Exile Best Quotes

We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.

They had battled and bloodied one another, they had kept secrets, broken hearts, lied, betrayed, exiled, they had walked away, said goodbye and sworn it was forever, and somehow, every time, they had mended, they had forgiven, they had survived. Some mistakes could never be fixed - some, but not all. Some people can't be driven away, no matter how hard you try. Some friendships won't break.

This is what you do. If you feel low, you stand tall. You mess up, you move on. You want to try something, try it, and if it was a stupid thing to try, you look it in the eye. There's no turning back. You apologize if you're sorry, but know that the nimblest, strongest hands can't rebuild a bridge out of embers, so cut new wood. Start from scratch. You love with your whole heart. If you're jealous, talk yourself from the ledge. If you can't talk yourself down from the ledge, have a good time up there, looking down on the world. If you have to lie to make everything true again, lie like you mean it. If you find yourself in a cage, reach out through the bars for the key, unlock the door, and run away. If running away gets dangerous, run home. If home doesn't mean what it used to mean, decide what home will be in the future. If your best friend says she doesn't trust you, hold her jaw in your hand until it hurts, and make her face you. Thats all it takes. If you think you love a guy, see how his hand looks in yours, thats all it takes. If you get exiled into a new land, then go discover it. And if you feel like you're drowning, go swimming.

Best way to find the weakness of the enemy is to understand their ways.

We can hardly bear to look. The shadow may carry the best of the life we have not lived. Go into the basement, the attic, the refuse bin. Find gold there. Find an animal who has not been fed or watered. It is you!! This neglected, exiled animal, hungry for attention, is a part of your self.

Alden turned to Grady. “I’m sorry to be late. I’d hoped to get here before the Hekses arrived. But Fitz, Keefe, and Biana insisted on seeing the long-lost alicorn, and someone needed time to fix their hair.” “Hey, a guy’s gotta look his best for the ladies.” Keefe patted the back of his head. “Right, Foster?” Sophie ignored him—though she could feel her cheeks blushing.

The Pomegranate The only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell. And found and rescued there. Love and blackmail are the gist of it. Ceres and Persephone the names. And the best thing about the legend is I can enter it anywhere. And have. As a child in exile in a city of fogs and strange consonants, I read it first and at first I was an exiled child in the crackling dusk of the underworld, the stars blighted. Later I walked out in a summer twilight searching for my daughter at bed-time. When she came running I was ready to make any bargain to keep her. I carried her back past whitebeams and wasps and honey-scented buddleias. But I was Ceres then and I knew winter was in store for every leaf on every tree on that road. Was inescapable for each one we passed. And for me. It is winter and the stars are hidden. I climb the stairs and stand where I can see my child asleep beside her teen magazines, her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit. The pomegranate! How did I forget it? She could have come home and been safe and ended the story and all our heart-broken searching but she reached out a hand and plucked a pomegranate. She put out her hand and pulled down the French sound for apple and the noise of stone and the proof that even in the place of death, at the heart of legend, in the midst of rocks full of unshed tears ready to be diamonds by the time the story was told, a child can be hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance. The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured. The suburb has cars and cable television. The veiled stars are above ground. It is another world. But what else can a mother give her daughter but such beautiful rifts in time? If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift. The legend will be hers as well as mine. She will enter it. As I have. She will wake up. She will hold the papery flushed skin in her hand. And to her lips. I will say nothing.

We can hardly bear to look. The shadow may carry the best of the life we have not lived. Go into the basement, the attic, the refuse bin. Find gold there. Find an animal who has not been fed or watered. It is you!! This neglected, exiled animal, hungry for attention, is a part of your self. —Marion Woodman (as quoted by Stephen Cope in The Great Work of Your Life)

Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.

If I couldn't hide from [bullies], then the next best thing was to blind them with my glorious fabulousness.

Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?..."I will do my best with what is here.

There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it's best to know the rules and only break them if you're playing a different game and following those rules.

There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.

He’d spent his entire exile schooling himself to face that he would never get what he wanted. People didn’t, sometimes. So you made a life as best you could.

In youth he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of things, and had been a poet; but poverty and sorrow and exile had turned his gaze in darker directions, and he had thrilled at the imputations of evil in the world around. Daily life had for him come to be a phantasmagoria of macabre shadow-studies; now glittering and leering with concealed rottenness as in Beardsley's best manner, now hinting terrors behind the commonest shapes and objects as in the subtler and less obvious work of Gustave Dore. He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high Intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe. All this reflection was no doubt morbid, but keen logic and a deep sense of humour ably offset it. Malone was satisfied to let his notions remain as half-spied and forbidden visions to be lightly played with; and hysteria came only when duty flung him into a hell of revelation too sudden and insidious to escape.

Our culture has little tolerance for or interest in women past their procreative prime, and certainly we have no reverence for them. While we have sanctified old men and propped them up as the ultimate authorities—the priests, lawmakers, judges—we have exiled their counterparts.

I miss you terribly. You see, you always talk about getting cure of our romance, and I did my best to help! But now you have me definitely and hopelessly 'contaminated' to the extent that I am sick at heart. Strangeley, I do not want to be cured! I love you completely.

Sometimes I think Life is best summed up as (a) Awful Bits and )b) This That Successfully Distract One from the Awful Bits

The best way to kill a good thing is question it to death.

Patience is a virtue best left to the dead, who can afford it,

He chewed the inside of his lip, eyes narrowed at the duffle. Worst case, it was some kind of murder kit, and she intended to put him out of his long-standing misery. Best case … well, same, honestly.

