Epic Party Quotes

It’s a classic love story. I hit on him at a party, he asked me out, then we fought an epic magical battle between good and evil side by side, and now we need a vacation.

At first it's bliss. It's drunken, heady, intoxicating. It swallows the people we were - not particuarly wonderful people, but people who did our best, more or less - and spits out the monsters we are becoming. Our friends despise us. We are an epic. Everything is grand, crashing, brilliant, blinding. It's the Golden Age of Hollywood, and we are a legend in our own minds, and no one outside can fail to see that we are headed for hell, and we won't listen, we say they don't understand, we pour more wine, go to the parties, we sparkle, fly all over the country, we're on an adventure, unstoppable, we've found each other and we race through our days like Mr. Toad in his yellow motorcar, with no idea where the brakes are and to hell with it anyway, we are on fire, drunk with something we call love.

If you haven't noticed yet, working sucks. Unless you are a racecar driver or an astronaut or Beyonce, working is completely and utterly devoid of awesome. It is hard, it lasts all day, the lighting is generally fluorescent, and, apparently, drinking at your desk is frowned upon. If you ever needed to ruin someone's fun, I mean really poop a party, just move things to the workplace. Fun terminated.

If a man is only as good as his word, then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours. The way you say dicey and delectable and octogenarian in the same sentence — that really turns me on. The way you describe the oranges in your backyard using anarchistic and intimate in the same breath. I would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue wrapping around your diction until listening become more like dreaming and dreaming became more like kissing you. I want to jump off the cliff of your voice into the suicide of your stream of consciousness. I want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die. I want to map it out with a dictionary and points of brilliant light until it looks more like a star chart than a strategy for communication. I want to see where your words are born. I want to find a pattern in the astrology. I want to memorize the scripts of your seductions. I want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments, in the haiku of your epiphanies. I want to know all the names you’ve given your desires. I want to find my name among them, ‘cause there is nothing more wrecking sexy than the right word. I want to thank whoever told you there was no such thing as a synonym. I want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet. And if it is true that a man is only as good as his word then, sweet jesus, let me be there the first time you are speechless, and all your explosive wisdom becomes a burning ball of sun in your throat, and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god, oh god.

You get up, you dress up, you show up. And usually have a pretty good time by the end of it.

By lunchtime, the rest of the school was still talking about last night’s epic howler at Hell Hall, but Mal had no interest. The party was the past; she’d moved on. She had bigger things to worry about now. All she could think about was how her mother wanted the Dragon’s Eye back. And how Maleficent wouldn’t see her as anything other than her father’s daughter—in other words, a pathetic, soft human—until Mal could prove her wrong. Mal kept reliving last night’s conversation over and over, so that she missed her first few classes and sleepwalked through the rest. She arrived for her one-on-one after-school seminar with Lady

What I want for the people I cook for is for them to enjoy their own perversions at the table, to feel free to exhibit a lack of constraint.

Byron published the first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a romanticized account of his wanderings through Portugal, Malta, and Greece, and, as he later remarked, “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Beautiful, seductive, troubled, brooding, and sexually adventurous, he was living the life of a Byronic hero while creating the archetype in his poetry. He became the toast of literary London and was feted at three parties each day, most memorably a lavish morning dance hosted by Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Caroline, though married to a politically powerful aristocrat who was later prime minister, fell madly in love with Byron. He thought she was “too thin,” yet she had an unconventional sexual ambiguity (she liked to dress as a page boy) that he found enticing. They had a turbulent affair, and after it ended she stalked him obsessively. She famously declared him to be “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” which he was. So was she.

The internet, although beloved by all including Al Qaeda, went straight from barbarism to decadence without ever encountering a civilisation. It was never utopian, although it was free. Its lawyers are patent trolls. Its political parties are flash mobs in the streets. Its wealthy are nouveau-rich cranks. Its poor are a tidal wave of Third World young people. The Twenty-Teens are quite an interesting cultural period.

In fact even as Holm and the writers were partying up in first class, Chuck Day and some of his mates were holding their own all-nighters down in tourist class, merrily mixing milk, Ovaltine, and alcohol. But discipline was sacrosanct for Brundage.

Many people today acquiesce in the widespread myth, devised in the late 19th century, of an epic battle between ‘scientists’ and ‘religionists’. Despite the unfortunate fact that some members of both parties perpetuate the myth by their actions today, this ‘conflict’ model has been rejected by every modern historian of science; it does not portray the historical situation. During the 16th and 17th centuries and during the Middle Ages, there was not a camp of ‘scientists’ struggling to break free of the repression of ‘religionists’; such separate camps simply did not exist as such. Popular tales of repression and conflict are at best oversimplified or exaggerated, and at worst folkloristic fabrications (see Chapter 3 on Galileo). Rather, the investigators of nature were themselves religious people, and many ecclesiastics were themselves investigators of nature.

