Famous Incredibles Quotes

Nuri Bilge Ceylan is an ocean who is becoming deeper with incredible speed and amazingly clearer by passing the time. He makes ices familiar with sea by showing “Winter Sleep”. Thanks for his existence. “All who love are relatives.

My mother isn’t famous. She doesn’t have an incredible career. She isn’t even married to the love of her life. But there’s one thing she’s always been . . . Right.

Anyway. I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, “But it’s turtles all the way down!” I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.

The cool thing about taking Jesus up on His offer is that whatever controls you doesn’t anymore. People who used to be obsessed about becoming famous no longer care whether anybody knows their name. People who used to want power are willing to serve. People who used to chase money freely give it away. People who used to beg others for acceptance are now strong enough to give love. When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that’s a pretty good trade.

We started out to see some of Paris on foot with him, stopping at the famous Café de la Paix, where you were supposed to see everyone you knew if you just sat there long enough. To sit at a sidewalk café having coffee or a drink – the sound and sight of France all around. The Champs-Elysées was incredible – the chestnut trees – how could one city attain such perfection? Who had dreamed it up? Who had made it all come true? I wanted to see every corner of it.

It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.

From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that’s bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum.

Thousands of British soldiers would eventually starve to death despite the fact incredible quantities of food were stockpiled only a few miles distant.

It is the noble races that have left behind them the concept 'barbarian' wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it (for example, when Pericles says to the Athenians in his famous funeral oration 'our boldness has gained access to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to its goodness and wickedness"). This 'boldness' of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression, the incalculability, even incredibility of their undertakings—Pericles specially commends the rhathymia of the Athenians—their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction, in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty—all this came together, in the minds of those who suffered from it, in the image of the 'barbarian,' the 'evil enemy,' perhaps as the 'Goths,' the 'Vandals.

think about how brave it is, to do this: to queue up, and meet your hero. There’s something incredibly intimate about reading, or listening, or looking at someone else’s art. When it truly moves you—when you whoop when Prince whoops in Purple Rain; or cry when Bastian cries in The NeverEnding Story, it is as if you have been them, for a while. You traveled inside them, in their shoes, breathing their breath. Moving with their pulse. A faint ghost of them imprinted, inside you, forever—it responds when you meet them, as if it recognizes its own reflection.

You burn to have your photograph in a tennis magazine.” “I’m afraid so.” “Why again exactly, now?” “I guess to be felt about as I feel about those players with their pictures in magazines.” “Why?” “Why? I guess to give my life some sort of meaning, Lyle.” “And how would this do this again?” “Lyle, I don’t know. I do not know. It just does. Would. Why else would I burn like this, clip secret pictures, not take risks, not sleep or pee?” “You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.” “I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?” “The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.” “Lyle, don’t they?” “LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.” “Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.” “LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?” “Okey-dokey.” “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” “Maybe I ought to be getting back.” “LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang: namely Michael Chang’s enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. No such animal.” “Animal?” “You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.” “This is good news?” “It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.” “The burning doesn’t go away?” “What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull toward yourself.” “Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn’t make me feel very much better at all?” “LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.” “So I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There’s no way out.” “You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage.

I find the writings of actors to be interesting. Actors are people who are famous for speaking words that others have crafted for them, and very often they themselves are incredibly inarticulate. If they were ducks, they couldn’t even say “quack” without someone writing it for them.

I was really in Italy. Not Maya Angelou, the person of pretensions and ambitions, but me, Marguerite Johnson, who had read about Verona and the sad lovers while growing up in a dusty Southern village poorer and more tragic than the historic town in which I now stood. I was so excited at the incredible turn of events which had brought me from a past of rejection, of slammed doors and blind alleys, of dead-end streets and culs-de-sac, into the bright sun of Italy, into a town made famous by one of the world’s greatest writers. I

Delhi’s most famous Sufi saint, Nizamuddin Auliya, who gave spiritual guidance to the incredible Amir Khusro—musician, scholar, poet and the father of qawwali.

