Famous Horse Quotes

Don’t talk to your horse, dear. People are watching,” Pauline said quietly. Halt turned a perplexed look toward her. “How do you know when I’m doing that?” She smiled at him. “Your nose twitches.” … On the way, Kane [stableboy] kept glancing surreptitiously at the famous Ranger, fascinated by the fact that he kept staring down his nose and tweaking its tip between his forefinger and thumb.

Dearest creature in creation, Study English pronunciation. I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. I will keep you, Suzy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy. Tear in eye, your dress will tear. So shall I! Oh hear my prayer. Just compare heart, beard, and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word, Sword and sward, retain and Britain. (Mind the latter, how it’s written.) Now I surely will not plague you With such words as plaque and ague. But be careful how you speak: Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; Cloven, oven, how and low, Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe. Hear me say, devoid of trickery, Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, Exiles, similes, and reviles; Scholar, vicar, and cigar, Solar, mica, war and far; One, anemone, Balmoral, Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; Gertrude, German, wind and mind, Scene, Melpomene, mankind. Billet does not rhyme with ballet, Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. Blood and flood are not like food, Nor is mould like should and would. Viscous, viscount, load and broad, Toward, to forward, to reward. And your pronunciation’s OK When you correctly say croquet, Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, Friend and fiend, alive and live. Ivy, privy, famous; clamour And enamour rhyme with hammer. River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, Doll and roll and some and home. Stranger does not rhyme with anger, Neither does devour with clangour. Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, And then singer, ginger, linger, Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age. Query does not rhyme with very, Nor does fury sound like bury. Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. Though the differences seem little, We say actual but victual. Refer does not rhyme with deafer. Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. Mint, pint, senate and sedate; Dull, bull, and George ate late. Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, Science, conscience, scientific. Liberty, library, heave and heaven, Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. We say hallowed, but allowed, People, leopard, towed, but vowed. Mark the differences, moreover, Between mover, cover, clover; Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, Chalice, but police and lice; Camel, constable, unstable, Principle, disciple, label. Petal, panel, and canal, Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, Senator, spectator, mayor. Tour, but our and succour, four. Gas, alas, and Arkansas. Sea, idea, Korea, area, Psalm, Maria, but malaria. Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. Doctrine, turpentine, marine. Compare alien with Italian, Dandelion and battalion. Sally with ally, yea, ye, Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. Say aver, but ever, fever, Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. Heron, granary, canary. Crevice and device and aerie. Face, but preface, not efface. Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. Large, but target, gin, give, verging, Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. Ear, but earn and wear and tear Do not rhyme with here but ere. Seven is right, but so is even, Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work. Pronunciation (think of Psyche!) Is a paling stout and spikey? Won’t it make you lose your wits, Writing groats and saying grits? It’s a dark abyss or tunnel: Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, Islington and Isle of Wight, Housewife, verdict and indict. Finally, which rhymes with enough, Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? Hiccough has the sound of cup. My advice is to give up!!!

You don't have to be famous to be a hero, anyone can do that. I'll never be my heroes, but I'll always have 'em.

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

THE PUZZLE IS WHY SO MANY PEOPLE LIVE so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines.

Peleus lived to a good age and survived his famous son Achilles, an initiate of the Centaur Horse fraternity, who was killed at the siege of Troy.

If I only had the privileges of a man, I would order out Sir Percival's best horse instantly, and tear away on a night-gallop, eastward, to meet the rising sun—a long, hard, heavy, ceaseless gallop of hours and hours, like the famous highwayman's ride to York. Being, however, nothing but a woman, condemned to patience, propriety, and petticoats for life, I must respect the house-keeper's opinions, and try to compose myself in some feeble and feminine way.

Even Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala warrior, was named for his father. But nobody called him Junior, for rather logical reasons. “Look! There’s the most feared and mysterious Indian of all time! Behold! It is Junior!

Why Brownlee left, and where he went, Is a mystery even now. For if a man should have been content It was him; two acres of barley, One of potatoes, four bullocks, A milker, a slated farmhouse. He was last seen going out to plough On a March morning, bright and early. By noon Brownlee was famous; They had found all abandoned, with The last rig unbroken, his pair of black Horses, like man and wife, Shifting their weight from foot to Foot, and gazing into the future.

Thomas," Chess said, "if you don't want to be famous and have your stories heard, then why'd you start the band up?" "I heard voices," Thomas said. "I guess I heard voices. I mean, I'm sort of a liar, enit? I like the attention. I want strangers to love me. I don't even know why. But I want all kids of strangers to love me." The Indian horses screamed.

sealing the pores were undertaken, famously with a horse. The poor animal was carefully varnished all over with several layers of shellac (the same solution that is used to varnish furniture) to ensure a complete seal, and died within hours. It was assumed that it had asphyxiated, thus ‘proving’ that the skin played an important role in respiration as well as perspiration.

I had a burning desire in me to win and started to get him on the back foot. I was looking for that one special shot when I put him down with the famous Horsley Muckspreader right hand… an unstoppable force. Incredibly, he got up and took the count and the ref waved us to continue.

Don’t Let That Horse . . .” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Don’t let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall’s mother But he kept right on painting And became famous And kept on painting The Horse With Violin In Mouth And when he finally finished it he jumped up upon the horse and rode away waving the violin And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across And there were no strings attached

Finnick Odair’s famous sea green eyes are only inches from mine. He pops a sugar cube in his mouth and leans against my horse.

In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. When he was winding to a close, the chief stood and said, “But you have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock….His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.” “I looked at them,” Tolstoy recalled, “and saw their faces all aglow, while their eyes were burning. I saw that those rude barbarians were really interested in a man whose name and deeds had already become a legend.” He told them everything he knew about Lincoln’s “home life and youth…his habits, his influence upon the people and his physical strength.” When he finished, they were so grateful for the story that they presented him with “a wonderful Arabian horse.” The next morning, as Tolstoy prepared to leave, they asked if he could possibly acquire for them a picture of Lincoln. Thinking that he might find one at a friend’s house in the neighboring town, Tolstoy asked one of the riders to accompany him. “I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend,” recalled Tolstoy. As he handed it to the rider, he noted that the man’s hand trembled as he took it. “He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer, his eyes filled with tears.” Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together. “We are still too near to his greatness,” Tolstoy concluded, “but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.

My poor father who is dead" (it is the sacristan who is speaking,) "was in his lifetime a grave-digger. He was of an agreeable disposition, the result, no doubt, of the calling he followed, for it has often been pointed out that people who work in cemeteries are of a jovial turn. Death has no terrors for them; they never give it a thought. I, for instance, monsieur, enter a cemetery at night as little perturbed as though it were the arbor of the White Horse. And if by chance I meet with a ghost, I don't disturb myself in the least about it, for I reflect that he may just as likely have business of his own to attend to as I.

Most important of all, though, were famous for our honesty. We had been famous for our honesty for something like eleven centuries, even when we had been the wealthiest family in what we liked to think was the world.

Often people who commit terrible acts are empathic and caring in other parts of their lives. One manifestation of this, often pointed out by those who want to mock vegetarians, was the concern that many Nazis had for nonhuman animals. Hitler famously loved dogs and hated hunting, but this was nothing compared to Hermann Göring, who imposed rules restricting hunting, the shoeing of horses, and the boiling of lobsters and crabs—and mandated that those who violated these rules be sent to concentration camps!