I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

such an ill-cooked roast at the future queen’s wedding?” he cries. The princess-cook appears before her father, but she is so changed he does not recognize her. “I would not serve you salt, Your Majesty,” she explains. “For did you not exile your youngest daughter for saying that it was of value?” At her words, the king realizes that not only is she his daughter—she is, in fact, the daughter who loves him best. And what then? The eldest daughter and the middle sister have been living with the king all this time. One has been in favor one week, the other the next. They have been driven apart by their father’s constant comparisons. Now the youngest has returned, the king yanks the kingdom from his eldest, who has just been married. She is not to be queen after all. The elder sisters rage. At first, the youngest basks in fatherly love. Before long, however, she realizes the king is demented and power-mad. She is to be queen, but she is also stuck tending to a crazy old tyrant for the rest of her days. She will not leave him, no matter how sick he becomes. Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt? Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom? It is hard for her to tell the difference. 17 THE FALL AFTER the European trip,

He had only smiled, condescendingly and therapeutically. "No, Leland, not you. You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for you to 'go mad' in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently 'went mad' and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now"--And I think he even went so far as to yawn--"you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You are all too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. Another thing: all of you have a talent for releasing frustration through clever fantasy. And you, you are the worst of the lot on that score. So... you may be neurotic as hell for the rest of your life, and miserable, maybe even do a short hitch at Bellvue and certainly good for another five years as a paying patient--but I'm afraid never completely out." He leaned back in his elegant Lounge-o-Chair. "Sorry to disappoint you but the best I can offer is plain old schizophrenia with delusional tendencies.

ONCE UPON A time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. As he grew old, he began to wonder which should inherit the kingdom, since none had married and he had no heir. The king decided to ask his daughters to demonstrate their love for him. To the eldest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him as much as all the treasure in the kingdom. To the middle princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” She loved him with the strength of iron. To the youngest princess he said, “Tell me how you love me.” This youngest princess thought for a long time before answering. Finally she said she loved him as meat loves salt. “Then you do not love me at all,” the king said. He threw his daughter from the castle and had the bridge drawn up behind her so that she could not return. Now, this youngest princess goes into the forest with not so much as a coat or a loaf of bread. She wanders through a hard winter, taking shelter beneath trees. She arrives at an inn and gets hired as assistant to the cook. As the days and weeks go by, the princess learns the ways of the kitchen. Eventually she surpasses her employer in skill and her food is known throughout the land. Years pass, and the eldest princess comes to be married. For the festivities, the cook from the inn makes the wedding meal. Finally a large roast pig is served. It is the king’s favorite dish, but this time it has been cooked with no salt. The king tastes it. Tastes it again. “Who would dare to serve such an ill-cooked roast at the future queen’s wedding?” he cries. The princess-cook appears before her father, but she is so changed he does not recognize her. “I would not serve you salt, Your Majesty,” she explains. “For did you not exile your youngest daughter for saying that it was of value?” At her words, the king realizes that not only is she his daughter—she is, in fact, the daughter who loves him best. And what then? The eldest daughter and the middle sister have been living with the king all this time. One has been in favor one week, the other the next. They have been driven apart by their father’s constant comparisons. Now the youngest has returned, the king yanks the kingdom from his eldest, who has just been married. She is not to be queen after all. The elder sisters rage. At first, the youngest basks in fatherly love. Before long, however, she realizes the king is demented and power-mad. She is to be queen, but she is also stuck tending to a crazy old tyrant for the rest of her days. She will not leave him, no matter how sick he becomes. Does she stay because she loves him as meat loves salt? Or does she stay because he has now promised her the kingdom? It is hard for her to tell the difference.

The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.

Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.

Like all the best monsters, this one cannot be killed. Even after he took his last breath, he would live forever inside me, destroying me every day of my life.

There was truly no pleasure and no honor in being a scholar or a writer. Those who entered the service of the rulers and devised slogans for them had jobs and livelihoods, but they suffered the contempt of the best among their fellows, and most of them surely suffered pangs of conscience also. Those who refused such service had to go hungry, live as outlaws, and die in misery or exile. A cruel, an incredibly harsh weeding out took place. Scientific research that did not directly serve the needs of power and warfare rapidly sank into decadence. The same was true for the whole educational system.

My life in politics has taught me that the only thing more difficult than fighting against our enemies is taking questions from my friends.” Amid knowing chuckles, he promised, “Nonetheless, I shall do my best.

The exile was the “crucible of Israel’s faith.”[8] They were pushed to the edge of existence where they thought they were hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and they found that in fact they had been pushed to the center, where God was.

questioned by a Companion about the best possible hijrah, the Prophet was to answer: “It is to exile yourself [to move away] from evil [abominations, lies, sins].”12 This requirement of spiritual exile was to be repeated in different forms.

It was a long struggle against invisible foes, or to put it more accurately, against invisible foes that might not have been there at all, but it was a victorious struggle, in the course of which they understood that the victory would only be unconditional if they annihilated or, if he might put it in such old fashioned terms, said Korin, exiled, exiled anything that might have stood against them, or rather, fully absorbed it into the repulsive vulgarity of the world they now ruled, ruled if not exactly commanded, and thereby besmirched whatever was good and transcendent, not by saying a haughty 'no' to good and transcendent things, no, for they understood that the important thing was to say 'yes' from the meanest of motives, to give them their outright support, to display them, to nurture them; it was this that dawned on them and showed them what to do, that their best option was not to crush their enemies, to mock them or wipe them off the face of the earth, but, on the contrary, to embrace them, to take responsibility for them and so to empty them of their content, and in this way to establish a world in which it was precisely these things that would be the most liable to spread the infection so that the only power that had any chance of resisting them, by whose radiant light it might still have been possible to see the degree to which they had taken over people's lives... how could he make himself clearer at this point, Korin hesitated...

This might not be what Emele pictured, but if I’m supposed to prod him from his self-imposed exile, I’m going to select a winning strategy rather than a conventional one. After musing over it for a few hours, Elle had decided that the best way to befriend His Illegitimate Highness Prince Severin, based on his personality and her observations, was to be as inconspicuous as possible and steadily invade his life. If she made him uncomfortable along the way, so be it. In fact, that would be preferred!

different forms. “The verbal intercourse of these raven-beings of the planet Saturn is somewhat like our own. But their way of speaking is the most beautiful I have ever heard. “It can be compared to the music of our best singers when with all their being they sing in a minor key. “And as for the quality of their relations with each other—I don’t even know how to describe it. It can be known only by existing among them and having the experience oneself. “All that can be said is that these bird-beings have hearts exactly like those of the angels nearest our Endless Maker and Creator. “They exist strictly according to the ninth commandment of our Creator: ‘Consider everything belonging to another as if it were your own, and so treat it.’ “Later, I must certainly tell you in more detail about those three-brained beings who arise and exist on the planet Saturn, since one of my real friends during the whole period of my exile in that solar system was a being of that planet, who had the exterior coating of a raven and whose name was Harharkh.

