up about things that are not really important while ignoring problems that will spell doom in the long term.
The natural tendency with fools is to lower yourself to their level.
They annoy you, get under your skin, and draw you into a battle.
In the process, you feel petty and confused. You lose a sense of what is really important.
You can’t win an argument or get them to see your side or change their behavior, because rationality and results don’t matter to them.
You simply waste valuable time and emotional energy.
In dealing with fools you must adopt the following philosophy: they are simply a part of life, like rocks or furniture.
All of us have foolish sides, moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or short-term goals.
It is human nature. Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others.
This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child, and to avoid the madness of trying to change them.
It is all part of the human comedy, and it is nothing to get upset or lose sleep over.
”
”
Robert Greene (Mastery)
“
Not being able to see this, culture-based explanations for economic development have usually been little more than ex post facto justifications based on a 20/20 hindsight vision. So, in the early days of capitalism, when most economically successful countries happened to be Protestant Christian, many people argued that Protestantism was uniquely suited to economic development. When Catholic France, Italy, Austria and southern Germany developed rapidly, particularly after the Second World War, Christianity, rather than Protestantism, became the magic culture. Until Japan became rich, many people thought East Asia had not developed because of Confucianism. But when Japan succeeded, this thesis was revised to say that Japan was developing so fast because its unique form of Confucianism emphasized co-operation over individual edification, which the Chinese and Korean versions allegedly valued more highly. And then Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Korea also started doing well, so this judgement about the different varieties of Confucianism was forgotten. Indeed, Confucianism as a whole suddenly became the best culture for development because it emphasized hard work, saving, education and submission to authority. Today, when we see Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia, Buddhist Thailand and even Hindu India doing well economically, we can soon expect to encounter new theories that will trumpet how uniquely all these cultures are suited for economic development (and how their authors have known about it all along).
”
”
Ha-Joon Chang (Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism)
“
The commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science, and it has happened with astonishing speed. For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secrecy in research, and have even frowned on the idea of patenting their discoveries, seeing themselves as working to the benefit of all mankind. And for many generations, the discoveries of scientists did indeed have a peculiarly selfless quality... Suddenly it seemed as if everyone wanted to become rich. New companies were announced almost weekly, and scientists flocked to exploit genetic research... It is necessary to emphasize how significant this shift in attitude actually was. In the past, pure
scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually
uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn't get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of contaminating industry ties, and whenever debate arose about technological matters, disinterested scientists were available to discuss the issues at the highest levels. But that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial affiliations. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit.
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1))
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Jesus Christ is not a cosmic errand boy. I mean no disrespect or irreverence in so saying, but I do intend to convey the idea that while he loves us deeply and dearly, Christ the Lord is not perched on the edge of heaven, anxiously anticipating our next wish. When we speak of God being good to us, we generally mean that he is kind to us. In the words of the inimitable C. S. Lewis, "What would really satisfy us would be a god who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven--a senile benevolence who as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.'" You know and I know that our Lord is much, much more than that.
One writer observed: "When we so emphasize Christ's benefits that he becomes nothing more than what his significance is 'for me' we are in danger. . . . Evangelism that says 'come on, it's good for you'; discipleship that concentrates on the benefits package; sermons that 'use' Jesus as the means to a better life or marriage or job or attitude--these all turn Jesus into an expression of that nice god who always meets my spiritual needs. And this is why I am increasingly hesitant to speak of Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. As Ken Woodward put it in a 1994 essay, 'Now I think we all need to be converted--over and over again, but having a personal Savior has always struck me as, well, elitist, like having a personal tailor. I'm satisfied to have the same Lord and Savior as everyone else.' Jesus is not a personal Savior who only seeks to meet my needs. He is the risen, crucified Lord of all creation who seeks to guide me back into the truth." . . .
His infinity does not preclude either his immediacy or his intimacy. One man stated that "I want neither a terrorist spirituality that keeps me in a perpetual state of fright about being in right relationship with my heavenly Father nor a sappy spirituality that portrays God as such a benign teddy bear that there is no aberrant behavior or desire of mine that he will not condone." . . .
Christ is not "my buddy." There is a natural tendency, and it is a dangerous one, to seek to bring Jesus down to our level in an effort to draw closer to him. This is a problem among people both in and outside the LDS faith. Of course we should seek with all our hearts to draw near to him. Of course we should strive to set aside all barriers that would prevent us from closer fellowship with him. And of course we should pray and labor and serve in an effort to close the gap between what we are and what we should be. But drawing close to the Lord is serious business; we nudge our way into intimacy at the peril of our souls. . . .
Another gospel irony is that the way to get close to the Lord is not by attempting in any way to shrink the distance between us, to emphasize more of his humanity than his divinity, or to speak to him or of him in casual, colloquial language. . . .