The Republican Party spent the year of the liberal apotheosis enacting the most unlikely political epic ever told: a right-wing fringe took over the party from the ground up, nominating Barry Goldwater, the radical-right senator from Arizona, while a helpless Eastern establishment-that-was-now-a-fringe looked on in bafflement. Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide. The Goldwaterites didn’t see suicide. They saw redemption. This was part and parcel of their ideology—that Lyndon Johnson’s “consensus” was their enemy in a battle for the survival of civilization. For them, the idea that calamitous liberal nonsense—ready acceptance of federal interference in the economy; Negro “civil disobedience”; the doctrine of “containing” the mortal enemy Communism when conservatives insisted it must be beaten—could be described as a “consensus” at all was symbol and substance of America’s moral rot. They also believed the vast majority of ordinary Americans already agreed with them, whatever spake the polls—“crazy figures,” William F. Buckley harrumphed, doctored “to say, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’” It was their article of faith. And faith, and the uncompromising passions attending it, was key to their political makeup.

Rather than boasting a doctrinal statement, the Refuge extends an invitation: The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24 Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.

The Refuge is a mission center and Christian community dedicated to helping hurting and hungry people find faith, hope, and dignity alongside each other. We love to throw parties, tell stories, find hope, and practice the ways of Jesus as best we can. We’re all hurt or hungry in our own ways. We’re at different places on our journey but we share a guiding story, a sweeping epic drama called the Bible. We find faith as we follow Jesus and share a willingness to honestly wrestle with God and our questions and doubts. We find dignity as God’s image-bearers and strive to call out that dignity in one another. We all receive, we all give. We are old, young, poor, rich, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay, straight, evangelicals, progressives, overeducated, undereducated, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving. Yet Christ’s love binds our differences together in unity. At The Refuge, everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.24

But of course Google doesn’t want the thermostat as a mere consumer-electronics device – it wants to amass and analyse the records of millions of interactions with millions of thermostats. That becomes a stack of Big Data that Google can bundle and sell to interested parties. Google spent the money, not because the Nest thermostat is worth it, but to demonstrate its determined willingness to frighten off possible rivals from the home-automation space. Google did that to prove its own intent to dominate there.

My mom is having a Scentsy party tomorrow," he said. "The scented-wax thingies? Random. But go on." He laced his fingers together on his lap. "I was thinking... I know how much you love to smell things." I nodded. I could spend hours in a candle store sticking my nose inside every jar. "True. I do love to smell." "Well, instead of going on your suicide mission, you could just come to the party. We could go smell crazy and even sneak a few of my mom's JELL-O shots. Eh?" He poked a finger in my ribs. "Epic, right?

By now Moonves must have been far beyond his third vodka of the evening. In his last text of the day, to Schwartz at 10:36 p.m., he was all but incoherent: “We need to lay their clowns think early on we are no hardship Barr no and will ill them handcuffs off. If they want to bring it n watch out. We will decimate. Old Sara we haven’t done anything but party with you. Now we will kill Scarw her big. All of them scare them. I am going to prevent this public bulls hit rightbaway. And let’s go after them head on NOW.

My approach to training echoed how I climbed. The romance of climbing didn’t interest me. I didn’t seek harps and wings. I heard no opera up there. Instead, my mountains had teeth. The jagged edge we walked up there dragged itself across my throat, and the throats of my friends and peers. I took the mountains’ indifference to life as aggression, and fought back. I armored myself against that indifference; with training, with thinking, with attitude. I trained with friends who shared a similar approach. Our mantra was dark, but it motivated us. When we ran we breathed in rhythm—no matter the speed—and that beat had words: “They all died.” We inhaled and exhaled the great alpine epics—like the tragedy that befell Walter Bonatti’s party on the Freney Pillar—to push ourselves to a place where we would never come up short, physically. The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades.

Consider almost any public issue. Today’s Democratic Party and its legislators, with a few notable individual exceptions, is well to the right of counterparts from the New Deal and Great Society eras. In the time of Lyndon Johnson, the average Democrat in Congress was for single-payer national health insurance. In 1971, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, for universal, public, tax-supported, high-quality day care and prekindergarten. Nixon vetoed the bill in 1972, but even Nixon was for a guaranteed annual income, and his version of health reform, “play or pay,” in which employers would have to provide good health insurance or pay a tax to purchase it, was well to the left of either Bill or Hillary Clinton’s version, or Barack Obama’s. The Medicare and Medicaid laws of 1965 were not byzantine mash-ups of public and private like Obamacare. They were public. Infrastructure investments were also public. There was no bipartisan drive for either privatization or deregulation. The late 1960s and early 1970s (with Nixon in the White House!) were the heyday of landmark health, safety, environmental, and financial regulation. To name just three out of several dozen, Nixon signed the 1970 Clean Air Act, the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the 1973 Consumer Product Safety Act. Why did Democrats move toward the center and Republicans to the far right? Several things occurred. Money became more important in politics. The Democratic Leadership Council, formed by business-friendly and Southern Democrats after Walter Mondale’s epic 1984 defeat, believed that in order to be more competitive electorally, Democrats had to be more centrist on both economic and social issues.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see who it was. My jaw dropped! Ralph and I exchanged looks of dismay and resignation. Standing behind us were our three top PJ bosses. Somehow they had tracked us down. We were caught red-handed and there was no escape. The air went out of my emotional sails, and I felt deflated. I didn’t even begin to try to talk my way out of this. I said, “OK. You got us. What can I say?” The PJ bosses looked at me funny and started to laugh. Then a long line of PJs streamed into the bar. The bosses were just the vanguard of a boisterous posse of PJs. Cabin fever had become unbearable and apparently almost every single PJ had decided to sneak off base! Everyone was loud, animated, and ready to do some serious drinking. Thus began a spontaneous and epic night of partying. Somehow, everyone made it back onto base afterwards without incident.