Britain’s Royal Veterinary College, where Catherine worked, had come into being in 1792 to study the skeleton of a famous English racehorse named Eclipse, an undefeated champion popular for his thrilling speed. The file contained lively newspaper reports on Eclipse’s races

Equally, I learned that most people don’t really know exactly what they want, or if they do it’s only from what they know, what is available or possible at the time. As Henry Ford said, famously, if he had asked American farmers what they wanted in terms of future transport, they would have answered ‘faster horses’. You need to show them new possibilities, new ideas and new products and explain these as lucidly as possible. Dyson advertising focuses on how our products are engineered and how they work, rather than on gimmicks and snappy sales lines.

Clara Barton was a famous Civil War nurse. When she began nursing, she used her own money for her supplies. She drove a horse-drawn “ambulance” right onto the battlefield to help save wounded soldiers. For this reason she became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” Jack put the book away. Then he hurried to Annie. He looked at the woman sitting in the driver’s seat of the wagon. She doesn’t look like an angel, Jack thought. The woman was very small. She had a plain, serious face and dark hair pulled back in a bun. She wore a long black skirt and a black jacket. In

The interpretation of a result is an example. To take a trivial instance, there is a famous joke about a man who complains to a friend of a mysterious phenomenon. The white horses on his farm eat more than the black horses. He worries about this and cannot understand it, until his friend suggests that maybe he has more white horses than black ones.

Achilles said. “I assume he is a famous warrior. But I am more interested in peace than war. War seems like a wonderful way to make everyone poor and miserable, to increase the share of orphans, to promote superstitions, to waste a lot of good bronze that could be used for tools, to ruin the soil, to kill perfectly good cart-horses pulling chariots, and so on.

Frederick II of Prussia (known as “the Great,” reigned 1740–1786) famously ran his Berlin court—and the associated Academy of Sciences—in French. When Voltaire visited in 1750, he wrote to the Marquis de Thibouville that “I find myself here in France. One speaks only our language. German is for the soldiers and for the horses; it is only necessary on the road.”187f

And so on that bright morning, the smoky Sicilian sun making them sweat, the six Mafia chiefs rode their horses up and down along the wall surrounding Prince Ollorto’s estate. The assembled peasants, under olive trees older than Christ, watched these six men, famous all over Sicily for their ferocity. They waited as if hoping for some miracle, too fearful to move forward.

He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums; of racing matches, in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner; of shooting parties, in which he had killed more birds (though without having one good shot) than all his companions together; and described to her some famous day’s sport, with the fox-hounds, in which his foresight and skill in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman, and in which the boldness of his riding, though it had never endangered his own life for a moment, had been constantly leading others into difficulties, which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many. Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable.

For his son-in-law the Pope suffered no further spasms of morality. Rather, judging from Burchard’s diary, the last inhibitions, if any, dropped away. Two months after Alfonso’s death, the Pope presided over a banquet given by Cesare in the Vatican, famous in the annals of pornography as the Ballet of the Chestnuts. Soberly recorded by Burchard, fifty courtesans danced after dinner with the guests, “at first clothed, then naked.” Chestnuts were then scattered among candelabra placed on the floor, “which the courtesans, crawling on hands and knees among the candelabra, picked up, while the Pope, Cesare and his sister Lucrezia looked on.” Coupling of guests and courtesans followed, with prizes in the form of fine silken tunics and cloaks offered “for those who could perform the act most often with the courtesans.” A month later Burchard records a scene in which mares and stallions were driven into a courtyard of the Vatican and equine coupling encouraged while from a balcony the Pope and Lucrezia “watched with loud laughter and much pleasure.” Later they watched again while Cesare shot down a mass of unarmed criminals driven like the horses into the same courtyard.

There is a famous painting of the young Napoleon crossing the St Bernard Pass on his way to the Italian campaign which rocketed him to fame. Louis David’s canvas shows him on a rearing horse, and everything about the painting is motion; the horse rears, its mouth open and eyes wide, its mane is wind-whipped, the sky is stormy and the General’s cloak is a lavish swirl of gale-driven colour. Yet in the centre of that frenzied paint is Napoleon’s calm face. He looks sullen and unsmiling, but above all, calm. That was what he demanded of the painter, and David delivered a picture of a man at home amidst chaos.

The poor fugitive had exchanged his reindeer-skin garments for a full suit of black, left at the Spladgest by a famous Throndhjem grammarian, who drowned himself in despair because he could not find out why "Jupiter" changed to " Jovis" in the genitive. His wooden shoes gave place to a stout pair of postilion boots, whose owner had been killed by his horses, in which his slender shanks had so much spare room that he could not have walked without the aid of half a truss of hay. The huge wig of an elegant young Frenchman, slain by thieves just outside the city gates, concealed his bald pate and floated over his sharp, crooked shoulders.

Saturday evening, on a quiet lazy afternoon, I went to watch a bullfight in Las Ventas, one of Madrid's most famous bullrings. I went there out of curiosity. I had long been haunted by the image of the matador with its custom made torero suit, embroidered with golden threads, looking spectacular in his "suit of light" or traje de luces as they call it in Spain. I was curious to see the dance of death unfold in front of me, to test my humanity in the midst of blood and gold, and to see in which state my soul will come out of the arena, whether it will be shaken and stirred, furious and angry, or a little bit aware of the life embedded in every death. Being an avid fan of Hemingway, and a proponent of his famous sentence "About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” I went there willingly to test myself. I had heard atrocities about bullfighting yet I had this immense desire to be part of what I partially had an inclination to call a bloody piece of cultural experience. As I sat there, in front of the empty arena, I felt a grandiose feeling of belonging to something bigger than anything I experienced during my stay in Spain. Few minutes and I'll be witnessing a painting being carefully drawn in front of me, few minutes and I will be part of an art form deeply entrenched in the Spanish cultural heritage: the art of defying death. But to sit there, and to watch the bull enter the arena… To watch one bull surrounded by a matador and his six assistants. To watch the matador confronting the bull with the capote, performing a series of passes, just before the picador on a horse stabs the bull's neck, weakening the neck muscles and leading to the animal's first loss of blood... Starting a game with only one side having decided fully to engage in while making sure all the odds will be in the favor of him being a predetermined winner. It was this moment precisely that made me feel part of something immoral. The unfair rules of the game. The indifferent bull being begged to react, being pushed to the edge of fury. The bull, tired and peaceful. The bull, being teased relentlessly. The bull being pushed to a game he isn't interested in. And the matador getting credits for an unfair game he set. As I left the arena, people looked at me with mocking eyes. Yes, I went to watch a bull fight and yes the play of colors is marvelous. The matador’s costume is breathtaking and to be sitting in an arena fills your lungs with the sands of time. But to see the amount of claps the spill of blood is getting was beyond what I can endure. To hear the amount of claps injustice brings is astonishing. You understand a lot about human nature, about the wars taking place every day, about poverty and starvation. You understand a lot about racial discrimination and abuse (verbal and physical), sex trafficking, and everything that stirs the wounds of this world wide open. You understand a lot about humans’ thirst for injustice and violence as a way to empower hidden insecurities. Replace the bull and replace the matador. And the arena will still be there. And you'll hear the claps. You've been hearing them ever since you opened your eyes.