No, I didn't thank them, but I forgot with you. I still see you as V, as my best friend, not some prince, even an exiled one. It still sounds so strange." "I only want to be V when I'm with you. Though I have to say," his eyes met hers as a smile played on his soft, kissable lips. "I'd like to a be a little more than your best friend." Taking her hand, he kissed her palm, a slow, lingering kiss that left her gasping for breath even though his lips were nowhere near hers. "What?" The word caught in her throat. "Did you dream of me, Noli?" His lips brushed her ear. "I dreamt of you." "I did. They were..." Her toes curled at the memory of her dreams, those kisses. "Pleasant." "Pleasant? I seem to remember them being far more then merely pleasant." His green eyes danced in amusement.

If there ever were one moment where everything worked for us, where we lived in harmony and at ease with our natures, then we would still be there. There is no garden to return to, no idyllic perfect childhood, no enwombed state. The Garden of Eden was boring, childhood is a nightmare we should all be grateful to be done with, and your mother smoked while she was pregnant and poisoned you in the womb with artificial sugar substitutes. The best thing any of us can do is just to keep fucking up in a forward motion, and see what comes out of it.

I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood.

Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood.

You do not have to be the best player in the world to win. You only have to be better, on that day, than the person across from you. And that’s something you understood from the start.” “You scared the shit out of the other girls,” he added. “Especially Jelena and Tatiana. You intimidated them. I don’t know whether you did it deliberately, but you had an air about you: this is a business and you are in my way.” * * * And then, just like that, I was kicked out of the academy. For Yuri, it was like being exiled from Eden, or slapped awake in the middle of a beautiful

For how little have we lost, when the two finest things of all will accompany us wherever we go, universal nature and our individual virtue. Believe me, this was the intention of whoever formed the universe, whether all-powerful god, or incorporeal reason creating mighty works, or divine spirit penetrating all things from greatest to smallest with even pressure, or fate and the unchanging sequence of causation - this, I say, was the intention, that only the most worthless of our possessions should come into the power of another. Whatever is best for a human being lies outside human control: it can be neither given nor taken away.

As for my own religious practice, I try to live my life pursuing what I call the Bodhisattva ideal. According to Buddhist thought, a Bodhisattva is someone on the path to Buddhahood wo dedicates themselves entirely to helping all other sentient beings towards release from suffering. The word Bodhisattva can best be understood by translating the Bodhi and Sattva separately: Bodhi means the understanding or wisdom of the ultimate nature of reality, and a Sattva is someone who is motivated by universal compassion. The Bodhissatva ideal is thus the aspiration to practise infinite compassion with infinite wisdom. releasing sentient beings from suffering.

the German ambassador in Copenhagen had a bright idea. He suggested to the Foreign Ministry that the best way to use the Russian Revolution to take Russia completely out of the war was to encourage its political extremists, especially those in exile, to return and spread chaos in their home country. The man at the head of everyone’s list was Lenin.

Her heels grind uselessly into the carpet. Her toes curl at the fibers. She stands in the quiet womb of the room, waiting for a signal from the root brain, the ancient network from which the invader has been exiled. She lifts her arms until they are fully extended, her fingers turned outward. Her ears prick up like sharp leaves, alert for moisture.

Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith. If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

The Heiligenstadt Testament" Oh! ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you! My heart and mind were ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskillful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction (the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove impracticable). Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! — and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, — a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like art exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent physician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accordance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclination for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce? And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sudden change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose Patience for my guide! This I have done. I hope the resolve will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Constrained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year! This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. God looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there! Oh! ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled, by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, has done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and [Johann], as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malady, and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs of my small fortune (if so it may be called). Share it fairly, agree together and assist each other. You know that any

What I understand now is this: There is no harder job than parenting. There is no human relationship with such potential for great achievement and awful destructiveness, and despite all the experts who write about it, no one has the slightest idea whether any decision will be right or best or even not-horrible for any particular child. It is a job that simply cannot be done right.

Concerning this desert, Jeremiah writes: ‘I will lead my beloved into the wilderness and will speak to her in her heart’ (Hosea 2:14) . . . The prophet hungered for this desolate self-abandonment when he said: ‘Who will give me the wings of a dove that I may fly away and be at rest?’ (Psalm 55:6). Where do we find peace and rest? Only in abandonment, in the desert and in isolation from all creatures . . . Now you could say . . . if all this must be removed, then it is grievous if God allows us to remain without any support. ‘Woe to me that my exile is prolonged’ (Psalm 120:5), as the prophet says, if God prolongs my dereliction without casting his light upon me, speaking to me or working in me, as you are suggesting here. If we thus enter a state of pure nothingness, is it not better that we should do something in order to drive away the darkness and dereliction? Should we not pray or read or listen to a sermon or do something else that is virtuous in order to help ourselves? No, certainly not! The very best thing you can do is to remain still for as long as possible . . . You cannot think about or desire this preparation more swiftly than God can carry it out . . . You should know that God must pour himself into you and act upon you where he finds you prepared . . . just as the sun must pour itself forth and cannot hold itself back when the air is pure and clean. Certainly, it would be a major failing if God did not perform great works in you, pouring great goodness into you, in so far as he finds you empty and there.