One of the earliest records of calisthenics training was handed down to us by the historian Herodotus, who recounts that prior to the Battle of Thermopolylae (c.480 BC) the god-king Xerxes sent a party of scouts to look down over the valley at his hopelessly outnumbered Spartan enemies, led by their king, Leonidas. To the amazement of Xerxes, the scouts reported back that the Spartan warriors were busy training their bodies with calisthenics. Xerxes had no idea what to make of this, since it looked as though they were limbering up for battle. The idea was laughable, because beyond the valley lay Xerxes’ Persian army, numbering over one hundred and twenty thousand men. There were only three hundred Spartans. Xerxes sent messages to the Spartans telling them to move or be destroyed. The Spartans refused and during the ensuing battle the tiny Spartan force succeeded in holding Xerxes’ massive army at bay until the other Greek forces coalesced. You might have seen a dramatization of this battle in Zac Snyder’s epic movie 300 (2007).

Thank you." After rounding the couch, the young queen sat her hip on the cushy armrest. Her thoughts went back to the impromptu party in the commissary the night before. “I assume no Mishmorats or Viiduns are missing. Do you know if any real mischief took place last night after we left?” “None you need to worry about,” Ian told her. She could see he was hiding something by the twinkle in his eye. “What happened?” she asked, certain he had a story to tell. “Let’s just say there may be an influx of soldiers visiting your garden.” Her eyes scrunched, unable to guess what he was talking about. “Okay, and why?” Ian’s shoulders jostled with a snicker. “Efren showed off your garden to Kira last night. She discovered the warm pond. You know how your sisters have a fondness for swimming in their underclothes.” “Oh great,” Eena groaned. “But don’t worry about it too much, Queenie, there is a deterrent.” Ian let go a laugh he couldn’t quite stifle. “What deterrent?” she asked, grinning at his amusement. “Shanks likes to swim too.” “Oh?” “Actually, he prefers skinny dipping.” “Ew! Ew, Ian, like I need that image in my head!” (Now you know how I feel on a regular basis,) he said, cracking up. After a moment of grossing out, Eena all but begged Ian, “Please, can we change the subject.

Many people today acquiesce in the widespread myth, devised in the late 19th century, of an epic battle between ‘scientists’ and ‘religionists’. Despite de unfortunate fact that some members of both parties perpetuate the myth by their actions today, this ‘conflict’ model has been rejected by every modern historian of science; it does not portray the historical situation. During the 16th and 17th centuries and during the Middle Ages, there was not a camp of ‘scientists’ struggling to break free of the repression of ‘religionists’; such separate camps simply did not exist as such. Popular tales of repression and conflict are at best oversimplified or exaggerated, and at worst folkloristic fabrications. Rather, the investigators of nature were themselves religious people, and many ecclesiastics were themselves investigators of nature. The connection between theological and scientific study rested in part upon the idea of the Two Books. Enunciated by St. Augustine and other early Christian writers, the concept states that God reveals Himself to human beings in two different ways – by inspiring the sacred writers to pen the Book of Scripture, and by creating the world, the Book of Nature. The world around us, no less than the Bible, is a divine message intended to be read; the perceptive reader can learn much about the Creator by studying the creation. This idea, deeply ingrained in orthodox Christianity, means that the study of the world can itself be a religious act. Robert Boyle, for example, considered his scientific inquiries to be a type of religious devotion (and thus particularly appropriate to do on Sundays) that heightens the natural philosopher’s knowledge and awareness of God through the contemplation of His creation. He described the natural philosopher as a ‘priest of nature’ whose duty it was to expound and interpret the messages written in the Book of Nature, and to gather together and give voice to all creation’s silent praise of its Creator.