The famous Northern reticence, the tight gag of place And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing Where to be saved you only must save face And whatever you say, you say nothing. Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us: Manoeuvrings to find out name and school, Subtle discrimination by addresses With hardly an exception to the rule That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape. O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, Of open minds as open as a trap, Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks, Where half of us, as in a wooden horse Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks, Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

From the pleasure podium of Ali Qapu, beyond the enhanced enclosure, the city spread itself towards the horizon. Ugly buildings are prohibited in Esfahan. They go to Tehran or stay in Mashhad. Planters vie with planners to outnumber buildings with trees. Attracting nightingales, blackbirds and orioles is considered as important as attracting people. Maples line the canals, reaching towards each other with branches linked. Beneath them, people meander, stroll and promenade. The Safavids' high standards generated a kind of architectural pole-vaulting competition in which beauty is the bar, and ever since the Persians have been imbuing the most mundane objects with design. Turquoise tiles ennoble even power stations. In the meadow in the middle of Naghshe Jahan, as lovers strolled or rode in horse-drawn traps, I lay on my back picking four-leafed clovers and looking at the sky. There was an intimacy about its grandeur, like having someone famous in your family. The life of centuries past was more alive here than anywhere else, its physical dimensions unchanged. Even the brutal mountains, folded in light and shadows beyond the square, stood back in awe of it. At three o'clock, the tiled domes soaked up the sunshine, transforming its invisible colours to their own hue, and the gushing fountains ventilated the breeze and passed it on to grateful Esfahanis. But above all was the soaring sky, captured by this snare of arches.(p378)

It reminded one of the famous Chinese story about the farmer whose horse runs away. His neighbors are quick to comment on his bad luck. The farmer responds that no one can know what is good and what is bad. When the horse comes back with a wild stallion, the neighbors are quick to comment, this time talking about the farmer’s good luck. Again, the farmer replies that no one can know what is good and what is bad. When the farmer’s son breaks his leg trying to tame the wild stallion, the neighbors now are certain of the farmer’s bad luck. Again, the farmer says that no one knows. When war breaks out, all the able-bodied young men are conscripted into battle except the farmer’s son, who was spared because of his broken leg.

Although Lasaraleen had said she was dying to hear Aravis's story, she showed no sign of really wanting to hear it at all. She was, in fact, much better at talking than at listening. She insisted on Aravis having a long and luxurious bath (Calormene baths are famous) and then dressing her up in the finest clothes before she would let her explain anything. The fuss she made about choosing the dresses nearly drove Aravis mad. She remembered now that Lasaraleen had always been like that, interested in clothes and parties and gossip. Aravis had always been more interested in bows and arrows and horses and dogs and swimming. You will guess that each thought the other silly. But when at last they were both seated after a meal (it was chiefly of the whipped cream and jelly and fruit and ice sort) in a beautiful pillared room (which Aravis would have liked better if Lasaraleen's spoiled pet monkey hadn't been climbing about it all the time) Lasaraleen at last asked her why she was running away from home.

The famous Dubner maggid, a gaon, was asked by an admiring student: “How is it that you always have the perfect parable for the topic under discussion?” The gaon smiled. “I’ll answer with a parable.” And he told the following story: A lieutenant of the Tsar’s cavalry, riding through a small shtetl, drew his horse up in astonishment, for on the side of a barn he saw a hundred chalked circles—and in the center of each was a bullet hole! The lieutenant excitedly stopped the first passerby, crying, “Who is the astonishing marksman in this place? Look at all those bull’s-eyes!” The passerby sighed. “That’s Shepsel, the shoemaker’s son, who is a little peculiar.” “I don’t care what he is,” said the lieutenant. “Any man who can shoot that well—” “Ah,” the pedestrian said, “you don’t understand. You see, first Shepsel shoots—then he draws the circle.” The gaon smiled. “That’s the way it is with me. I don’t search for a parable to fit the subject. I introduce the subject for which I have a perfect parable.

This is well set out in Rodney Stark’s famous book The Rise of Christianity (1996, Ch. 4). Stark makes a compelling case that the way the Christians behaved in the great plagues of the early centuries was a significant factor in contributing to the spread of the faith. Stark, and others who have followed him, have collected the evidence from the plagues of the 170s AD, which killed the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the 250s. (Nobody is quite sure what diseases they were. One might have been smallpox, the other measles, both killers when attacking unprepared populations.) The emperor Julian, who tried to deconvert the Roman empire in the late fourth century after it had become officially Christian under Constantine, complained that the Christians were much better at looking after the sick, and for that matter the poor, than the ordinary non-Christian population. He was trying to lock the stable door after the horse had bolted. The Christians were being for the world what Jesus had been for Israel. People took notice. Something new was happening.

By June the revival began to wane. But Roberts’s vision had been realized. An estimated 100,000 confessed Christ. The Congregationalists added 26,500 members. Another 24,000 Welsh joined the Calvinist Methodist Church. About 4,000 opted for the Wesleyan Church. The remainder were split between the Anglicans and several Baptist groups.13 The effect on Welsh society was undeniable. Output from the coal mines famously slowed because the horses wouldn’t move. Miners converted in the revival no longer kicked or swore at the horses, so the horses didn’t know what to do.14 Judges closed their courtrooms with nothing to judge. Christians wielded the revival as apologetic against the growing number of skeptics who derided religion. Stead argued: The most thoroughgoing materialist who resolutely and forever rejects as inconceivable the existence of the soul in man, and to whom “the universe is but the infinite empty eye-socket of a dead God,” could not fail to be impressed by the pathetic sincerity of these men; nor, if he were just, could he refuse to recognize that out of their faith in the creed which he has rejected they have drawn, and are drawing, a motive power that makes for righteousness, and not only for righteousness, but for the joy of living, that he would be powerless to give them.15

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of

It is almost necessary to say nowadays that a saint means a very good man. The notion of an eminence merely moral, consistent with complete stupidity or unsuccess, is a revolutionary image grown unfamiliar by its very familiarity, and needing, as do so many things of this older society, some almost preposterous modern parallel to give its original freshness and point. If we entered a foreign town and found a pillar like the Nelson Column, we should be surprised to learn that the hero on the top of it had been famous for his politeness and hilarity during a chronic toothache. If a procession came down the street with a brass band and a hero on a white horse, we should think it odd to be told that he had been very patient with a half-witted maiden aunt. Yet some such pantomime impossibility is the only measure of the innovation of the Christian idea of a popular and recognized saint. It must especially be realized that while this kind of glory was the highest, it was also in a sense the lowest. The materials of it were almost the same as those of labour and domesticity: it did not need the sword or sceptre, but rather the staff or spade. It was the ambition of poverty. All this must be approximately visualized before we catch a glimpse of the great effects of the story which lay behind the Canterbury Pilgrimage.

After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys. But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car. ‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.