Be paralyzed whenever you want to write anything. You were so wrong for so many years, so incredibly good at lying to yourself, and given that, how could you possibly think you’ll ever put a pen to paper and say something true?

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.

My mother was a saint. I really mean it. Stunningly beautiful, an incredible singer, with a heart of gold. For years before she died, she would always tell me that we were gonna get out of Hell’s Kitchen and go straight to Hollywood. She said she was going to be the most famous woman in the world and get us a mansion on the beach. I had this fantasy of the two of us together in a house, throwing parties, drinking champagne. And then she died, and it was like waking up from a dream. Suddenly, I was in a world where none of that was ever going to happen. And I was going to be stuck in Hell’s Kitchen forever.

We know from subsequent leaks that the president was indeed presented with information about the seriousness of the virus and its pandemic potential beginning at least in early January 2020. And yet, as documented by the Washington Post, he repeatedly stated that “it would go away.” On February 10, when there were 12 known cases, he said that he thought the virus would “go away” by April, “with the heat.” On February 25, when there were 53 known cases, he said, “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.” On February 27, when there were 60 cases, he said, famously, “We have done an incredible job. We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.” On March 6, when there were 278 cases and 14 deaths, again he said, “It’ll go away.” On March 10, when there were 959 cases and 28 deaths, he said, “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” On March 12, with 1,663 cases and 40 deaths recorded, he said, “It’s going to go away.” On March 30, with 161,807 cases and 2,978 deaths, he was still saying, “It will go away. You know it—you know it is going away, and it will go away. And we’re going to have a great victory.” On April 3, with 275,586 cases and 7,087 deaths, he again said, “It is going to go away.” He continued, repeating himself: “It is going away.… I said it’s going away, and it is going away.” In remarks on June 23, when the United States had 126,060 deaths and roughly 2.5 million cases, he said, “We did so well before the plague, and we’re doing so well after the plague. It’s going away.” Such statements continued as both the cases and the deaths kept rising. Neither the virus nor Trump’s statements went away.

In the distant past the British Isles were ruled by tribes of giants. In the north, in the highlands of Scotland, in what is now Ross-shire, lived such a tribe of giant beings. This primeval tribe was renowned for their strength, and was famous for its incredible kinsfolk, such as Gog-Magog and the Cailleach-Mhore (Great Cailleach). This Cailleach was famed for her strength, even amongst this mightily-hewed tribe. One day, Cailleach Mhore was walking over the hills with a pannier of earth and rocks on her back. Pausing for breath, she stopped and stood on the site of Ben-Vaichard. As she stood gazing around her, the pannier gave way and all its contents came pouring out. Amidst the noise and chaos the Cailleach-Mhore cursed as her load was scattered. When the dust had cleared her gaze passed over a completely new landscape, with new hills formed by the earth and rocks she had been carrying.

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.

Two fantasies dominated my darting then. I wanted to dart Fritz Lipmann. Lipmann was an incredibly famous biochemist, got the Nobel Prize decades ago, and now was an august octogenarian who would spend his day shuffling around the campus in his running shoes, endlessly passing my first-floor dorm window. I would get him in my blowgun sights from behind my biochemistry textbooks (which were half about him), choose between his rear end and shoulders, try to calculate his body weight for a proper dosage. I refrained from darting, however.

Leonard Woolf’s endurance of Virginia’s famous frigidity is, we must suppose after the fact, altogether to his credit. Their honeymoon did not bring the amelioration they had hoped for and it is incredibly innocent and moving to think of them discussing it with Vanessa. They wanted to know when she had first had an orgasm. She said she couldn’t remember but she knew she had been “sympathetic” from the age of two. Vita Sackville-West said about Virginia, “She dislikes the possessiveness and love of domination in men. In fact she dislikes the quality of masculinity.

Charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. It is somewhat amusing, indeed, to notice the difference between the fate of these three paradoxes in the fashion of the modern mind. Charity is a fashionable virtue in our time; it is lit up by the gigantic firelight of Dickens. Hope is a fashionable virtue to-day; our attention has been arrested for it by the sudden and silver trumpet of Stevenson. But faith is unfashionable, and it is customary on every side to cast against it the fact that it is a paradox. Everybody mockingly repeats the famous childish definition that faith is “the power of believing that which we know to be untrue.” Yet it is not one atom more paradoxical than hope or charity. Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.

Pilgrimage was a centrally important part of Christian life in the early twelfth century, and had been for nearly one thousand years. People traveled incredible distances to visit saints' shrines and the sites of famous Christian deeds. did it for the good of their souls: sometimes to seek divine relief from illness, sometimes as penance to atone for their sins. Some thought that praying at a certain shrine would ensure the protection of that saint in their passage through the afterlife. All believed that God looked kindly on pilgrims and that a man or woman who ventured humbly and faithfully to the center of the world would improve his or her standing in the eyes of God.

Despite the complexity and variety of the universe, it turns out that to make one you need just three ingredients. Let’s imagine that we could list them in some kind of cosmic cookbook. So what are the three ingredients we need to cook up a universe? The first is matter—stuff that has mass. Matter is all around us, in the ground beneath our feet and out in space. Dust, rock, ice, liquids. Vast clouds of gas, massive spirals of stars, each containing billions of suns, stretching away for incredible distances. The second thing you need is energy. Even if you’ve never thought about it, we all know what energy is. Something we encounter every day. Look up at the Sun and you can feel it on your face: energy produced by a star ninety-three million miles away. Energy permeates the universe, driving the processes that keep it a dynamic, endlessly changing place. So we have matter and we have energy. The third thing we need to build a universe is space. Lots of space. You can call the universe many things—awesome, beautiful, violent—but one thing you can’t call it is cramped. Wherever we look we see space, more space and even more space. Stretching in all directions. It’s enough to make your head spin. So where could all this matter, energy and space come from? We had no idea until the twentieth century. The answer came from the insights of one man, probably the most remarkable scientist who has ever lived. His name was Albert Einstein. Sadly I never got to meet him, since I was only thirteen when he died. Einstein realised something quite extraordinary: that two of the main ingredients needed to make a universe—mass and energy—are basically the same thing, two sides of the same coin if you like. His famous equation E = mc2 simply means that mass can be thought of as a kind of energy, and vice versa. So instead of three ingredients, we can now say that the universe has just two: energy and space. So where did all this energy and space come from? The answer was found after decades of work by scientists: space and energy were spontaneously invented in an event we now call the Big Bang.

While the Austrian crown was dissolving like jelly in your fingers, everyone wanted Swiss francs and American dollars, and large numbers of foreigners exploited the economic situation to feed on the twitching corpse of the old Austrian currency. Austria was ‘discovered’, and became disastrously popular with foreign visitors in a parody of the society season. All the hotels in Vienna were crammed full with these vultures; they would buy anything, from toothbrushes to country estates; they cleared out private collections of antiquities and the antique dealers’ shops before the owners realised how badly they had been robbed and cheated in their time of need. Hotel receptionists from Switzerland and Dutch shorthand typists stayed in the princely apartments of the Ringstrasse hotels. Incredible as it may seem, I can vouch for it that for a long time the famous, de luxe Hotel de l’Europe in Salzburg was entirely booked by unemployed members of the English proletariat, who could live here more cheaply than in their slums at home, thanks to the generous unemployment benefit they received. Anything that was not nailed down disappeared. Word gradually spread of the cheap living and low prices in Austria. Greedy visitors came from further and further afield, from Sweden, from France, and you heard more Italian, French, Turkish and Romanian than German spoken in the streets of the city centre of Vienna.