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 18,000 words of kid-friendly fun!** This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game! Meet the Skull Kids. They're three Minecraft players who hop from world to world, hunting zombies and searching for the elusive Herobrine--the ghost in the machine. Teleporting down into a new world, the group is surprised to find that the game has changed once again, rendering almost ALL of their technology and mods useless. And when two of the Skull Kids are starving and distracted by exploring a desert village on Day 1 of their new adventure, the whole group is in danger when the sun goes down. Will the Skull Kids survive? Thank you to all of you who are buying and reading my books and helping me grow as a writer. I put many hours into writing and preparing this for you. I love Minecraft, and writing about it is almost as much fun as playing it. It’s because of you, reader, that I’m able to keep writing these books for you and others to enjoy. This book is dedicated to you. Enjoy!! After you read this book, please take a minute to leave a simple review. I really appreciate the feedback from my readers, and love to read your reactions to my stories, good or bad. If you ever want to see your name/handle featured in one of my stories, leave a review and tell me about it in there! And if you ever want to ask me any questions, or tell me your idea for a cool Minecraft story, you can email me at steve@skeletonsteve.com. Are you on my Amazing Reader List? Find out at the end of the book! June 29th, 2016 Now I’m going to try something a little different. Tell me what you guys think! This ‘Players Series’ is going to be a continuing series of books following my new characters, the players Renzor51, Molly, and quantum_steve. Make sure to let me know if you like it or not! Would you still like to see more books about mobs? More books about Cth’ka the Creeper King? I’m planning on continuing that one. ;) Don’t forget to review, and please say hi and tell me your ideas! Thanks, Ryan Gallagher, for the ideas to continue the wolf pack book! Enjoy the story. P.S. - Have you joined the Skeleton Steve Club and my Mailing List?? You found one of my diaries!! This particular book is the continuing story of some Minecraft players—a trio of friends who leap from world to world, searching for the elusive Herobrine. They’re zombie hunters and planeswalkers. They call themselves “The Skull Kids”. Every time these Skull Kids hop into a new world, they start with nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing, and they end up dominating the realm where they decide to live. What you are about to read is the first collection of diary entries from Renzor51, the player and member of the Skull Kids who documents their adventures, from the day they landed on Diamodia and carved out their own little empire, and beyond. Be warned—this is an epic book! You’re going to care about these characters. You’ll be scared for them, feel good for them, and feel bad for them! It’s my hope that you’ll be sucked up into the story, and the adventure and danger will be so intense, you’ll forget we started this journey with a video game! With that, future readers, I present to you the tale of the Skull Kids, Book 1. The Skull Kids Ka-tet Renzor51 Renzor51 is the warrior-scribe of the group, and always documents the party’s adventures and excursions into game worlds. He’s a sneaky fighter, and often takes the role of a sniper, but can go head to head with the Skull Kids’ enemies when needed. A natural artist, Renzor51 tends to design and build many of the group’s fortresses and structures, and keeps things organized. He also focuses a lot on weapon-smithing and enchanting, always seeking out ways to improve his gear. Molly

Epic Holidays Is A Travel Agency That Specialises In Creating Tailor-Made Holiday Packages For Bucks Parties, Hens Parties, Footy Trips, Netball Trips, End Of Season Trips, Birthdays, Schoolies, Group Holidays, Ski & Snowboard, Adventure, Golf & More. We Offer Group Discounts And Great Personal Service For Party Holidays All Over The World.

For the best mechanical bull rentals Austin, TX has to offer, trust the pros at Bounce Across Texas to provide an epic experience at your next party or event. Our customers leave raving reviews because of our excellent service and competitive rates. Also, our bulls are a thrill to ride. You can adjust the difficult presets, and our operators fully control the speed, spin, and buck. Making your party the next talk of the town can be a piece of cake when you have the right entertainment lined up.

An alliance was only an alliance until the interests of one party outweighed the benefits of the union.

Don’t think of this book as an epic journey. It’s not. Instead, think of this book as you would a good sex party.

The speechwriter this memo referred to was Charles Kramer, also known as Charles Krivitsky and Charles Krevisky, who worked for Pepper's House Subcommittee on Wartime Health and Education. Kramer began working for the Communist Party in 1931 and joined the party two years later. Kramer was editor of the communist publication New Masses until 1931 and was identified as a communist and a member of the “Soviet espionage apparatus.” He worked at a number of middle-level government posts before going to work for Senator Kilgore in 1942. His role was to pass sensitive Senate documents to Soviet agents, although most of his information was little more than warmed-over Washington gossip.

James Weldon Johnson, the literary polymath and leader of the NAACP from 1920 to 1930. When he urged Black voters to abandon the Republican ticket in 1924 because the party refused to denounce the Klan, he sparked an epic political realignment.

There is an expression in Ottawa that every member of Parliament believes they should be in cabinet and every member of cabinet thinks they should be prime minister. The exception is any member of Parliament from Newfoundland. They go to bed at night thinking they should be ambassador to Ireland. What a job it would be, lying around the fancy house in Dublin, representing the not very pressing interests of Canada in the land of your forefathers. The spare bedroom in the house would be filled with a steady stream of relatives and old high school buddies hell-bent on having a party and finding out where their great-grandparents are buried. The best Newfoundland musicians would be at the embassy, hobnobbing with their fiddle-playing Irish counterparts. The kitchen parties would be epic. Mother Ireland. The Emerald Isle. The Land of Saints and Scholars. She's easy on the eyes and hard on the liver.