If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

... I feared I might lose my faith. If you've never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying, that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you'll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

As she does, she speculates about all the aspects of the mortal world she’s going to have to explain to Dad. “Like cell phones,” she says. “Or self-checkout in the grocery store. Oh, this is going to be amazing. Seriously, his exile is the best present you ever got me.” “You know that he’s going to be so bored that he’s going to try to micromanage your life,” Taryn says. “Or plan your invasion of a neighboring apartment building

Hold thy desperate hand: Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art: Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote The unreasonable fury of a beast: Unseemly woman in a seeming man! Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both! Thou hast amazed me: by my holy order, I thought thy disposition better temper’d. Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? And stay thy lady too that lives in thee, By doing damned hate upon thyself? Why rail’st thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth? Since birth, and heaven, and earth, all three do meet In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose. Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit; Which, like a usurer, abound’st in all, And usest none in that true use indeed Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit: Thy noble shape is but a form of wax, Digressing from the valour of a man; Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury, Killing that love which thou hast vow’d to cherish; Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love, Misshapen in the conduct of them both, Like powder in a skitless soldier’s flask, Is set afire by thine own ignorance, And thou dismember’d with thine own defence. What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive, For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead; There art thou happy: Tybalt would kill thee, But thou slew’st Tybalt; there are thou happy too: The law that threaten’d death becomes thy friend And turns it to exile; there art thou happy: A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back; Happiness courts thee in her best array; But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench, Thou pout’st upon thy fortune and thy love: Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable. Go, get thee to thy love, as was decreed, Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her: But look thou stay not till the watch be set, For then thou canst not pass to Mantua; Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back With twenty hundred thousand times more joy Than thou went’st forth in lamentation. Go before, nurse: commend me to thy lady; And bid her hasten all the house to bed, Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto: Romeo is coming.

What’s it all about, Alfie?” Its lyrics are not particularly profound, but the question has stayed with me. What’s it all about? What’s life all about? What’s Christianity all about? What’s salvation all about? My answer to that question now, my conviction now: “it”—Christianity and salvation—is about transformation this side of death. The natural effect of growing up, beginning in childhood, is that we fall into bondage to cultural messages and conventions; experience separation and exile from the one in whom we live and move and have our being; become blinded by habituated ways of seeing and live in the dark, even dead in the midst of life; and hunger and thirst for something more. Salvation is about liberation, reconnection, seeing anew, acceptance, and the satisfaction of our deepest yearnings. Christianity at its best—like all of the enduring religions of the world at their best—is a path of transformation.

...she speculates about all the aspects of the mortal world she's going to have to explain to Dad. 'Like cell phones,' she says. 'Or self-checkout in the grocery store. Oh, this is going to be amazing. Seriously, his exile is the best present you ever got me.' 'You know that he's going to be so bored that he's going to try to micromanage your life,' Taryn says. 'Or plan your invasion of a neighbouring apartment building.' At that, Vivi stops smiling. It makes Oak giggle, though.

Polish paratroopers could not have been more different. They were not like the British who just wanted to make the best of a bad war by joking and referring to any battle as ‘a party’. Nor were they like the Americans who wanted to finish it quickly so that they could go home. The Poles were exiles, fighting for the very survival of their national identity. An American officer who saw them in training described them as ‘killers under the silk’. Polish patriotism was nothing like the rather embarrassed British equivalent: theirs was a burning, spiritual flame.

You and in fact quite a lot of your generation have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary its become almost impossible for you to go mad in the classical sense... You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. Another thing, all of you have a talent for releasing frustration through clever fantasy and you, you are the worst of the lot on that score. So you may be neurotic as hell for the rest of your life and miserable. Maybe even do a few years at Bell View and certainly good for another 5 years as a paying patient but I'm afraid never completely out. Sorry to disappoint you but the best I can offer you is plain ole schizophrenia with delusional tendencies.

Natiya’s questions ranged from how old I was to wondering which food I liked the best, but when she asked, “Are you really a princess?” the chatter in the tent stopped and they all looked at me, waiting. Was I? I had abdicated that role weeks ago when I left Civica and banished the phrase “Her Royal Highness” from Pauline’s vocabulary. I certainly didn’t look like or act like one now. Yet I had just pulled the title out of exile quite readily when it suited me. I recalled Walther’s words: You’ll always be you, Lia. I reached out and cupped her chin and nodded. “But no more than you are for bringing me this meal. I am truly grateful.” She smiled and lowered her long dark lashes, a blush warming her cheeks. The chatter resumed, and I went back to my last butter tart. *

Swear you will do your best to keep Percy from danger,” he insisted. “Swear upon the River Styx.” “I—I swear it upon the River Styx,” Annabeth said. Thunder rumbled outside. “Very well,” Chiron said. He seemed to relax just a little. “Perhaps my name will be cleared and I shall return. Until then, I go to visit my wild kinsmen in the Everglades. It’s possible they know of some cure for the poisoned tree that I have forgotten. In any event, I will stay in exile until this matter is resolved…one way or another.” Annabeth stifled a sob. Chiron patted her shoulder awkwardly. “There, now, child. I must entrust your safety to Mr. D and the new activities director. We must hope…well, perhaps they won’t destroy the camp quite as quickly as I fear.” “Who is this Tantalus guy, anyway?” I demanded. “Where does he

Moreover, seeing ourselves as a majority led at times to both a theological downgrade and a counter-productive public stance. The application of the promises to Israel to the United States of America, for example, caused many to miss, as we will see in the next chapter, the meaning of the kingdom of God, and thus to bypass Jesus Christ himself. The idea of America as a Christian nation is able to get “Amens” in the churches only as long as the churches believe America is, at least in some ways, with us and not against us. But what happens when the cultural climate starts to shift in obvious ways? If the church believes the United States is a sort of new Israel, then we become frantic when we see ourselves “losing America.” We then start to speak in gloomy terms of America as, at best, Babylon, a place of hopeless exile, or, at worst, Gomorrah, slouching toward the judgment of God.

There’s a story that comes from the tradition of the Desert Fathers, an order of Christian monks who lived in the wastelands of Egypt about seventeen hundred years ago. In the tale, a couple of monks named Theodore and Lucius shared the acute desire to go out and see the world. Since they’d made vows of contemplation, however, this was not something they were allowed to do. So, to satiate their wanderlust, Theodore and Lucius learned to “mock their temptations” by relegating their travels to the future. When the summertime came, they said to each other, “We will leave in the winter.” When the winter came, they said, “We will leave in the summer.” They went on like this for over fifty years, never once leaving the monastery or breaking their vows. Most of us, of course, have never taken such vows—but we choose to live like monks anyway, rooting ourselves to a home or a career and using the future as a kind of phony ritual that justifies the present. In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We’d love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place. Vagabonding is about gaining the courage to loosen your grip on the so-called certainties of this world. Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate. Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises. In this way, vagabonding is not a merely a ritual of getting immunizations and packing suitcases. Rather, it’s the ongoing practice of looking and learning, of facing fears and altering habits, of cultivating a new fascination with people and places. This attitude is not something you can pick up at the airport counter with your boarding pass; it’s a process that starts at home. It’s a process by which you first test the waters that will pull you to wonderful new places.