Four thousand miles away in France, the old boys from the Haute-Loire Resistance wrote to each other to share the devastating news. They had enjoyed nearly forty years of freedom since spending a mere couple of months in Virginia’s presence in 1944. But the warrior they called La Madone had shown them hope, comradeship, courage, and the way to be the best version of themselves, and they had never forgotten. In the midst of hardship and fear, she had shared with them a fleeting but glorious state of happiness and the most vivid moment of their lives. The last of those famous Diane Irregulars—the ever-boyish Gabriel Eyraud, her chouchou—passed away in 2017 while I was researching Virginia’s story. Until the end of his days, he and the others who had known Virginia on the plateau liked to pause now and then to think of the woman in khaki who never, ever gave up on freedom. When they talked with awe and affection of her incredible exploits, they smiled and looked up at the wide, open skies with “les étoiles dans les yeux.

Wiser and more capable men than I shall ever be have put their findings before you, findings so rich and so full of anger, serenity, murder, healing, truth, and love that it seems incredible the world were not destroyed and fulfilled in the instant, but you are too much for them: the weak in courage are strong in cunning; and one by one, you have absorbed and have captured and dishonored, and have distilled of your deliverers the most ruinous of all your poisons; people hear Beethoven in concert halls, or over a bridge game, or to relax; Cézannes are hung on walls, reproduced, in natural wood frames; van Gogh is the man who cut off his ear and whose yellows became recently popular in window decoration; Swift loved individuals but hated the human race; Kafka is a fad; Blake is in the Modern Library; Freud is a Modern Library Giant; Dovschenko’s Frontier is disliked by those who demand that it fit the Eisenstein esthetic; nobody reads Joyce any more; Céline is a madman who has incurred the hearty dislike of Alfred Kazin, reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune book section, and is, moreover, a fascist; I hope I need not mention Jesus Christ of whom you have managed to make a dirty gentile. However

Even after the funeral, the trips to Kensington Palace, and the consolation of friends, I still couldn’t accept Diana’s death. Then, Mr. Jeffrey Ling, the British consul general in New York, invited me to speak at the memorial service for Diana in Central Park the weekend after the funeral. I was grateful for the chance to speak about Diana in my own words and at my own pace. Pat and I rewrote my three-minute speech over and over. I practiced it several times the night before. On Sunday afternoon I visited backstage with Mr. Ling and Mayor Giuliani before the service began. The mayor was engaging and down to earth. Mr. Ling was gracious and reassuring, a true gentleman. We watched the North Meadow fill up with more than ten thousand people and were grateful to see such a big turnout on a hot, sunny day. As I sat on the stage, I grew more nervous by the minute. I delivered my heartfelt speech, trembling with emotion as I spoke about “the Diana we knew.” As I looked out at the crowded meadow, I pondered the incredible path I’d traveled, all because I’d needed a part-time nanny in London seventeen years ago. I’d enjoyed a remarkable friendship, attended the most famous ceremonies of my lifetime, dined and danced in palaces, visited with royalty--extraordinary experiences for me and my family. Now, tragically, it was all ending here, as I spoke from my heart in memory and praise of my friend Diana.

In June 1981, a strike shuttered the major leagues for fifty days, the first time in baseball history that players walked out during the season. Determined to make his people earn their keep, George Steinbrenner ordered his major-league coaches into the minors to scout and help mentor the organization’s prospects. Berra drew Nashville, where Merrill was the manager. Merrill was a former minor-league catcher with a degree in physical education from the University of Maine. He began working for the Yankees in 1978 at West Haven, Connecticut, in the Eastern League and moved south when the Yankees took control of the Southern League’s Nashville team in 1980. Suddenly, in mid-1981, the former catcher who had never made it out of Double-A ball had the most famous and decorated Yankees backstop asking him, “What do you want me to do?” Wait a minute, Merrill thought. Yogi Berra is asking me to supervise him? “Do whatever you want,” Merrill said. “No,” Berra said. “Give me something specific.” And that was when Merrill began to understand the existential splendor of Yogi Berra, whom he would come to call Lawrence or Sir Lawrence in comic tribute to his utter lack of pretense and sense of importance. “He rode buses with us all night,” Merrill said. “You think he had to do that? He was incredible.” One day Merrill told him, “Why don’t you hit some rollers to that lefty kid over there at first base?” Berra did as he was told and later remarked to Merrill, “That kid looks pretty good with the glove.” Berra knew a prospect when he saw one. It was Don Mattingly, who at the time was considered expendable by a chronically shortsighted organization always on the prowl for immediate assistance at the major-league level.