In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, "He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.

When the Soviet army liberated war-ravaged Eastern Europe, they had promised the people free elections with Hitler gone. At first, Stalin kept his promise. But when communist parties in Poland, Hungary, Germany, and Austria lost in the free elections of ’45 and ’46, Stalin set his secret police, the NKVD, in motion. The secret police reopened former Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz to imprison Poles and Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen to imprison East Germans. The communists built sixteen new camps to hold Hungarians.

From the moment Adolf Hitler’s airplane descended from the clouds into Nuremberg on September 4 of that year, every movement he made, every detail of the imagery that unfolded, every word he and his minions spoke, was carefully calculated to reinforce the notion that the Nazi Party was invincible.

In the meantime, though, the race for the Republican Party presidential nomination sure seems funny. The event known around the world as hashtagGOPClownCar is improbable, colossal, spectacular and shocking; epic, monumental, heinous and disgusting. It’s like watching 17 platypuses try to mount the queen of England. You can’t tear your eyes away from it. It

Despite the refusal of the Obama Justice Department to prosecute anyone at the IRS, it is clear that what happened was an epic clampdown on any conservative voices speaking or advocating against the president’s disastrous policies and in favor of patriotism and adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. Over the course of twenty-seven months leading up to the 2012 election, not a single Tea Party–type organization received tax-exempt status. Many were unable to operate; others disbanded because donors refused to fund them without the IRS seal of approval; some organizations and their donors were audited without justification; and many incurred legal fees and costs fighting the unlawful conduct by Lerner and other IRS employees. The IRS suppressed the entire Tea Party movement just in time to help Obama win reelection. And everyone in the administration involved in this outrageous conduct got away with it without being punished or prosecuted. Was it simply a case of retribution against the perceived “enemies” of the administration? No, this was much bigger than political payback. It was a systematic and concerted effort to squash the Tea Party movement—one of the most organic and powerful political movements in recent memory—during an election season. [See Appendix for select IRS documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.] This was about campaign politics. It was a scandal for the ages. President Obama obviously wanted this done even if he gave no direct orders for it. In 2015, he told Jon Stewart on The Daily Show that “you don’t want all this money pouring through non-profits.” But there is no law preventing money from “pouring through non-profits” that they use to achieve their legal purposes and the objectives of their members. Who didn’t want this money pouring through nonprofits? Barack Obama. In the subsequent FOIA litigation filed by Judicial Watch, the IRS obstructed and lied to a federal judge and Judicial Watch in an effort to hide the truth about what Lois Lerner and other senior officials had done. The IRS, including its top political appointees like IRS Commissioner John Koskinen and General Counsel William J. Wilkins, have much to answer for over their contempt of court and of Congress. And the Department of Justice lawyers and officials enabling this cover-up in court need to be held accountable as well. If the Tea Party and other conservative groups had been fully active in the critical months leading up to the 2012 election, would Mitt Romney have been elected president? We will, of course, never know for certain. But we do know that President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service targeted right-leaning organizations applying for tax-exempt status and prevented them from entering the fray during that period. That is how you steal an election in plain sight. Accountability is not something we will get from the Obama administration. But Judicial Watch will continue its independent investigation and certainly any new presidential administration should take a fresh look at this IRS scandal.

He then offered one of the most infamous pronouncements that has ever been made about the Grand Canyon: Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality. It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed. . . . Excepting when the melting snows send their annual torrents through the avenues to the Colorado, conveying with them sound and motion, these dismal abysses, and the arid table-lands that enclose them, are left as they have been for ages, in unbroken solitude and silence. That

What is known is that Ellen spoke forcefully offstage when she wished. One journalist would remember a dinner party, soon after the Crafts’ arrival overseas, where Ellen was asked “if the slaves generally were intelligent enough to take care of themselves if they were emancipated.” Her reply: “At present, they take care of themselves and their master, too; if they were free, I think they would be able to take care of themselves.” This impromptu wit would prove essential, as the petty politics that they had thus avoided soon threatened to engulf them all.

On Valentine’s Day, John let himself into Steven Spielberg’s home, raided his refrigerator, and left a note. He partied into the night with the Pretenders, who had played at UCLA. After midnight, he telephoned Judy from Chateau Marmont. “Chrissie Hynde has passed out,” he said. “What should I do?” Call her road manager, Judy instructed coolly.

The storm raged with renewed power. Visibility was zero. The general lassitude of all members of the party was still very much in evidence.” All the world was snow and wind, and there appeared no escape from its hold.