Machiavelli’s second metaphor alludes to the fact that Fortune was always seen as a feminine force. Like any woman, she responds best, he believes, to rough handling. He argues that in dealings with Fortune it is advisable to act impetuously “because Fortune is a woman and if she is to be submissive it is necessary to beat and coerce her.” However disagreeable the image, it is worth remembering that gendered interpretations of philosophical conceptions have a lengthy history, and that Machiavelli elsewhere speaks of winning over Fortune by means of friendship and harmonious action. The idea of battering Fortune into submission did not, in fact, originate with Machiavelli. Seventy years earlier, in Somnium de Fortuna (The Dream of Fortune), Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini had Fortune claim she despised those who “run away from me” and favored “those who put me to flight.” The upshot, at any rate, is that one can manage the caprice of Fortune—a comforting philosophy for the former Second Chancellor to contemplate from his lonely exile in the Albergaccio.

It was a sign of the times that a Russian could joke, however wryly, about his country’s treatment of its greatest scientist. Floyd was again reminded of Sakharov’s eloquent speech to the Academy, when he was belatedly made Hero of the Soviet Union. Prison and banishment, he had told his listeners, were splendid aids to creativity; not a few masterpieces had been born within the walls of cells, beyond the reach of the world’s distractions. For that matter, the greatest single achievement of the human intellect, the Principia itself, was a product of Newton’s self-imposed exile from plague-ridden London. The comparison was not immodest; from those years in Gorky had come not only new insights into the structure of matter and the origin of the Universe, but the plasma-controlling concepts that had led to practical thermonuclear power. The drive itself, though the best-known and most publicized outcome of that work, was merely one by-product of that astonishing intellectual outburst. The tragedy was that such advances had been triggered by injustice; one day, perhaps, humanity would find more civilized ways of managing its affairs.

Why did the best Jewish poet of the post-exile generation choose the (probably) Persian fable of Job as the basis for his greatest work? What does the obviously Hebrew poet want to accomplish by presenting Job as an “Everyman” character rather than as a Jew? What does this suggest about the way that the Abrahamic Covenant was understood by at least some people during the Babylonian captivity? What different perspectives do Job’s Comforters represent? Who in the poet’s culture held the views attributed to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar? Why do Job’s friends hold so firmly to their belief in Job’s guilt? Why are they willing to condemn the man that they came to comfort? What do they consider more important than friendship? Do we ever act like they do? How does the poet want us to answer the question, “Why do people suffer?” How does he not want us to answer this question? Why does the poet represent God at the end of Job as an asker of questions rather than as a giver of answers? Does the God that the poet presents at the end of the poem deserve our respect, or just our fear? Is there a difference? Does the final prose segment of Job undercut the poem? Or does the poem’s rebuttal undercut its ideology so effectively that it becomes ironic? Is it possible to believe in a God of rewards and punishments after reading Job?

The 1890s were apprentice years for Yeats. Though he played with Indian and Irish mythology, his symbolism really developed later. The decade was for him, as a poet, the years of lyric, of the Rhymers’ Club, of those contemporaries whom he dubbed the ‘tragic generation’. ‘I have known twelve men who killed themselves,’ Arthur Symons looked back from his middle-aged madness, reflecting on the decade of which he was the doyen. The writers and artists of the period lived hectically and recklessly. Ernest Dowson (1867–1900) (one of the best lyricists of them all – ‘I cried for madder music and for stronger wine’) died from consumption at thirty-two; Lionel Johnson (1867–1902), a dipsomaniac, died aged thirty-five from a stroke. John Davidson committed suicide at fifty-two; Oscar Wilde, disgraced and broken by prison and exile, died at forty-six; Aubrey Beardsley died at twenty-six. This is not to mention the minor figures of the Nineties literary scene: William Theodore Peters, actor and poet, who starved to death in Paris; Hubert Crankanthorpe, who threw himself in the Thames; Henry Harland, editor of The Yellow Book, who died of consumption aged forty-three, or Francis Thompson, who fled the Hound of Heaven ‘down the nights and down the days’ and who died of the same disease aged forty-eight. Charles Conder (1868–1909), water-colourist and rococo fan-painter, died in an asylum aged forty-one.

Build houses and make yourselves at home. You are not camping. This is your home; make yourself at home. This may not be your favorite place, but it is a place. Dig foundations; construct a habitation; develop the best environment for living that you can. If all you do is sit around and pine for the time you get back to Jerusalem, your present lives will be squalid and empty. Your life right now is every bit as valuable as it was when you were in Jerusalem, and every bit as valuable as it will be when you get back to Jerusalem. Babylonian exile is not your choice, but it is what you are given. Build a Babylonian house and live in it as well as you are able. Put in gardens and eat what grows in the country. Enter into the rhythm of the seasons. Become a productive part of the economy of the place. You are not parasites. Don’t expect others to do it for you. Get your hands into the Babylonian soil. Become knowledgeable about the Babylonian irrigation system. Acquire skill in cultivating fruits and vegetables in this soil and climate. Get some Babylonian recipes and cook them. Marry and have children. These people among whom you are living are not beneath you, nor are they above you; they are your equals with whom you can engage in the most intimate and responsible of relationships. You cannot be the person God wants you to be if you keep yourself aloof from others. That which you have in common is far more significant than what separates you. They are God’s persons: your task as a person of faith is to develop trust and conversation, love and understanding. Make yourselves at home there and work for the country’s welfare. Pray for Babylon’s well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you. Welfare: shalom. Shalom means wholeness, the dynamic, vibrating health of a society that pulses with divinely directed purpose and surges with life-transforming love. Seek the shalom and pray for it. Throw yourselves into the place in which you find yourselves, but not on its terms, on God’s terms. Pray. Search for that center in which God’s will is being worked out (which is what we do when we pray) and work from that center. Jeremiah’s letter is a rebuke and a challenge: “Quit sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves. The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible—to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love. You didn’t do it when you were in Jerusalem. Why don’t you try doing it here, in Babylon? Don’t listen to the lying prophets who make an irresponsible living by selling you false hopes. You are in Babylon for a long time. You better make the best of it. Don’t just get along, waiting for some miraculous intervention. Build houses, plant gardens, marry husbands, marry wives, have children, pray for the wholeness of Babylon, and do everything you can to develop that wholeness. The only place you have to be human is where you are right now. The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at this moment.