In fact, the same basic ingredients can easily be found in numerous start-up clusters in the United States and around the world: Austin, Boston, New York, Seattle, Shanghai, Bangalore, Istanbul, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, and Dubai. To discover the secret to Silicon Valley’s success, you need to look beyond the standard origin story. When people think of Silicon Valley, the first things that spring to mind—after the HBO television show, of course—are the names of famous start-ups and their equally glamorized founders: Apple, Google, Facebook; Jobs/ Wozniak, Page/ Brin, Zuckerberg. The success narrative of these hallowed names has become so universally familiar that people from countries around the world can tell it just as well as Sand Hill Road venture capitalists. It goes something like this: A brilliant entrepreneur discovers an incredible opportunity. After dropping out of college, he or she gathers a small team who are happy to work for equity, sets up shop in a humble garage, plays foosball, raises money from sage venture capitalists, and proceeds to change the world—after which, of course, the founders and early employees live happily ever after, using the wealth they’ve amassed to fund both a new generation of entrepreneurs and a set of eponymous buildings for Stanford University’s Computer Science Department. It’s an exciting and inspiring story. We get the appeal. There’s only one problem. It’s incomplete and deceptive in several important ways. First, while “Silicon Valley” and “start-ups” are used almost synonymously these days, only a tiny fraction of the world’s start-ups actually originate in Silicon Valley, and this fraction has been getting smaller as start-up knowledge spreads around the globe. Thanks to the Internet, entrepreneurs everywhere have access to the same information. Moreover, as other markets have matured, smart founders from around the globe are electing to build companies in start-up hubs in their home countries rather than immigrating to Silicon Valley.

I miss Diana more than I can express. The world seems a colder place without her luminous presence. To had had Diana’s friendship, to have known her personally, has been a gift beyond comparison. She brought joy and pride and a touch of glamour to my life for years. I loved and admired her without reservation. When Patrick recognized her picture on magazine covers, I thought how incredible it was that we actually knew the beautiful, famous Diana. Best of all, we knew she was even lovelier inside. I read her letters, feeling deeply touched that she continued to care for us. Seeing her in person--warm, unpretentious, and radiant--was a thrill that lasted a long, long time. It truly was, “like being brushed by angels’ wings,” as my friend at the funeral had said. Whoever would have thought when I called for a nanny so many years ago, that magic would enter my life. My family and I watched her dazzling progress from a shy teenager to a multi-faceted and charismatic woman. She fulfilled her many roles so beautifully. Yet to me, Diana was a beloved friend, not the world-famous Princess of Wales. Behind the glamour, I saw the qualities I’d always admired in her--kindness, integrity, and grace in all she did. Above all, Diana was born to be a mother. Showing affection was as natural to her as breathing. I saw her tender care for my young son. I know she was an utterly devoted mother to her own boys, giving them unconditional love and deriving her greatest joy in life from them. I’ve wished so often that her life had been a fairytale, that Diana had been spared the pain and loneliness she suffered. But without the despair, she might not have developed the strength and humanity that reached out to people everywhere. Diana instinctively looked beyond her own problems to ease the pain and distress of others. She touched so many people in her short lifetime. I never thought it would end this way--that she would die so young. I will always remember, as the last hymn faded into silence at her funeral, the solemn tread of the soldiers’ boots--so haunting, so final--as they carried her casket through the Abbey. I couldn’t bear that she was leaving forever. For months now, I’ve searched for some solace in this tragedy. I hope that Diana’s untimely death and the worldwide mourning for her have silenced forever those who belittled her values and doubted her appeal. She rests peacefully now beyond reproach--young and beautiful. Diana, you were greater than we realized. We will never, never forget you.