An aristocracy often dictates, it rules as long as it is composed of the strongest elements i.e. as long as it maintains its sense of the present. One might almost say as long as it maintains its news sense. Both the communist party in Russia and the Fascist party in Italy are examples of aristocracy, active. They are the best, the pragmatical, the aware, the most thoughtful, the most wilful elements in their nations.

The elections were over, and while he himself had won handily enough, there was some question about who had been elected President. Tilden, as the official returns later showed, had a plurality of more than a quarter of a million votes and was the rightful winner, but at that point the outcome in three southern states—South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—was still undetermined, and if they were to go for Hayes, then Hayes would have the electoral votes needed to win—which was what the Republicans were claiming. Hewitt, still the moving spirit of the Tilden camp, was doing all he could to rescue his man, writing speeches, sending prominent citizens off to the disputed states to see that a fair count was made (Grant, meanwhile, was sending his own set of “visiting statesmen”), and rallying his fellow Democrats to “boldly denounce all . . . fraudulent contrivances for the destruction of self-government.” But in the year of the centennial of American democracy, the Presidency was about to be stolen by the Republicans, who were quicker and more efficient with their bribes than the other party. Hayes would win in the Electoral College by a majority of one.

More briefly: Beowulf is a violent epic about the dangers of being friendless. There’s a party, the misfit is not invited, he sulks outside, then comes in, wreaks havoc, and is killed.

All Yang’s men were in by midday and our party straggled in later completely done in. Chuen came in first. He was wearing a dark green commando’s beret, long green canvas boots with rubber soles – American jungle boots – and green battle-dress with lovely blue parachute wings over his left pocket. He is a little cheerful man and speaks fair English. Then came Humpleman, very young, blue-eyed, with a bland and serious manner; then Jim Hannah, lean, dark, hook-nosed, moustached, and over forty. At one time he was a journalist and in the rubber slump in Malaya he worked in Australia. Then came Harrison, short, with red face and sandy hair – a very silent Scot, also a planter. John and Richard brought up the rear, absolutely exhausted but very contented. After a meal they had got out on to the field and had everything ready an hour before midnight. Then they waited and waited and, as nothing happened, they got more and more worried and despondent. One hour late, then two hours. It was bitterly cold, and at last they were just talking of returning home when a faint drone was heard from the west. They were so excited that their hearts almost choked them! At last the Lib came over. Apparently she followed up the Perak river, then came across on a bearing. The moon was shining brilliantly and the sky was covered with high, white, fleecy clouds. The fires, freshly stoked with dry atap, burned up brightly, and Quayle with his torch flashed the recognition letter faster and faster with growing excitement as the great Lib, after flying round in a wide circle, swooped overhead, vast and glistening in the moonlight. Suddenly four little white balls seemed to appear in the plane’s wake, and four tiny black forms were seen swinging from side to side below them. John, Richard, and Frank all agreed it was the most exciting moment of their lives. While they were still lost in wonder, things started happening. Hannah and Harrison landed beautifully and were immediately fielded, but Humpleman fell in the stream and was retrieved soaking wet. The containers and packages, which had been released immediately after the bodies, now came down and all landed

From the moment Adolf Hitler’s airplane descended from the clouds into Nuremberg on September 4 of that year, every movement he made, every detail of the imagery that unfolded, every word he and his minions spoke, was carefully calculated to reinforce the notion that the Nazi Party was invincible. And more: that it was the only legitimate object of not just political but religious fervor. And still more: that this new German religion was embodied and made incarnate in the person of its leader.

The movement away from the party was clear by 1936, when 43 of the 102 congressional Democrats from the South deserted the party on votes more than half the time.35 Many southerners thought the worst of the Great Depression was over and saw no need for the New Deal's expanding welfare state and federal bureaucracy. The Roosevelt programs to help the South drew unwanted blacks to the Democratic Party.

But this wasn’t a dinner party; it was an epic life-or-death battle with an evil queen and her evil tribe and also a vitally important rescue mission

toddler named Huey Newton was spirited from Monroe to Oakland with his sharecropper parents in 1943. His father had barely escaped a lynching in Louisiana for talking back to his white overseers. Huey Newton would become perhaps the most militant of the disillusioned offspring of the Great Migration. He founded the Black Panther Party in 1966 and reveled in discomfiting the white establishment with his black beret, rifle, and black power rhetoric.

Beowulf is a violent epic about the dangers of being friendless. There’s a party, the misfit is not invited, he sulks outside, then comes in, wreaks havoc, and is killed.

I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me to do that....'Always go to the funeral' means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully underattended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing. In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity. On a cold April night three years ago, my father died...His funeral was on a Wednesday, the middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful, and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

WELL, I THINK IT’S SAFE to say that the Fitzphie slumber party is a total snoozefest,” Keefe said, plopping dramatically onto the empty cot next to Sophie. “And I mean that literally.” He pointed across the room, to where Fitz was still curled up with Mr. Snuggles, looking far more peaceful than Sophie felt at the moment. Ro was watching Fitz like a hawk, like she suspected him of eavesdropping again. But every time she poked his shoulder, Fitz let out a snuffly snore. Keefe smirked. “Epic Fitzphie fail.” Sophie rolled her eyes,

When he tried to offer an example of how WeWork separated itself from other office space operators, he mentioned how much fun people had at its recent Halloween party, where Busta Rhymes performed.