In 1910 Leroux had his greatest literary success with Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera). This is both a detective story and a dark romantic melodrama and was inspired by Leroux’s passion for and obsession with the Paris Opera House. And there is no mystery as to why he found the building so fascinating because it is one of the architectural wonders of the nineteenth century. The opulent design and the fantastically luxurious furnishings added to its glory, making it the most famous and prestigious opera house in all Europe. The structure comprises seventeen floors, including five deep and vast cellars and sub cellars beneath the building. The size of the Paris Opera House is difficult to conceive. According to an article in Scribner’s Magazine in 1879, just after it first opened to the public, the Opera House contained 2,531 doors with 7,593 keys. There were nine vast reservoirs, with two tanks holding a total of 22,222 gallons of water. At the time there were fourteen furnaces used to provide the heating, and dressing-rooms for five hundred performers. There was a stable for a dozen or so horses which were used in the more ambitious productions. In essence then the Paris Opera House was like a very small magnificent city. During a visit there, Leroux heard the legend of a bizarre figure, thought by many to be a ghost, who had lived secretly in the cavernous labyrinth of the Opera cellars and who, apparently, engineered some terrible accidents within the theatre as though he bore it a tremendous grudge. These stories whetted Leroux’s journalistic appetite. Convinced that there was some truth behind these weird tales, he investigated further and acquired a series of accounts relating to the mysterious ‘ghost’. It was then that he decided to turn these titillating titbits of theatre gossip into a novel. The building is ideal for a dark, fantastic Grand Guignol scenario. It is believed that during the construction of the Opera House it became necessary to pump underground water away from the foundation pit of the building, thus creating a huge subterranean lake which inspired Leroux to use it as one of his settings, the lair, in fact, of the Phantom. With its extraordinary maze-like structure, the various stage devices primed for magical stage effects and that remarkable subterranean lake, the Opera House is not only the ideal backdrop for this romantic fantasy but it also emerges as one of the main characters of this compelling tale. In using the real Opera House as its setting, Leroux was able to enhance the overall sense of realism in his novel.

She started to head out, but she passed her room. It was the same as she'd left it: a pile of cushions by her bed for Little Brother to sleep on, a stack of poetry and famous literature on her desk that she was supposed to study to become a "model bride," and the lavender shawl and silk robes she'd worn the day before she left home. The jade comb Mulan had left in exchange for the conscription notice caught her eye; it now rested in front of her mirror. Mulan's gaze lingered on the comb, on its green teeth and the pearl-colored flower nestled on its shoulder. She wanted to hold it, to put it in her hair and show her family- to show everyone- she was worthy. After all, her surname, Fa, meant flower. She needed to show them that she had bloomed to be worthy of her family name. But no one was here, and she didn't want to face her reflection. Who knew what it would show, especially in Diyu? She isn't a boy, her mother had told her father once. She shouldn't be riding horses and letting her hair loose. The neighbors will talk. She won't find a good husband- Let her, Fa Zhou had consoled his wife. When she leaves this household as a bride, she'll no longer be able to do these things. Mulan hadn't understood what he meant then. She hadn't understood the significance of what it meant for her to be the only girl in the village who skipped learning ribbon dances to ride Khan through the village rice fields, who chased after chickens and helped herd the cows instead of learning the zither or practicing her painting, who was allowed to have opinions- at all. She'd taken the freedom of her childhood for granted. When she turned fourteen, everything changed. I know this will be a hard change to make, Fa Li had told her, but it's for your own good. Men want a girl who is quiet and demure, polite and poised- not someone who speaks out of turn and runs wild about the garden. A girl who can't make a good match won't bring honor to the family. And worse yet, she'll have nothing: not respect, or money of her own, or a home. She'd touched Mulan's cheek with a resigned sigh. I don't want that fate for you, Mulan. Every morning for a year, her mother tied a rod of bamboo to Mulan's spine to remind her to stand straight, stuffed her mouth with persimmon seeds to remind her to speak softly, and helped Mulan practice wearing heeled shoes by tying ribbons to her feet and guiding her along the garden. Oh, how she'd wanted to please her mother, and especially her father. She hadn't wanted to let them down. But maybe she hadn't tried enough. For despite Fa Li's careful preparation, she had failed the Matchmaker's exam. The look of hopefulness on her father's face that day- the thought that she'd disappointed him still haunted her. Then fate had taken its turn, and Mulan had thrown everything away to become a soldier. To learn how to punch and kick and hold a sword and shield, to shoot arrows and run and yell. To save her country, and bring honor home to her family. How much she had wanted them to be proud of her.

in North India would have remained ‘unbrokenly’ visible to sky-watchers there. Diti was then the visible portion of the southern hemisphere of the heavens, a portion which changes (is ‘bound’ or ‘broken’) day by day as the Earth shifts her position in space. Diti and Aditi are the two wives of the Rishi Kashyapa (‘The Tortoise’), who is the tortoise-shaped firmament. Aditi, whom we met in “The Greatness of Saturn” in the chapter on the Sun, is the ‘mother’ (the home, the womb) of all the deities (stars, constellations, and planets). Prominent among Aditi’s s children are the twelve solar deities known as the Twelve Adityas (‘sons of Aditi’), each of which rules one month of the year (= one constellation of the zodiac). Each Adirya courses through the skies in his chariot drawn by seven green horses (the seven Vedic meters, which with the chariot represent all the Vedas and all there is to know, including infinite space). Aditi’s most famous child was Vamana, the incarnation of Vishnu who took birth that he might beg the universe back from Bali, king of the asuras (who reside in the southern celestial hemisphere). While Bali may represent some particular

I have no idea. I’ve had better conversations with Apples.” “Apples is a horse. They are famous for their conversational abilities, whereas Arrago is a man. If it is any comfort, men say the same things about us.

The pre-Socratic Xenophanes famously commented, “Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians gods with gray eyes and red hair,” and remarked, “But if oxen (and horses) and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make the bodies [of their gods] in accordance with the form that each species itself possesses.

Reaganomics, as the dominant economics of this period came to be called, was quite open about the fact that the benefits of growth would come at the cost of some inequality. The idea was that the rich would benefit first but the poor would eventually benefit. This is the famous trickle-down theory, never better described than by Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith, who claimed this was what used to be called the “horse and sparrow” theory in the 1890s: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”28 Indeed, the 1980s ushered a dramatic change in the social contract in the US and the UK. Whatever economic growth happened since 1980 has been, for all intents and purposes, siphoned off by the rich. Was Reaganomics or its UK version responsible for it?

there is not one person in a thousand who does not hold to some kind of superstition, and those most given to ridiculing the belief in witchcraft of past ages, believe in omens, prognostics, dreams and revelations. They carry a rabbit’s foot or buckeye, keep a horse shoe over or under the door, see spectres stalking around a table of thirteen, or could not be induced to start a journey or begin any work on Friday, and since people of the present day cannot explain the phenomena in spiritual manifestations, mind reading, electric wonders, etc., their ancestors may be excused for believing in witchcraft, inasmuch as they accepted the Bible for the guidance of their faith and believed all it says on this subject, as they did that pertaining to the soul’s salvation, and sought to put away witchcraft, that Christianity might prevail.

Over in Europe, at around the same time, people were creating art in very similar ways. Southern France is littered with caves adorned with pictures of astonishing beauty and skill that date from around this time all the way into the near present. Lascaux, near Montignac, is probably the most famous, a Pleistocene art gallery from a much more recent 17,000 years ago, displaying more than 6,000 figures, interpretations of hunts, with horses and bison, felines, the extinct colossal elk Megaloceros giganteus, and abstract symbols whose meaning we can never understand. People painted in charcoal and haematite and dabbed them onto the walls as pigments in suspensions with animal fats and clay. They are breathtaking. To the west, the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave has the oldest wall art in Europe, again with beasts in relief, from hunts, and hunters – cave lions, hyenas, bears and panthers, oh my! The oldest of these were painted 37,000 years ago, according to the most up-to-date studies in 2016.