He called back with an incredible report: there were people lined up around the store already. Wow, I thought. Wow! Wow didn’t begin to cover it. People lined up on two floors of the store to talk to Chris and get their books signed, hours before he was even scheduled to arrive. Chris was overwhelmed when he got there, and so was I. The week before, he’d been just another guy walking down the street. Now, all of a sudden he was famous. Except he was still the same Chris Kyle, humble and a bit abashed, ready to shake hands and pose for a picture, and always, at heart, a good ol’ boy. “I’m so nervous,” confided one of the people on the line as he approached Chris. “I’ve been waiting for three hours just to see you.” “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Chris. “Waitin’ all that time and come to find out there’s just another redneck up here.” The man laughed, and so did Chris. It was something he’d repeat, in different variations, countless times that night and over the coming weeks. We stayed for three or four hours that first night, far beyond what had been advertised, with Chris signing each book, shaking each hand, and genuinely grateful for each person who came. For their part, they were anxious not just to meet him but to thank him for his service to our country-and by extension, the service of every military member whom they couldn’t personally thank. From the moment the book was published, Chris became the son, the brother, the nephew, the cousin, the kid down the street whom they couldn’t personally thank. In a way, his outstanding military record was beside the point-he was a living, breathing patriot who had done his duty and come home safe to his wife and kids. Thanking him was people’s way of thanking everyone in uniform. And, of course, the book was an interesting read. It quickly became a commercial success beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, including the publisher’s. The hardcover debuted at number two on the New York Times bestseller list, then rose to number one and stayed there for more than two months. It’s remained a fixture on the bestseller lists ever since, and has been translated into twenty-four languages worldwide. It was a good read, and it had a profound effect on a lot of people. A lot of the people who bought it weren’t big book readers, but they ended up engrossed. A friend of ours told us that he’d started reading the book one night while he was taking a bath with his wife. She left, went to bed, and fell asleep. She woke up at three or four and went into the bathroom. Her husband was still there, in the cold water, reading. The funny thing is, Chris still could not have cared less about all the sales. He’d done his assignment, turned it in, and got his grade. Done deal.

Should I be scared?” “I think you should get ready for quite an inquiry, but they’re necessary questions that must be answered if I want to ask you out on a second date.” “What if I don’t want to go on a second date?” “Hmm.” He taps his chin with his fork, ready to dig in the minute the plate arrives at our table. “That’s a good point. All right. If the question arose, would you go on a second date with me?” “Well, now I feel pressured to say yes just so I can hear the inquiry.” “You’re going to have to deal with the pressure, sweet cheeks.” “Fine. Hypothetically, if you were to ask me out on a second date, I would hypothetically, possibly say yes.” “Great.” He bops his own nose with his fork and then sets it down on the table. “Here goes.” He looks serious; both his hands rest palm down on the table and his shoulders stiffen. Looking me dead in the eyes, he asks, “Bobbies and Rebels are in the World Series, what shirt do you wear?” “Bobbies obviously.” He blinks. Sits back. “What?” “Bobbies for life.” “But I’m on the Rebels.” “Yes, but are we dating, are we married? Are we just fooling around? There’s going to have to be a huge commitment on my part in order to put a Rebels shirt on. Sorry.” “We’re dating.” “Eh.” I wave my hand. “Fine. We’re living together.” “Hmm, I don’t know.” I twist a strand of hair in my finger. “Christ, we’re married.” “Ugh.” I wince. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think it will ever happen.” “Not even if we’re married, for fuck’s sake?” he asks, dumbfounded. It’s endearing, especially since he’s pushing his hand through his hair in distress, tousling it. “Do we have kids?” I ask. “Six.” “Six?” Now it’s time for my eyes to pop out of their sockets. “Do you really think I want to birth six children?” “Hell, no.” He shakes his head. “We adopted six kids from all around the world. We’re going to have the most diverse and loving family you’ll ever see.” Adopting six kids, now that’s incredibly sweet. Or mad? No, it’s sweet. In fact, it’s extremely rare to meet a man who not only knows he wants to adopt kids, but is willing to look outside of the US, knowing how much he could offer that child. Good God, this man is a unicorn. “We have the means for it, after all,” he says, continuing. “You’re taking over the city of Chicago, and I’ll be raining home runs on every opposing team. We would be the power couple, the new king and queen of the city. Excuse me, Oprah and Steadman, a new, hip couple is in town. People would wear our faces on their shirts like the royals in England. We’re the next Kate and William, the next Meghan and Harry. People will scream our name and then faint, only for us to give them mouth-to-mouth because even though we’re super famous, we are also humanitarians.” “Wow.” I sit back in my chair. “That’s quite the picture you paint.” I know what my mom will say about him already. Don’t lose him, Dorothy. He’s gold. Gorgeous and selfless. “So . . . with all that said, our six children at your side, would you wear a Rebels shirt?” I take some time to think about it, mulling over the idea of switching to black and red as my team colors. Could I do it? With the way Jason is smiling at me, hope in his eyes, how could I ever deny him that joy—and I say that as if we’ve been married for ten years. “I would wear halfsies. Half Bobbies, half Rebels, and that’s the best I can do.” He lifts his finger to the sky. “I’ll take it.