I found myself squarely in the middle as an independent, gun-owning, pro-hunting, nature-loving, freethinking conservationist. Neither political party seemed to wholly represent me. In a climate of increasingly partisan politics, my independent stance felt not only unique, but also slightly disorienting.

I can't recall ever wanting a normal life. I never really wanted marriage and kids, the whole barefoot in the kitchen thing. I LOVE children, and I LOVE the idea of celebrating love. I've been in engaged multiple times. But, even when I said yes, I knew it was just to agree to and seal myself to that person with a higher commitment. I've never gotten that wedding bug, where I just want to pour a years worth of energy into throwing this epic party because I did the thing every body does. What's the big deal? I just don't comprehend it.

In medieval society, daily or at least frequent contact with opponents was inescapable; thus conflict was a constant and ongoing part of life. Enemies frequently were forced to encounter one another, perhaps even to work together, and certainly to pray together, and this constantly reinforced atmosphere of hostility ultimately involved not only the opponents themselves and their immediate families but the entire community. Every conflict drew into it a wider society; as individuals and families were forced to take sides, to define their relationships to the principal participants. In the dispute at Chorges we see a conflict that involves not only the prior and the de Turre brothers but also their respective vassals, lords (the abbot and the archbishop respectively), and kin and, ultimately, the neighbors who are forced to testify for one side or the other. The circle of conflict becomes progressively wider. The fatal magnetism that feuds exercised on society at large is perhaps best illustrated in contemporary literature. The essence of the tragedy in medieval epics and sagas is often exactly this: that a man, burdened by complex obligations to estranged parties, is ultimately and fatally drawn into their conflict. Neutrality is unthinkable. The most obvious example is the conflict between Roland and his father-in-law, Ganelon, which ultimately leads to the deaths not only of the two principals but also of the peers, numerous Frankish knights, and thirty of Ganelon's kinsmen (not to mention thousands of Saracens). At Chorges, the prior tries to avoid having Peter de Rosset drawn into the web of conflict for fear of losing his friendship; the bailiff Peter attempts to avoid testifying because he knows that to do so will place in the conflict. Both efforts come to nought. From this process of taking sides, of testing bonds, came not only social antagonism but cohesion as well. Dispute thus served to define the boundaries of social groups: kindreds, vassalic groups, patronage connections, and the like. Moreover, conflicts created new groups as individuals or parties sought new alliances to assist them in pressing their claims. Finally, every conflict tested the implicit, preexisting social bonds and hierarchies, and every new outbreak caused existing ties to be either reaffirmed or denied. The Chorges dispute tests and reinforces the bonds uniting the de Turre and de Rosset groups, tests and strengthens the loyalty of their vassals and amid, and forces the entire local community to define itself in relationship to the two sides. By the end of the account (which is not the same as the end of the dispute), the knights have reason to doubt the strength of their bonds with their lord, the archbishop, and to take comfort in the loyalty of Bruno Stephanus and their other vassals who have proven their devotion. The archbishop and the monks, who had often faced each other as opponents, have drawn closer together in their mutual effort to end the conflict. Like the dispute over the sponsaficium itself, the narrative of it does not begin at the "beginning" and carry through to the "end." This is typical of such records because these conflicts were such an essential part of the social fabric that one can hardly speak of them in this society as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. Conflicts were more structures than events--structures often enduring generations. The basis for social forms themselves was often a long-term, inherited conflict without which social groups would have lost their meaning and hence their cohesion.

Life with adolescents is an epic dance party, scary roller coaster, military battlefield, and the warmest hug ever, all mixed into one.

Michelangelo, however, stood apart from these musical parties. It sounds as though, even as an adolescent, he was already antisocial, reclusive and driven: constantly drawing and carving. Only such dedication could explain the rapidity of the progress he made. Within two years, he had become as skilful a sculptor in marble as any alive.

The invaders numbered almost four hundred thousand, Milorg roughly forty thousand. There could have been an ugly fight, but there was none. At last Norway was free, and parties broke out in the streets of Oslo and throughout the country.

Comprised of the wealthiest, most athletic, most connected guys currently attending Jade Mountain, we threw the most epic parties, scored the hottest girls, and in general just caused debauchery … in the best way possible.