When my best friend came to say goodbye the day before I went into exile—we embraced thinking we would never see each other again because I would never be allowed to return to Romania and she would never be able to leave the country—we couldn't bear to let go of each other. She walked out of the door three times and returned each time. Only after the third time did she leave me, walking straight down the street. I could see her pale jacket getting smaller and smaller and, in a strange way, brighter and brighter the more distant it became. I don't know if it was the winter sunshine of that February day, or the tears making my eyes glisten, or perhaps her jacket was made of some shiny fabric, but one thing I know for sure: as I watched her walk away her back glittered like a silver spoon. In this way, intuitively, I was able to put our parting into words. And that is also the best description of that moment. But what does a silver spoon have to do with a jacket? Nothing at all. Nor does it have anything to do with parting. Yet as a poetic image the spoon and the jacket need one another. That is why I am mistrustful of language. I know from my own experience that to be accurate, language must always usurp something that doesn't belong to it. I keep asking myself what makes verbal images such thieves, why the most apt comparison appropriates qualities that don't belong to it. To get closer to reality we need to catch the imagination unawares. Only when one perception plunders another, when an object snatches material that belongs to another and starts to exploit it—only when things that in reality are mutually exclusive become plausible in a sentence can the sentence hold its own against reality. I am happy when I succeed in doing that.

Marcus released the countess as if he had been burned. His first reaction was a piercing relief that Lillian was still alive. However, the relief was followed immediately by the awareness that she was far from safe. In light of St. Vincent’s need of a fortune, it made perfect sense for him to abduct Lillian. Marcus turned from his mother, never wanting to look at her again, unable to bring himself to speak to her. His gaze locked with Simon Hunt’s. Predictably, Hunt was already making rapid calculations. “He’ll take her to Gretna Green, of course,” Hunt murmured, “and they’ll have to travel east to the main road in Hertfordshire. He won’t risk traveling the back ways and getting mired in mud, or having the wheels damaged from broken road. From Hertfordshire it will be approximately forty-five hours to Scotland… and at a speed of ten miles per hour, with occasional stops for fresh relay horses…” “You’ll never overtake them,” the countess cried with a cackling laugh. “I told you I would have my way, Westcliff!” “Oh, shut up, you evil hag!” cried Daisy Bowman impatiently from the doorway, her eyes huge in her pale face. “Lord Westcliff, shall I run to the stables and tell them to saddle a horse?” “Two horses,” Simon Hunt said resolutely. “I’m going with him.” “Which ones—” “Ebony and Yasmin,” Marcus replied. They were his best Arabians, bred for speed over long distance. They were not as lightning-fast as thoroughbreds, but they would endure a punishing pace for hours, traveling at least three times as fast as St. Vincent’s coach. Daisy disappeared in a flash, and Marcus turned to his sister. “See that the countess is gone by the time I return,” he said curtly. “Pack whatever she needs, and get her off the estate.” “Where do you wish me to send her?” Livia asked, pale but composed. “I don’t give a damn, so long as she knows not to return.” Realizing that she was being banished, and most likely exiled, the countess rose from her chair. “I will not be disposed of in this manner! I won’t have it, my lord!” “And tell the countess,” Marcus said to Livia, “that if the slightest harm comes to Miss Bowman, she had better pray that I never find her.” Marcus strode from the room, shoving through a small crowd that had gathered in the hallway. Simon Hunt followed, pausing only to murmur briefly to Annabelle and press a kiss to her forehead. She stared after him with an anxious frown, biting her lip to keep from calling after him. After a lengthy pause, the countess was heard to mutter, “It matters not what becomes of me. I am content in the knowledge that I have prevented him from befouling the family lineage.” Livia turned to give her mother a half-pitying, half-contemptuous glance. “Marcus never fails,” she said softly. “Most of his childhood was spent learning to overcome impossible odds. And now that Marcus has finally found someone worth fighting for… do you really think he would let anything stop him?

Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I'd be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone. "Look, Steve," I said, "whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear." "What about Robin and Reagen? Little Joe?" he asked. "Those personalities were absorbed, not exiled. No one inside will ever disappear. We're all real. We all matter.

Brother,” the Third Mortal spoke, “God asked for me to bring the best of my fields, that which brings me joy and happiness. I misunderstood and brought the seeds of the soil, its fruits and flowers. But this is not what He wanted. It wasn’t worthy, because it comes from the dust He exiled our Father and Mother to. As you brought the firstlings of your flock, tender and innocent, I brought nothing but dirt. I know now what I must do. For you are the best of my fields, for long I have been your keeper, and I will always be. You will be my gift to him and I will earn his love with your blood.

There are rules to everything, even if nobody made them up, even if nobody calls it a game. And if you want things to work out well, it’s best to know the rules and only break them if you’re playing a different game and following those rules.

father’s best friends, and Dax had known him all his life. Dax and his father had hunted with Herne in the forests north and east of Tazzelton, and

Kier wasn’t generally much for heroics. In his opinion, heroes were fools at worst, poor bastards at best. By definition, they only showed up when someone else had completely fucked everything up, after all, and then they proceeded to throw themselves into the grinder to rectify that other person’s mistake.

these have characterized the work of the best American story writers of the last half-century, from John Cheever to Raymond Carver to Lorrie Moore, and the best Canadians, from Alice Munro to Margaret Atwood to Clark Blaise.