tablespoons, if you’d care to indulge). Will the body composition outcomes be the same? Of course not. Rule #2: The hormonal responses to carbohydrates (CHO), protein, and fat are different. There is no shortage of clinical studies to prove that beef calories7 do not equal bourbon calories. One such study, conducted by Kekwick and Pawan, compared three groups put on calorically equal (isocaloric) semistarvation diets of 90% fat, 90% protein, or 90% carbohydrate. Though ensuring compliance was a challenge, the outcomes were clearly not at all the same: 1,000 cals. at 90% fat = weight loss of 0.9 lbs. per day 1,000 cals. at 90% protein = weight loss of 0.6 lbs. per day 1,000 cals. at 90% carbohydrate = weight gain of 0.24 lbs. per day Different sources of calories = different results. Things that affect calorie allocation—and that can be modified for fat-loss and muscle gain—include digestion, the ratio of protein-to-carbohydrates-to-fat, and timing. We’ll address all three. Marilyn Monroe building her world-famous sex appeal. More than 50% of the examples in this book are of women. Marketers have conditioned women to believe that they need specific programs and diets “for women.” This is an example of capitalism at its worst: creating false need and confusion. Does this mean I’m going to recommend that a woman do exactly the same thing as a 250-pound meathead who wants 20-inch arms? Of course not. The two have different goals. But 99% of the time both genders want exactly the same thing: less fat and a bit more muscle in the right places. Guess what? In these

I will always be very thankful for my opponents. First, because, they make me famous and second, they also make me the vigilant without any penny. It is an incredible free service.

Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn’t about money or possessions or even our hopes. It’s about our pride. He asks if we’ll give up that thing we’re so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He’s asking us, “Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?” The cool thing about taking Jesus up on His offer is that whatever controls you doesn’t anymore. People who used to be obsessed about becoming famous no longer care whether anybody knows their name. People who used to want power are willing to serve. People who used to chase money freely give it away. People who used to beg others for acceptance are now strong enough to give love. When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that’s a pretty good trade.

Wealthy people so often find that the summit of their mountains - the success that they sought - isn’t enough. And they are right. It isn’t enough to satisfy our deep hunger for meaning and purpose. (And we will talk about that later on.) In essence, you have got to build your house on good foundations - on rock, not sand - and money as a goal in itself will never satisfy you. So choose wisely. And be careful what you wish for. When you start putting the correct steps into place, good things will start to happen. So you have got to be prepared for the success when it comes. Money can make the path more comfortable, but it will never remove the potholes. The billionaire John Paul Getty famously said: ‘I would give everything I own for one happy marriage.’ That is pretty telling. Money doesn’t solve all your ills. In fact, money, like success, tends, instead, to magnify your life - and if you are living with the wrong values, money will make things much worse. Conversely, if you get it right, money can be an incredible blessing. So always keep referring back to page 15 at the start of this book. Look at your dream. Never lose sight of it, because if you attain it, you will be rich beyond measure…and I’m not talking dollars and cents.