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself.

here are only two things that are wanted badly enough to risk damnation. The love potion or the cup of poison." "Ah." "So simple, isn't it? Love - and death. The love potion to win the man you want, the black mass to keep your lover. A draught to be taken at the full of the moon. Recite the names of devils or of spirits. Draw patterns on the floor or on the wall. All that's window dressing. The truth is the aphrodisiac in the draught!" "And death?" I asked. "Death?" She laughed, a queer little laugh that made me uncomfortable. "Are you so interested in death?" "Who isn't?" I said lightly. "I wonder." She shot me a glance, keen, searching. It took me aback. "Death. There's always been a greater trade in that than there ever has been in love potions. And yet - how childish it all was in the past! The Borgias and their famous secret poisons. Do you know what they really used? Ordinary white arsenic! Just the same as any little wife poisoner in the back streets. But we've progressed a long way beyond that nowadays. Science has enlarged our frontiers." "With untraceable poisons?" My voice was sceptical. "Poisons! That's vieux jeu. Childish stuff. There are new horizons." "Such as?" "The mind. Knowledge of what the mind is - what it can do - what it can be made to do.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses,” said Henry Ford famously.

Kids Riding Tornados The Wizard of Oz is a famous movie that was made in 1939. Dorothy is the girl who is the main character and in the story, she is picked up by a tornado and carried off to the fictional land of Oz. A few years later, in 1955, a 9-year-old really did go for a ride in a tornado! But first she rode a horse. There’s not a whole lot around Bowdle, South Dakota. It’s a very rural part of the state. Sharon Weron was 9 years old and riding a horse home from a neighbor’s house. Her mom was following in her car and saw everything. Just as Sharon and her horse reached their house, the tornado was on them. They had very little warning. Sharon’s mom saw the tornado pick up her daughter (and horse), spin them around wildly, and carry them away. Sharon was wearing a blue shirt so her mom was looking for that in the tornado and could see her spinning. The tornado carried them around 1,000 feet, over several fences, and dumped Sharon in a ditch. She was wearing a leather jacket and pulled that up around her head during her flight. There was hail and all kinds of debris flying around inside the tornado with her. Sharon’s hands were badly bruised from being hit by the hail and who knows what else. She remembered hitting the ground and grabbing the grass so that she wouldn’t get sucked up again. As she looked around, she found her horse. He was just standing there not far from her. Both were a little beaten up but okay. That’s crazy, right? Their story got picked up by newspapers and spread all over the world. Reporters had no reason to doubt the story. As unbelievable as it seems, it still holds up as credible. Sharon’s ride was also witnessed by neighbors. The Guinness book of world records listed Sharon’s ride as the furthest anyone had ever ridden in a tornado until 2006. It’s remarkable that both Sharon and her horse lived through such a terrifying experience. That has to be the craziest horse story in the history of the world!

Old horse! old horse! what brought you here?” — “From Sacarap to Portland pier I’ve carted stone this many a year: Till, killed by blows and sore abuse, They salted me down for sailors’ use The sailors they do me despise: They turn me over and damn my eyes; Cut off my meat, and pick my bones, And pitch the rest to Davy Jones.

Noor Afzhal looked into Jim’s eyes. “You are not just a fighter anymore,” he told Jim. “You are nangyalee.” In a verse by the seventeenth-century Pashtun poet Khushal Khan Khattak, nangyalee refers to a brave man who also has honor and who never gives up. “A brave man has only two options in the world, to fight to the death or secure victory,” went the famous line. But Noor Afzhal explained the term to Jim as meaning a champion who is both brutal and compassionate. “Nangyalee is a warrior who rides a white horse, and when he sees someone who cannot protect themselves, he rides there with his men and fights for them,” he said. Jim was deeply moved.

Aida Manduley, LCSW, is a Latinx activist, trauma-focused clinician with a basis in liberation health and healing justice, and a human discotheque. They say, The biggest lie that we’re told—and I would say that this goes for everyone, just in different flavors—the lie that we’re told is that we have to do it by ourselves. No one does anything by themselves. Any person who says they got to where they are by themselves is lying, either actively lying or deeply misinformed and spouting a lie. Look, find me any famous person, find me any philosopher, find me any person who’s made it into the history books. A huge reason why they were able to is because they had people making their food and caring for their children, driving their cars, or horse buggies or whatever. None of these people did it by themselves. The fact that they got help was just erased. So now, other people think, “Oh, well, I gotta do it myself. This other person did it, so clearly, I gotta do it, too.” That’s not how it worked for them either. Actually, they got a lot of help.

He saw El Lagartijo—“The Lizard”—one of the most famous bullfighters in Spain, and he met Cara Ancha, the celebrated Andalusian matador. When he was only nine years old, Pablo completed his first painting, Le Picador, a portrait of a man riding a horse in the bullring. Two years later, Pablo’s family moved to a new town, La Coruña, on Spain’s Atlantic coast. Don José got a job as an art teacher at the local college. Even though he was much younger than the other students, Pablo enrolled in his father’s class. He also took courses in figure drawing and landscape painting. By the time he turned thirteen, Pablo’s skill level had surpassed his father’s. Don José was so impressed that he handed his son his brushes and vowed never to paint again. When Pablo was fourteen years old, his family moved again, this time to Barcelona, where Pablo enrolled in the prestigious School of Fine Arts. His teachers quickly noticed his skills and allowed him to skip two grades. But just as in Málaga, Pablo had trouble adhering to the school’s rules. Before long he was back to his old tricks, cutting class so that he could wander the city streets, sketching interesting scenes that he observed along the way. Pablo repeated this behavior at his next school, the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. This time, Pablo’s father refused to tolerate his son’s antics and stopped his allowance. At age sixteen, Pablo found himself on his own for the first time, forced to support himself on nothing but his artistic ability. It has been said that the older Pablo grew, the more childlike his art became. During some periods he painted almost entirely in blue or depicted only circus performers.

❝The Blood Horse❞ GAMARRA is a dainty steed, Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of fire, and full of bone, With all his line of fathers known; Fine his nose, his nostrils thin, But blown abroad by the pride within! His mane is like a river flowing, And his eyes like embers glowing In the darkness of the night, And his pace as swift as light. Look,—how ’round his straining throat Grace and shifting beauty float! Sinewy strength is on his reins, And the red blood gallops through his veins; Richer, redder, never ran Through the boasting heart of man. He can trace his lineage higher Than the Bourbon dare aspire,— Douglas, Guzman, or the Guelph, Or O’Brien’s blood itself! He, who hath no peer, was born Here, upon a red March morn: But his famous fathers dead Were Arabs all, and Arab bred, And the last of that great line Trod like one of a race divine! And yet,—he was but friend to one Who fed him at the set of sun, By some lone fountain ’fringed with green: With him, a roving Bedouin, He liv’d,—(none else would he obey Through all the hot Arabian day,)— And died untam’d upon the sands Where Balkh amidst the desert stands!

spend an hour in the past with someone who is no longer living (family or famous)? WOULD YOU RATHER… Be a horse tamer, always riding wild and crazy horses OR be an artist with paint on your face all the time?