Arabs & Garbage" Strange is the Arab story with garbage! Who told them who taught them to toss garbage randomly wherever and however they please? When will the Arabs understand that placing garbage in its right place will solve half of their environmental and societal problems? And the other half of their problems will be solved, too, as soon as they stop tossing out their human gems forcing out their most talented and qualified human capital to serve foreigners in foreign lands? When will the Arabs stop getting rid of their best minds, replacing them with foreign garbage they glorify simply because the foreign individuals have white skin and blue eyes and claim to possess skills and expertise the Arabs can’t survive without… When will the Arabs understand that placing garbage in its right place -be it the garbage that govern their countries or the foreign garbage they import – will solve all their problems? [Original poem published in Arabic on February 20, 2024 at ahewar.org]

Whatever.” “I must see him!” Psyche insisted. “I must help him!” “Oh, now you want to help him. I’m his mother and I have it under control, thank you very much. As I was saying, the most important quality for a woman is beauty. I’ve been so busy caring for my son that I’ve run out of my famous magical beauty cream. I’ve used it all up, and I need some more.” “Wait…you tried to cure Eros with beauty cream?” “Duh!” Aphrodite rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I need more, but it’s out of stock at, like, every store, so I need a proper substitute. The only goddess who has cosmetics I can use without my face breaking out is Persephone.” “The queen of the Underworld?” Psyche’s knees shook. “You—you want me to—” “Yes.” Aphrodite savored the fear in Psyche’s eyes. “Pop down to the Underworld and ask Persephone if I can borrow a little of her beauty cream. You can put it in this.” The goddess snapped her fingers. A polished rosewood box with golden filigree appeared in Psyche’s hands. “Last chance to give up and go into exile.” Psyche did her best to hide her misery. “No. I’d rather die trying to win back Eros’s love than give up. I’ll get you your beauty cream.” “Make sure it’s the unscented kind,” Aphrodite said. “Hypoallergenic. And hurry. There’s a new play on Mount Olympus tonight. I need to get ready.” Psyche trudged out of the palace on her final quest.

Exile me From Planet Kardashian 'Darkness, rescue me' I need true stars

It would be so much easier if I weren’t determined to do what’s best for everybody. Whoever said virtue was its own reward was full of crap.

Sephardic poems: The mind is flawed, the way to wisdom blocked; The body alone is seen, the soul is hid, And those who seek the world find only ill; The servant rises up and kills his lord, And serving girls attack their mistresses. Sons are raising hands against their parent’s will. My friend, from what I’ve seen of life I’d say The best that one can hope is to go mad. However long you live you suffer toil, And in the end you suffer rot and worms. Then finally the clay goes back to clay; At last the soul ascends to join the Soul.

Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world. Their continued presence in the Garden was contingent on the keeping of only a few commandments, not 613 commandments. Under the best conditions this world has ever seen, Adam and Eve break one of the three laws and die in exile. It is not at all clear how the telling of the story of Adam and Eve’s failure to keep only a few commandments in a perfect world is supposed to encourage Israel to keep 613 commandments in a fallen world. Actually, it offers no encouragement, at all. And if we take the principle of ma’asei avot’ siman l’banim seriously, Adam’s story never was intended to warn Israel from following in Adam’s footsteps (i.e., a warning to keep the Law). Rather, Adam’s story was intended to be a prophecy that Israel would follow in Adam’s footsteps. “Israel, you will be just like Adam.

Jeremiah 29:11—“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” A verse she and some of her Yada Yada sisters quoted a lot, confirming the good plans God had in store for them. She’d claimed it for Leroy a bunch of times.      But the last time she’d turned to that chapter, she’d read it in context—a letter to the exiles who’d been carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon, telling them to make the best of it, and after seventy years—a whole lifetime basically—God promised He’d bring the nation of Israel home again. A promise that didn’t see the light of day for God’s people until the next generation.

The prevailing paradigm of domination, control, and “power over” has failed us. This paradigm has led to an untenable separation between people. It is endangering our survival as a species. It is dehumanizing us, violating our environment, and exiling us from the best in our spirit.

Not out of ivory only [he tells us] was Phidias skilled in making statues, he made them of bronze; if you brought marble or any cheaper material to him he would turn it to the best use of which it was capable. So, if riches fall to him, the wise man will display his wisdom amidst riches, if not, then in poverty; if he can, in his native country, if not, then in exile; if he can, as a general, if not, then as a soldier; if he can, in health, if not, then in sickness. Whatever fortune befall him, he will carve out of it something memorable.

So he immolated himself. He made the sacrifice because he was a father; he went into voluntary exile. His daughters were satisfied, so he thought that he had done the best thing he could; but it was a family crime, and father and daughters were accomplices.

your pup. crate time is nap time. The purpose, again, is to help your dog love his crate and not associate crate time with exile or punishment.

HAPPINESS IS ACHIEVABLE   Why is the Dalai Lama always smiling?   I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s wondering. This is a man who has practically lost his country to another country. He is now living a frugal existence as the exiled leader of the Tibetans.   Why is this man smiling?   Anyone else would curl up in bed and refuse to leave. Others would sink into depression. There is no logical reason for him to maintain such as sunny deposition when everything he had has been snatched away from him. So why does he?

Moving to New York was the best decision I’ve ever made. It gets a bad rap because back in the day it was pretty shady; but truthfully, I think that’s part of the appeal. This is an island of outcasts: the smart ones, the dumb ones, the pretty ones, the weird ones. We’re all the same here. We all come from somewhere else looking for the same thing. We weren’t accepted where we came from, for one reason or another, so we exiled ourselves to a place where we felt safe amongst the chaos of other misfits. The most interesting and talented individuals end up here and it suddenly becomes desirable to be a part of such an obscure group. The nerds are the popular kids and the popular kids work at a McDonald’s in the hometown you left behind. People visit our show all year long just to catch a glimpse of the madness, to feel an ounce of whimsy, but it’s lost on them. This is our island. The island of the lost, but for all who dwell here, it’s the island of the found. Before

One minute Ender is the beginning and end of the world, the best chance for a great man that I'll ever have a chance to find. The next minute, he's a gay little boy who shamed me. You judge hi according to whether or not he's useful to you.

The best leaders were those who could see farther than others. And that would be Galantas's task here tonight: keep his kinsmen's gazes directed to the horizon so they didn't notice him digging the ground out from under their feet.

Of all the services Britain provided to the Zionist movement before 1939, perhaps the most valuable was the armed suppression of Palestinian resistance in the form of the revolt. The bloody war waged against the country’s majority, which left 14 to 17 percent of the adult male Arab population killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled,55 was the best illustration of the unvarnished truths uttered by Jabotinsky about the necessity of the use of force for the Zionist project to succeed. To quash the uprising, the British Empire brought in two additional divisions of troops, squadrons of bombers, and all the paraphernalia of repression that it had perfected over many decades of colonial wars.56

Remember, all you can do is try your best.