Those who have come to know the Lord best--the prophets or covenant spokesmen--are also those who speak of him in reverent tones, who, like Isaiah, find themselves crying out, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah 6:5). Coming into the presence of the Almighty is no light thing; we feel to respond soberly to God's command to Moses: "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5). Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained, "Those who truly love the Lord and who worship the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit, according to the approved patterns, maintain a reverential barrier between themselves and all the members of the Godhead.
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Robert L. Millet
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The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones—gliding like a Satan—well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes—feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, black, white, gray, and in all sizes, with their heavy death fringes daubed in Sapolio silver on the black. Beggars in dog voices on the church steps enact the last feebleness for you with ancient Church Spanish, and show their old flails of stump and their sores. The burden carriers with the long lines, hemp lines they wind over their foreheads to hold the loads on their backs, lie in the garbage at siesta and give themselves the same exhibited neglect the dead are shown. Which is all to emphasize how openly death is received everywhere, in the beauty of the place, and how it is acknowledged that anyone may be roughly handled—the proudest—pinched, slapped, and set down, thrown down; for death throws even worse in men’s faces and makes it horrible and absurd that one never touched should be roughly dumped under, dumped upon.
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Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March)
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Parent and Teacher Actions: 1. Ask children what their role models would do. Children feel free to take initiative when they look at problems through the eyes of originals. Ask children what they would like to improve in their family or school. Then have them identify a real person or fictional character they admire for being unusually creative and inventive. What would that person do in this situation? 2. Link good behaviors to moral character. Many parents and teachers praise helpful actions, but children are more generous when they’re commended for being helpful people—it becomes part of their identity. If you see a child do something good, try saying, “You’re a good person because you ___.” Children are also more ethical when they’re asked to be moral people—they want to earn the identity. If you want a child to share a toy, instead of asking, “Will you share?” ask, “Will you be a sharer?” 3. Explain how bad behaviors have consequences for others. When children misbehave, help them see how their actions hurt other people. “How do you think this made her feel?” As they consider the negative impact on others, children begin to feel empathy and guilt, which strengthens their motivation to right the wrong—and to avoid the action in the future. 4. Emphasize values over rules. Rules set limits that teach children to adopt a fixed view of the world. Values encourage children to internalize principles for themselves. When you talk about standards, like the parents of the Holocaust rescuers, describe why certain ideals matter to you and ask children why they’re important. 5. Create novel niches for children to pursue. Just as laterborns sought out more original niches when conventional ones were closed to them, there are ways to help children carve out niches. One of my favorite techniques is the Jigsaw Classroom: bring students together for a group project, and assign each of them a unique part. For example, when writing a book report on Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, one student worked on her childhood, another on her teenage years, and a third on her role in the women’s movement. Research shows that this reduces prejudice—children learn to value each other’s distinctive strengths. It can also give them the space to consider original ideas instead of falling victim to groupthink. To further enhance the opportunity for novel thinking, ask children to consider a different frame of reference. How would Roosevelt’s childhood have been different if she grew up in China? What battles would she have chosen to fight there?
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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If we live in a world of states, and if out-of-state existence is impossible, then we all must live as national citizens. We are the nation, and the nation is us. This is as fundamental as it is an inescapable reality. Nationalism engulfs both the individual and the collective; it produces the 'I' and 'We' dialectically and separately. Not only does nationalism produce the community and its individual members: it is itself the community and its realized individual subjects, for without these there is no nationalism.
"Leading sociologists and philosophers have emphasized the pervasive presence of the community in individual consciousnesses, where the social bond is an essential part of the self. It is not only that the 'I' is a member of the 'We,' but, more importantly, that the 'We' is a necessary member of the 'I.' It is an axiom of sociological theory, writes Scheler, that all human knowledge 'precedes levels of self-contagiousness of one's self-value. There is no "I" without "We." The "We" is filled with contents prior to the "I." ' Likewise, Mannheim emphasizes ideas and thought structures as functions of social relations that exist within the group, excluding the possibility of any ideas arising independently of socially shared meanings. The social reality of nationalism not only generates meanings but is itself a 'context of meaning'; hence our insistence that nationalism constitutes and is constituted by the community as a social order. 'It is senseless to pose questions such as whether the mind is socially determined, as though the mind and society each posses a substance of their own' [citing Pressler and Dasilva's Sociology]. The profound implications of the individual's embeddedness in the national community is that the community's ethos is prior and therefore historically determinative of all socioepistemic phenomena. And if thought structures are predetermined by intellectual history, by society's inheritance of historical forms of knowledge, then those structures are also a priori predetermined by the linguistic structures in which this history is enveloped, cast, and framed.
Like law, nationalism is everywhere: it creates the community and shapes world history even before nationalism comes into it.
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Wael B. Hallaq (The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament)
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It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.
My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.
Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you'd better use a different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.
To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.
The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.
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Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
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But if you could just pay her some small attention-or better yet, escort her yourself-it would be ever so helpful, and I would be grateful forever.”