Politically, according to Muslim observers, India comprised many kingdoms, each with a formidable army that included elephants and cavalry as well as infantry. According to a Baghdad adage quoted by al-Biruni, the Turks were famous for their horses, Kandahar (for some reason) for its elephants, and India for its armies.

As the battle began Ivo Taillefer, the minstrel knight who had claimed the right to make the first attack, advanced up the hill on horseback, throwing his lance and sword into the air and catching them before the English army. He then charged deep into the English ranks, and was slain. The cavalry charges of William’s mail-clad knights, cumbersome in manœuvre, beat in vain upon the dense, ordered masses of the English. Neither the arrow hail nor the assaults of the horsemen could prevail against them. William’s left wing of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and retreated rapidly down the hill. On this the troops on Harold’s right, who were mainly the local “fyrd”, broke their ranks in eager pursuit. William, in the centre, turned his disciplined squadrons upon them and cut them to pieces. The Normans then re-formed their ranks and began a second series of charges upon the English masses, subjecting them in the intervals to severe archery. It has often been remarked that this part of the action resembles the afternoon at Waterloo, when Ney’s cavalry exhausted themselves upon the British squares, torn by artillery in the intervals. In both cases the tortured infantry stood unbroken. Never, it was said, had the Norman knights met foot-soldiers of this stubbornness. They were utterly unable to break through the shield-walls, and they suffered serious losses from deft blows of the axe-men, or from javelins, or clubs hurled from the ranks behind. But the arrow showers took a cruel toll. So closely, it was said, were the English wedged that the wounded could not be removed, and the dead scarcely found room in which to sink upon the ground. The autumn afternoon was far spent before any result had been achieved, and it was then that William adopted the time-honoured ruse of a feigned retreat. He had seen how readily Harold’s right had quitted their positions in pursuit after the first repulse of the Normans. He now organised a sham retreat in apparent disorder, while keeping a powerful force in his own hands. The house-carls around Harold preserved their discipline and kept their ranks, but the sense of relief to the less trained forces after these hours of combat was such that seeing their enemy in flight proved irresistible. They surged forward on the impulse of victory, and when half-way down the hill were savagely slaughtered by William’s horsemen. There remained, as the dusk grew, only the valiant bodyguard who fought round the King and his standard. His brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine, had already been killed. William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided. The last formed body of troops was broken, though by no means overwhelmed. They withdrew into the woods behind, and William, who had fought in the foremost ranks and had three horses killed under him, could claim the victory. Nevertheless the pursuit was heavily checked. There is a sudden deep ditch on the reverse slope of the hill of Hastings, into which large numbers of Norman horsemen fell, and in which they were butchered by the infuriated English lurking in the wood. The dead king’s naked body, wrapped only in a robe of purple, was hidden among the rocks of the bay. His mother in vain offered the weight of the body in gold for permission to bury him in holy ground. The Norman Duke’s answer was that Harold would be more fittingly laid upon the Saxon shore which he had given his life to defend. The body was later transferred to Waltham Abbey, which he had founded. Although here the English once again accepted conquest and bowed in a new destiny, yet ever must the name of Harold be honoured in the Island for which he and his famous house-carls fought indomitably to the end.

Although these were easily the darkest days in Alfred’s life, they also were to become the most famous. The stories of his persevering against the Vikings transformed King Alfred into Alfred the Great. The story falls into a category that the modern ear can easily recognize and appreciate. From the legends of Robin Hood hiding out with his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest to the tales of men fighting in the underground French resistance during World War II, the modern listener has been well trained to be moved by the courageous nobility of continuing a campaign of resistance long after being driven into hiding. The seeming despair of a life of defiant resistance, while being hunted in one’s homeland, captures the imagination and takes on a romantic hue. But this was not a category of story that the Anglo-Saxon ear was accustomed to hearing. To his contemporaries, Alfred’s plight was an unqualified tragedy, utterly devoid of romanticism

I remember the great feeling of sadness to have left many of our brothers behind in a foreign land, but as I sat on the rowing bench, alongside Hengist and Yffi, as the Famous Horse sailed over the gentle waves, I couldn't help but feel excited of what was to come. Yet none of us could have predicted that we were sailing towards a head -on-collision with the Roman General, Flavius Aëtius and his Hun allies, where Hengist and I would come face to face with the legendary Siegfried the Dragon Slayer and the one they call Attila the Hun!

In early 1506 a peasant had been fixing up his vineyard near the Colosseum when he accidentally opened up a hole in the ground. There, he discovered a large statue of humans being slaughtered by giant serpents. Word reached the Vatican almost immediately. Experts were sent for, including Michelangelo. The statue was identified as the long-lost Laocoön, the most beloved statue in pagan Rome, thought destroyed by the barbarian hordes in the fifth century. It was originally commissioned by the victorious Greeks after they destroyed Troy. It shows the moment of death of Laocoön, the high priest of Troy, being killed by supernatural snakes sent by the Greek gods to prevent him and his sons from warning the Trojans not to bring the famous Trojan horse inside the city walls. Laocoön is best known for his warning: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” After the serpents killed him and his sons, the Trojans did indeed bring the giant wooden horse into their city. When the hidden Greek soldiers came out of its hollow belly that night, it spelled the end of both Troy and the Trojans. Later, when the victorious Roman legions brought a close to the Greek Empire, they brought home the Laocoön as one of their favorite war trophies.

There’s really only one thing you can do—ride the wave of notoriety for all it’s worth. Who knows, you might actually get a rich, hot, famous guy who’s hung like a horse. And then you’ll fuck your way into the sunset and live happily ever after with a big cock in your bed every night.

Now they needed a man to go across the line. Col. T.B. Hargis, Jr. called in Capt. Tom Stewart. Stewart, 30, was lanky, bookish and witty, a devout Christian and the son of a semi-famous senator from Tennessee. It’s likely he was chosen because he was decisive and smart. He knew a smattering of German — plus he could ride a horse. That was more than enough to qualify him for the job.

Why the von Igelfeld family should have adopted the hedgehog, both as their name and their symbol, is uncertain. Family tradition has it that they once lived in close proximity to a field renowned for its hedgehogs, but where this field was, and even if it ever existed, is far from clear. Another tradition has it that a von Igelfeld ancestor was once saved by a hedgehog, although how a hedgehog might be capable of saving anybody has never been revealed. Dogs have saved the lives of humans, as have horses, and even, famously, Capitoline geese, but never have hedgehogs been credited with such service to humanity.

ugliest bridge in the city. It was made from iron, did not have a graceful arching form like the famous stone bridges prevalent throughout Venice, and had been placed too low over the water, making it difficult for gondoliers during high tide. Around us, the canal was crowded with boats, the only method of transport in a place with no streets. I’d already decided I didn’t miss them. I much preferred the sleek gondolas, with their singing boatmen, to the clatter of horse and carriage.

When you mention a famous race horse, they always ask you, ‘From which stable?’ The stable is important. It establishes the ancestry and the breed. When you name a lawyer who has done well, people ask you, ‘From which chamber?’ The chamber is important. It establishes the hierarchy and cultural tradition in which the lawyer has been reared.

I arrived from Hong Kong part way through second form, and even then, when we were all still shrimps (shrimps, for this new casebook, is what we call the little lower-form girls), Daisy was already famous throughout Deepdean School. She rode horses, was part of the lacrosse team, and was a member of the Drama Society. The Big Girls took notice of her, and by May the entire school knew that the Head Girl herself had called Daisy a ‘good sport’.