The last thing I think the powers that be expected when they hit us with super-super tax is that we’d say, fine, we’ll leave. We’ll be another one not paying tax to you. They just didn’t factor that in. It made us bigger than ever, and it produced Exile on Main St., which was maybe the best thing we did. They didn’t believe we’d be able to continue as we were if we didn’t live in England. And in all honesty, we were very doubtful too. We didn’t know if we would make it, but if we didn’t try, what would we do? Sit in England and they’d give us a penny out of every pound we earned? We had no desire to be closed down. And so we upped and went to France.

​Then the guilt would hit him, blending with the fright. Was death really much better than facing the others you’ve wronged, even long after they’ve forgiven you and forgotten the sins you’ve committed? How can you ever look anyone in the eye again like you had before the sin had even been conjured in your mind, long after the guilt was admitted? When was the expiration date for those sins? Was there one? What compensation, what punishment? Was any sentence worse than crippling, earnest self-flagellation? And what good was it if nobody knew the pain you were foisting upon yourself? And every time at that point, he knew his self-inflicted exile was not only warranted, but the best thing for her.

Exile is a kind word for death sentence. Nobody likes spilling the blood of a god if they can help it. Bad precedent.

Jade’s eyes crinkled with excitement. She’d always heard revenge was a dish best served cold. And she knew just the recipe.

have bested Stella through sheer good luck and Lulu’s kindness, but I know that I can’t push my advantage too far without risking Permanent Exile. The only safe thing to do now is say to Lulu and Chris and Colin, Sorry—see you guys, and break off to reclaim my rightful place as Stella’s Number One, at which point we’ll ditch Iona and Yvette and have a sweet time, the magic of Stella being most intense when we’re first reunited and there is a sparkling surprise even to normal things like Shuffleboard or the Bocce Ball Courts or the Tire Swing. Ditching my new group is the only right move in my Stella drama but I can’t bring myself to do it, it is a split-second decision—NO—so I just smile at Stella and we keep walking and it feels dangerous to do this, I know I will pay later on but now it’s done.

I thought how the lives of exiled people are like being on a flight. They are up in the air, between land and sky, not knowing when and whether they will ever land somewhere…I thought how transits are like the lives of many dislocated people like myself. The storyline from my experience often goes like this: a disaster befalls the place you call ‘home.’ You leave for another place hoping it will be just a temporary wait. Sometimes, the second destination is so harsh and unforgiving that you think of it as a ‘temporary transit’ and keep looking for a ‘final’ station that can grant you at least the basic human rights with some dignity. Over time, the temporary becomes permanent. But, deep inside, your feelings, senses, and existence may not cooperate with your new permanent reality. And so, you may find yourself in a state that can be best described as ‘permanently temporary.’ You become divided and torn deep inside constantly hearing two voices: one voice tells you that it is all temporary no matter how long it takes; and a second voice tells you not to believe the first one as this is your permanent destiny.

Taxi drivers are some of my best friends in every city I visit. I wish to write a book on my encounters with taxi drivers in the Middle East one day. They see so much. They encounter all kinds of people. They learn to interact with people of different politics, backgrounds, gender, views, feelings, and even accents and dialects. In a sense, they are exposed to people in ways that any novelist, poet, anthropologist, or journalist would love to be. They are usually some of the best guides that hold the keys to the hidden secrets, especially the ‘dirty secrets’ of the cities where they live and work.

Worst case, it was some kind of murder kit, and she intended to put him out of his long-standing misery. Best case … well, same, honestly.

Acheson and MacLeish questioned the desirability of exempting the emperor from punishment and permitting the Japanese to preserve an institution that was so easily exploited by the militarists.57 That was a view held by Owen Lattimore, a China scholar and advisor in the Pacific section of the Office of War Information. Lattimore published his thoughts on reconstructing Japan in February 1945 in a slim volume titled Solution in Asia. Lattimore argued that democratization was possible in Japan, but first the Allies had to “puncture the myth of the divinity of the Mikado.” The best way to do that, he advised, was to exile Hirohito and all males eligible for the throne to China under United Nations supervision.58

I am prone to prefer people who are like me-- in color, culture, heritage and history..the creation of man and woman in the image of God with equal dignity before God..this means that no human being is more or less human that another..for in the process of discussing our diversity in terms of different "races," we are undercutting our unity in the human race..instead of being strictly tied to biology, ethnicity is much more fluid, factoring in social, cultural, lingual, historical, and even religious characteristics..The pages of the Bible and human history are thus filled with an evil affinity for ethnic animosity..God promises to bless these ethnic Israelites, but the purpose of his blessing extends far beyond them..[it is] his desire for all nations to behold his greatness and experience his grace..When Jesus comes to the earth in the New Testament, we are quickly introduced to him as an immigrant..he nevertheless reaches beyond national boundaries at critical moments to love, serve, teach, heal, and save Canaanites and Samaritans, Greeks and Romans..he came as Savior and Lord over all..Though Gentiles were finally accepted into the church, they felt at best like second-class Christians..the Bible doesn't deny the obvious ethnic, cultural, and historical differences that distinguish us from one another..diversifies humanity according to clans and lands as a creative reflection of his grace and glory in distinct groups of people. In highlighting the beauty of such diversity, the gospel thus counters the mistaken cultural illusion that the path to unity is paved by minimizing what makes us unique. Instead, the gospel compels us to celebrate our ethnic distinctions, value our cultural differences, and acknowledge our historical diversity..(In reference to Galations 3:28) some people might misconstrue this verse..to say that our differences don't matter. But they do..It is not my aim here to stereotype migrant workers..It is also not my aim to oversimplify either the plight of immigrants in our country or the predicament of how to provide for them..Consequently, followers of Christ must see immigrants not as problems to be solved but as people to be loved. The gospel compels us in our culture to decry any and all forms of oppression, exploitation, bigotry, or harassment of immigrants..[we] will stand as one redeemed race to give glory to the Father who calls us not sojourners or exiles, but sons and daughters.