“Alex, if you were married to anyone but Jordan Townsende, I might consider asking you how you’d be willing to express your gratitude. However, since I haven’t any real wish to see my life brought to a premature end, I shall refrain from doing so and say instead that your smile is gratitude enough.”
“Don’t joke, Roddy, I’m quite desperately in need of your help, and I would be eternally grateful for it.”
“You are making me quake with trepidation, my sweet. Whoever she is, she must be in a deal of trouble if you need me.”
“She’s lovely and spirited, and you will admire her tremendously.”
“In that case, I shall deem it an embarrassing honor to lend my support to her. Who-“ His gaze flicked to a sudden movement in the doorway and riveted there, his eternally bland expression giving way to reverent admiration. “My God,” he whispered.
Standing in the doorway like a vision from heaven was an unknown young woman clad in a shimmering silver-blue gown with a low, square neckline that offered a tantalizing view of smooth, voluptuous flesh, and a diagonally wrapped bodice that emphasized a tiny waist. Her glossy golden hair was swept back off her forehead and held in place with a sapphire clip, then left to fall artlessly about her shoulders and midway down her back, where it ended in luxurious waves and curls that gleamed brightly in the dancing candlelight. Beneath gracefully winged brows and long, curly lashes her glowing green eyes were neither jade nor emerald, but a startling color somewhere in between.
In that moment of stunned silence Roddy observed her with the impartiality of a true connoisseur, looking for flaws that others would miss and finding only perfection in the delicately sculpted cheekbones, slender white throat, and soft mouth.
The vision in the doorway moved imperceptibly. “Excuse me,” she said to Alexandra with a melting smile, her voice like wind chimes, “I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.”
In a graceful swirl of silvery blue skirts she turned and vanished, and still Roddy stared at the empty doorway while Alexandra’s hopes soared. Never had she seen Roddy display the slightest genuine fascination for a feminine face and figure. His words sent her spirits even higher: “My God,” he said again in a reverent whisper. “Was she real?”
“Very real,” Alex eagerly assured him, “and very desperately in need of your help, though she mustn’t know what I’ve asked of you. You will help, won’t you?”
Dragging his gaze from the doorway, he shook his head as if to clear it. “Help?” he uttered dryly. “I’m tempted to offer her my very desirable hand in marriage!
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Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
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Any true definition of preaching must say that that man is there to deliver the message of God, a message from God to those people. If you prefer the language of Paul, he is 'an ambassador for Christ'. That is what he is. He has been sent, he is a commissioned person, and he is standing there as the mouthpiece of God and of Christ to address these people. In other words he is not there merely to talk to them, he is not there to entertain them. He is there - and I want to emphasize this - to do something to those people; he is there to produce results of various kinds, he is there to influence people. He is not merely to influence a part of them; he is not only to influence their minds, not only their emotions, or merely to bring pressure to bear upon their wills and to induce them to some kind of activity. He is there to deal with the whole person; and his preaching is meant to affect the whole person at the very centre of life. Preaching should make such a difference to a man who is listening that he is never the same again. Preaching, in other words, is a transaction between the preacher and the listener. It does something for the soul of man, for the whole of the person, the entire man; it deals with him in a vital and radical manner.
I remember a remark made to me a few years back about some studies of mine on “The Sermon on the Mount.” I had deliberately published them in sermonic form. There were many who advised me not to do that on the grounds that people no longer like sermons. The days for sermons, I was told, were past, and I was pressed to turn my sermons into essays and to give them a different form. I was most interested therefore when this man to whom I was talking, and he is a very well-known Christian layman in Britain, said, "I like these studies of yours on “The Sermon on the Mount” because they speak to me.” Then he went on to say, “I have been recommended many books by learned preachers and professors but,” he said, “what I feel about those books is that it always seems to be professors writing to professors; they do not speak to me. But,” he said, “your stuff speaks to me.” Now he was an able man, and a man in a prominent position, but that is how he put it. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. He felt that so much that he had been recommended to read was very learned and very clever and scholarly, but as he put it, it was “professors writing to professors.” This is, I believe, is a most important point for us to bear in mind when we read sermons. I have referred already to the danger of giving the literary style too much prominence. I remember reading an article in a literary journal some five or six years ago which I thought was most illuminating because the writer was making the selfsame point in his own field. His case was that the trouble today is that far too often instead of getting true literature we tend to get “reviewers writing books for reviewers.” These men review one another's books, with the result that when they write, what they have in their mind too often is the reviewer and not the reading public to whom the book should be addressed, at any rate in the first instance. The same thing tends to happen in connection with preaching. This ruins preaching, which should always be a transaction between preacher and listener with something vital and living taking place. It is not the mere imparting of knowledge, there is something much bigger involved. The total person is engaged on both sides; and if we fail to realize this our preaching will be a failure.
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D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Preaching and Preachers)