Men are generally more careful of the Breed of their Horses and Dogs than of their Children.

Private Casler recounted what happened next: “General Bernard E. Bee, riding up to General Jackson, who sat on his horse calm and unmoved, though severely wounded in the hand, exclaimed in a voice of anguish: ‘General, they are beating us back.’ Turning to General Bee, he said calmly: ‘Sir, we’ll give them the bayonet.’ Hastening back to his men, General Bee cried enthusiastically, as he pointed to Jackson: ‘Look yonder! There is Jackson and his brigade standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here and we will conquer. Rally behind them!’”[16] Another account differed as it was said that Bee was in fact irritated by what appeared to be inactivity from Jackson and angrily gestured, “Look at Jackson standing there like a damned stone wall!

Some of the famous warriors of the Western Plains earned more coup feathers in their lifetime than were required for a full-sized headdress. These warriors were allowed by tribal law to make and wear a war bonnet having either a single or double row of eagle feathers hanging down the back. Originally these bonnets were only knee length, but when the Indian started to ride horses, the tails were extended to the wearer’s heels.

And now he’d hurt her feelings, which was just… famous, as Westhaven would have said. Bloody, famously famous. “Sophie.” He reached over and covered her hand with his own for just a moment. Her brothers were allowing them some privacy by dropping back a few dozen yards, probably because the entire party was in full view of the house. “I will treasure the memories I already have of this holiday season for all the rest of my days.” She urged her horse to a slightly faster walk, which meant Vim had to drop his hand or look as ridiculous as he felt.

The good news is that we're moving with the Mongol army. Less likely to get trampled by their horses that way." "Thanks for that," Dak said. 'But you should know the Mongols were famous for being able to shoot their bows in any direction while galloping on their horses, with deadly accuracy. Even backward. Which is where we'll be coming from.

to Freyja.” and Odin is like “Can I at least have the octohorse?” and Loki is like “Only if I don’t have to do what you say anymore.” and Odin is like “FINE.” and Loki is like “HAHA, I PRANKED YOU THAT HORSE CAME OUT OF MY HORSE VAGINA.” And Odin is like “Ew, ick. I still want the horse though.” So the moral of the story is that only a sucker pays full price for masonry. Oh, speaking of which let me tell you about another really gross thing Loki had sex with . . . FENRIR IS A DILF So one day, Loki’s wandering around Jotunheim and he sees this chick Angrboða pronounced ANGER BOW THE and he is like “Well, I know she’s pretty ugly and her name is kinda like a reference book entry for THE ANGER BOW but you know what? I’m gonna tap that and have three kids with that and all three of those kids are going to be horrible beasts that bring on the apocalypse. I see no problems with this.” So for now, let’s just focus on the first kid: a giant wolf named Fenrir. Now Loki brings baby Fenrir to Asgard and the Aesir all instantly know that this wolf is gonna be the death of them mainly because it is a GIANT WOLF NAMED FENRIR. But instead of doing anything about it they decide to see if they can just raise it as their own presumably because they don’t want to hurt Loki’s feelings. So this god Tyr the god of single combat and being awesome gets put in charge of feeding Fenrir because he’s the only person with sufficient testicular mass to actually go near the wolf and Fenrir gets bigger and bigger and holy shit bigger until the gods start to be like “Uhh . . . we should really do something about this wolf.” So what they do is they make a big metal chain. This chain is so incredibly massive that they don’t feel right until they give it a name that name is Leyding. So they go up to Fenrir like “Hey, man I bet you totally can’t break out of this chain.” And Fenrir is like “Okay, bring it.” So they tie him up and he pretty much just breaks the chains like cobwebs and he gets famous because of that and the gods are like “Fuck, that backfired. Okay, let’s make a better chain.” so they make a chain that is TWO TIMES AS STRONG and they name it Dromi and they go back to Fenrir like “Bet you can’t break THIS chain.” And Fenrir is like “I don’t know if I want to let you tie me up again.” And the gods are like “Don’t you want to be double famous?” and Fenrir is like “Ugh, okay.” So he lets them tie him up again and he flexes a little, but the chain doesn’t break so then he kicks the chain, and it does break and the gods are all like “Okay we definitely need a better chain. Somebody call some dwarves.” So the dwarves are like “Okay the mistake you guys have been making is you have been trying to make a chain out of actual things that exist such as metal instead of abstract concepts such as the sound of a cat’s footfall.” So what the dwarves do is they take the sound of a cat’s footfall along with the roots of a mountain the sinews of a bear the beard of a woman— remember, these are dwarves— and the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird so that’s why you can’t hear cats walking around and mountains don’t have roots and fish don’t breathe, and birds don’t spit but I think bears still probably have sinews and I have definitely met me some bearded ladies so I guess the dwarves were not that thorough. But anyway somehow they manage to distill all this shit into THE ULTIMATE

She was not alone. “There’s a definite panic on the hip scene in Cambridge,” wrote student radical Raymond Mungo that year, “people going to uncommonly arduous lengths (debt, sacrifice, the prospect of cold toes and brown rice forever) to get away while there’s still time.” And it wasn’t just Cambridge. All over the nation at the dawn of the 1970s, young people were suddenly feeling an urge to get away, to leave the city behind for a new way of life in the country. Some, like Mungo, filled an elderly New England farmhouse with a tangle of comrades. Others sought out mountain-side hermitages in New Mexico or remote single-family Edens in Tennessee. Hilltop Maoists traversed their fields with horse-drawn plows. Graduate students who had never before held a hammer overhauled tobacco barns and flipped through the Whole Earth Catalog by the light of kerosene lamps. Vietnam vets hand-mixed adobe bricks. Born-and-bred Brooklynites felled cedar in Oregon. Former debutants milked goats in Humboldt County and weeded strawberry beds with their babies strapped to their backs. Famous musicians forked organic compost into upstate gardens. College professors committed themselves to winter commutes that required swapping high heels for cross-country skis. Computer programmers turned the last page of Scott and Helen Nearing’s Living the Good Life and packed their families into the car the next day. Most had no farming or carpentry experience, but no matter. To go back to the land, it seemed, all that was necessary was an ardent belief that life in Middle America was corrupt and hollow, that consumer goods were burdensome and unnecessary, that protest was better lived than shouted, and that the best response to a broken culture was to simply reinvent it from scratch.