The slaughter of Jerusalem in the days following its fall to the crusaders on Friday, July 15, 1099, was one of the atrocities of its age, an extreme example of the rights of a victorious party to withhold mercy from the vanquished, and a biblical wasting in keeping with other Norman-inspired massacres like William the Conqueror’s “Harrying” of northern England in 1069 and 1070.

he had announced, to practice journalism in Germany one would henceforth have to do so as a licensed member of his press organization, the Reichsverband der Deutschen Presse, and no one would be licensed who had, or was married to someone who had, so much as one Jewish grandparent. As for editorial content, no one was to publish anything that was not consecrated by the party. Specifically, nothing was to be published that was “calculated to weaken the power of the Reich at home or abroad, the community will of the German people, its military spirit, or its culture and economy.” None of this should be any problem, Goebbels had calmly assured his audience of dumbstruck journalists that day: “I don’t see why you should have the slightest difficulty in adjusting the trend of what you write to the interests of the State. It is possible that the Government may sometimes be mistaken—as to individual measures—but it is absurd to suggest that anything superior to the Government might take its place. What is the use, therefore, of editorial skepticism? It can only make people uneasy.” But just to make sure, the same week, the new Nazi government had enacted a separate measure imposing the death penalty on those who published “treasonable articles.

Hitler had not originally wanted to host the games at all. Almost everything about the idea, in fact, had offended him. The year before, he had damned the games as the invention of “Jews and Freemasons.” The very heart of the Olympic ideal—that athletes of all nations and all races should commingle and compete on equal terms—was antithetical to his National Socialist Party’s core belief: that the Aryan people were manifestly superior to all others. And he was filled with revulsion by the notion that Jews, Negroes, and other vagabond races from around the world would come traipsing through Germany.

The standoff had already lasted five days. "It was a Monday, the 3rd of October 1502," wrote Tomé Lopes: "a date that I will remember every day of my life." By now Gama's soldiers had removed all the weapons they could find from the Arab ship. It was a sitting duck, and the admiral ordered his men into their boats. Their task was simple. They were to tow the Mîrî out to sea until it was safely away from the Portuguese fleet. Then they were to set it alight and burn it with everyone on board. The soldiers marched onto the Mîrî, set fires across the decks, and jumped back into the boats as the flames licked and the smoke billowed. Some of the Muslims rushed to smother the fires, and one by one they stamped them out. Others dragged out several small bombards they had managed to hide from the search party, and they hurriedly set them up. The pilgrims and merchants ran to grab anything that could serve as ammunition, including fist-sized stones from the piles of ballast in the hold. There was clearly no chance of surrender, and they were determined to die fighting rather than burn to death. When the soldiers in the boats saw the fires go out they rowed back to light them again. As they approached, women and men alike fired the bombards and hurled the stones. The Europeans cowered under the hail of missiles and beat a fast retreat. From a distance they tried to sink the Mîrî with their bombards, but the guns carried on the boats were too small to inflict real damage. The Muslim women tore off their jewelry, clutched the gold, silver, and precious stones in their fists, and shook them at the boats, screaming at their attackers to take everything they had. They held up their babies and little children and desperately pleaded with the Christians to take pity on the innocents. One last time, the merchants shouted and gestured that they would pay a great ransom if their lives were spared. Gama watched, hidden from sight, through a loophole in the side of his ship. Tomé Lopes was stunned: shocked by the admiral's refusal to relent, and amazed that he was willing to turn down such wealth. There was no doubt in his mind that the ransom would have been enough to buy the freedom of every Christian prisoner in Morocco and still leave great treasure for the king. Bergamo and his fellow factors were no doubt wondering just how much of their profit would go up in smoke. Yet there were plenty of zealous Christians among the crews who had no more qualms than their Crusader forebears about killing peaceful merchants and pilgrims. The dehumanizing notion that their enemies in faith were somehow not real people was too deeply ingrained to be shaken. Like holy warriors before and after, they avoided looking into the whites of their victims' eyes and got on with their godly business.

In the past two decades, especially, scholars and biographers have given emphasis to a pattern of hypocrisy and duplicity in the president’s life and career. Affecting the modesty and frugality of a simple country farmer, Jefferson’s private tastes ran to fine food, fine wines, fine homes, and fine horses. He criticized government waste, overspending, and public debt, but his profligate spending habits kept him buried under a mountain of personal debt all his adult life. He was enthralled by mechanical contrivances and innovations, but an enemy of industrialization. He denounced financial speculators while speculating aggressively in real estate. Deploring the smear tactics that were so pervasive in the 1790s, he arranged to have his political adversaries smeared. He declared that “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all,” but he was the first acknowledged leader of a major American political party. Jefferson was his country’s greatest spokesman for liberty—swearing “eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the minds of men”—and also the deeded owner of more than two hundred men, women and children, some of whom were his blood relations. As Dr. Samuel Johnson had asked: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

With a staff of 172, including 18 cameramen dressed as SA men so they would blend into the crowd, Riefenstahl shot the week’s events from every conceivable angle, using techniques that had never been tried in a documentary before—cameras on dollies moving along tracks, cameras mounted on elevator platforms for dynamic aerial views, cameras in pits dug at ground level for shots upward at the looming Nazi figures. And the cameras caught it all: a half million uniformed party members