by refusing to repeat it, much to the despair of their record companies. Both wrote gorgeous sci-fi ballads blatantly inspired by 2001—“Space Oddity” and “After the Gold Rush.” Both did classic songs about imperialism that name-checked Marlon Brando—“China Girl” and “Pocahontas.” Both were prodigiously prolific even when they were trying to eat Peru through their nostrils. They were mutual fans, though they floundered when they tried to copy each other (Trans and Tin Machine). Both sang their fears of losing their youth when they were still basically kids; both aged mysteriously well. Neither ever did anything remotely sane. But there’s a key difference: Bowie liked working with smart people, whereas Young always liked working with . . . well, let’s go ahead and call them “not quite as smart as Neil Young” people. Young made his most famous music with two backing groups—the awesomely inept Crazy Horse and the expensively addled CSN—whose collective IQ barely leaves room temperature. He knows they’re not going to challenge him with ideas of their own, so he knows how to use them—brilliantly in the first case, lucratively in the second. But Bowie never made any of his memorable music that way—he always preferred collaborating with (and stealing from) artists who knew tricks he didn’t know, well educated in musical worlds where he was just a visitor. Just look at the guitarists he worked with: Carlos Alomar from James Brown’s band vs. Robert Fripp from King Crimson. Stevie Ray Vaughan from Texas vs. Mick Ronson from Hull. Adrian Belew from Kentucky vs. Earl Slick from Brooklyn. Nile Rodgers. Peter Frampton. Ricky Gardiner, who played all that fantastic fuzz guitar on Low (and who made the mistake of demanding a raise, which is why he dropped out of the story so fast). Together, Young and Bowie laid claim to a jilted generation left high and dry by the dashed hippie dreams. “The

Several Top Secret recommendations were made by Dr. Aurelio Peccei of the  Club of Rome. He advocated that a plague be introduced that would have same effect as the famous Black Death of history. The chief recommendation was to develop a microbe which would attack the autoimmune system and thus render the development of a vaccine impossible.

We are already acquainted with the phenomena of the growing sensitiveness of conscience. We know how we come to see sin, where we saw none before, and what a feeling of insecurity about the past that new vision has often given us. Yet death is a sudden stride into the light. Even in our General Confessions, the past was discernible in a kind of soft twilight; now it will be dragged out into unsheltered splendour. The dawn of the judgment, mere dawn though it will be, is brighter than any terrestrial noon; and it is a light which magnifies more than any human microscope. There lie fifty crowded years, or more. O, such an interminable-seeming waste of life, with actions piled on actions, and all swarming with minutest incredible life, and an element of eternity in every nameless moving point of that teeming wilderness! How colossal will appear the sins we know of, so gigantic now that we hardly know them again! How big our little sins! How full of malice our faults that seemed but half-sins, if they were sins at all. Then again, the forgotten sins, who can count them? Who believed they were half so many or half so serious? The unsuspected sins, and the sinfulness of our many ignorances, and the deliberateness of our indeliberations, and the rebellions of our self-will, and the culpable recklessness of our precipitations, and the locust-swarms of our thought-peopled solitudes, and the incessant persevering cataracts of our poisoned tongues, and the inconceivable arithmetic of our multiplied omissions—and a great solid neglected grace lying by the side of each one of these things—and each one of them as distinct, and quiet, and quietly compassed, and separately contemplated, and overpoweringly light-girdled, in the mind of God, as if each were the grand sole truth of His self-sufficing unity! Who will dare to think that such a past will not be a terrific pain, a light from which there is no terrified escape? Or who will dare to say that his past will not look such to him, when he lies down to die? Surely it would be death itself to our entrapped and amazed souls, if we did not see the waters of the great flood rising far off, and sweeping onward with noiseless, but resistless, inundation, the billows of that Red Sea of our salvation, which takes away the sins of the world, and under which all those Egyptians of our own creation, those masters whom we ourselves appointed over us, with their living hosts, their men, their horses, their chariots, and their incalculable baggage, will look in the morning- light of eternity, but a valley of sunlit waters.

The Morioka region of northern Japan is famous for its horses and this festival was originally conceived by horse breeders who wished to pray for long and happy lives for their animals. It now features a parade of colourfully dressed horses ridden by local children with round 80–100 horses usually taking part dressed in konida costumes (worn by the horses of daimyo – feudal lords – in the Edo Period). The name of the festival comes from the noise made by the bells (chagu chagu) on the horses’ harnesses (umakko) and the event is designated as a national intangible folklore cultural asset. At the end of the parade, prayers are offered for a bountiful rice harvest and thanks are given to the horses.

The arrangement fell to pieces at the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the disastrous hetmanate of that most un-Cossack of Cossacks – Ivan Mazeppa. Suave and subtle, famous for his love affairs and his deft hand at political intrigue, Mazeppa was an even unlikelier rebel than Khmelnytsky. Born into a noble Orthodox family in Polish-ruled ‘right-bank’ Ukraine, he was schooled at a Jesuit college in Warsaw before entering the court of King Jan Kazimierz as a gentleman-in-waiting. Keen to create a cadre of Ruthenian nobles loyal to the crown, Kazimierz sent him to study in Holland before putting him to work on diplomatic errands to the left-bank hetmanate. In 1663 the promising young favourite suddenly left Cracow and joined the Polish-ruled Cossacks on the western bank of the Dnieper. Legend – as embroidered by everyone from Byron to Tchaikovsky – has it that he had been discovered in bed with the wife of a neighbour, who stripped him naked and sent him galloping off into the steppe on the back of a wild horse. Whatever the truth, Mazeppa spent the next few years travelling back and forth to the Crimean khanate as the Polish Cossacks’ envoy. In 1674, journeying home from one of these missions, he was captured by the Zaporozhians and turned over to the rival left-bank hetmanate as a spy. At this

It was flattering to see Hannah watch me, studying how I ordered the next round or sent something back if I wasn’t satisfied. Donato watched too. Was this when I ordered a bottle of prosecco? Yes, because he had finally stopped trying to charm and embarrass me as if I were a granny. And because I liked the way he slouched into his chair, one arm outstretched over the back of mine, another button undone on his shirt so I could peek at the skin beneath, the smattering of springy dark hair at its center. He is so sinewy and long. Like a wild animal, like a well-exercised show horse. His toothy grin said it, those flashing eyes said it too—I know what you’re thinking. It humored him, gave him pleasure. And I didn’t mind giving in, letting him know that I admired his profile. And Hannah seemed pleased to share his attention with me—the kind of satisfaction one gets from ordering correctly from the menu. After the bottle of prosecco she wanted to hear stories about when her mother and I were young—about those long-ago parties. Mom and Cilla were hanging out with famous writers and actors before they were old enough to walk, she bragged to Donato.

We are seeing an evolution toward services rather than physical transactions,” Allison said at our conference. “There’s been a fragmentation of the customer experience. When you bought a car, or you leased a car, that was one interaction. Then as you went and needed service for your car, there’d be a different interaction at the dealership. And for all these years, the cars weren’t connected, so we really didn’t have a view of the journey that you’re on.” Allison is absolutely right about the fragmentation of the customer experience—most of the big auto manufacturers conceded the service aspect of their industry to thousands of dealerships and repair shops a long time ago. Today Ford is actively trying to remedy that. As Allison noted, “FordPass is a portal to a seamless customer experience.” FordPass app users can warm up their cars in the driveway on cold mornings, find and reserve parking spots, schedule service appointments, find nearby gas stations, and make mobile payments. Henry Ford had a famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Today Ford understands that it can’t solve for mobility just by selling more cars.

supper-bell again. She always gave them ten minutes’ grace, knowing that they might sometimes have a job to finish with the horses, but everyone was supposed to be at the table when the second supper-bell had finished ringing. George looked nice, because her curly hair went with a skirt and blouse quite well, but Henry looked quite wrong, somehow, in her frilly dress. ‘You look like a boy dressed up!’ said Anne, and this pleased Henry, but not George. The talk at the supper-table was mainly about all the wonderful things that Henry had done in her life. Apparently she had three brothers and did everything with them, and according to her own tales, she was considerably