My mother isn’t famous. She doesn’t have an incredible career. She isn’t even married to the love of her life. But there’s one thing she’s always been… Right.

Jesus didn't ask everybody to give up all their stuff. This is something He asked of the rich young ruler because He wanted to teach the young man that he wasn't as holy as he thought he was. He wanted to teach the young man that he still needed God's help, to look at what he had and decide whether he would rather have that, or trade up and have what Jesus is offering: a life with Him. Actually, the real game of Bigger and Better that Jesus is playing with us usually isn't about money or possessions or even our hopes. It's about our pride. He asks if we'll give up that thing that we're so proud of, that thing we believe causes us to matter in the eyes of the world, and give it up to follow Him. He's asking us, 'Will you take what you think defines you, leave it behind, and let Me define who you are instead?' The cool thing about taking Jesus up on His offer is that whatever controls you doesn't anymore. People who used to be obsessed about becoming famous no longer care whether anybody knows their name. People who used to want power are willing to serve. People who used to chase money freely give it away. People who used to beg others for acceptance are now strong enough to give love. When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that's a pretty good trade.

The Omo peoples of Ethiopia are a huge favorite on social media for their astounding body art and rituals, such as the famous clay lip-plates of Mursi women. But most people looking at those pictures and videos have no clue about this incredible struggle going on behind the scenes.

We don’t have silverware. Instead, we have something a lot better. We have a story to tell. The incredible story of how a community-based club from Hamburg becomes one of the most famous football teams in Europe. Without big trophies. Without big money.

The robot sat for a moment, considering. "I don't want to separate myself from other robots any more than I already have," it said. "I am having the most incredible experience out here. I've seen species of trees that don't live in my part of the world. I've been on a boat. I've played with domesticated cats. I have a satchel!" It gestured at the bag hanging at its side for emphasis. "A satchel for my belongings! I am doing things no robot has ever done, and while that's marvelous, I ... I don't want to become removed from tham. The aggregate differences I have are only going to increase as we continue along, Sibling Dex. It's very nice to be famous, but I don't know how I feel about it yet, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's a trait I'll have among my own kind as well. So, you see, it's enough that I'm experientialy different; I don't want to be physically different too." It paused. "Does that make sense?

What did surprise me, though, was how—in spite of his outward bravado—Mark was incredibly insecure and dependent on Susan’s approval. Even though Mark had a tendency to speak with great swagger and forced gravitas, he would constantly look over to Susan to gauge her reaction to what he’d just said.

As Abba Eban famously said, ‘The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

One other thing about the Trump team was just how incredibly wealthy it was. It was flush with billionaires, multi-millionaires – oh, and a smattering of generals. It was the richest group ever assembled. The joke was you either needed to have bread or braid to get into a Trump cabinet. Presumably the military men were the poorest of those who sat round the famous table, but it should be recorded that none of them was caught up in any of these scandals.

1. Sri Lanka’s Cultural and Historical Richness "Sri Lanka is a place where history lives in harmony with the present. From ancient temples to colonial fortresses, every corner of this island tells a story." Sri Lanka’s history stretches over 2,500 years, featuring incredible landmarks like the Sigiriya Rock Fortress and Anuradhapura's ancient ruins. The country is also home to the famous Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, an important religious site for Buddhists around the world. Each historic site tells a different story, making Sri Lanka a treasure trove of cultural and spiritual experiences. Find out more about planning a visit here. ________________________________________ 2. Nature’s Bounty and Biodiversity "In Sri Lanka, nature isn't merely observed; it's experienced with all the senses — from the scent of spice plantations to the sight of vibrant tea terraces and the sound of waves on pristine beaches." Sri Lanka’s national parks, like Yala and Udawalawe, are among the best places to see elephants, leopards, and a diverse range of bird species. The island’s ecosystems, from rainforests to coastal mangroves, create an incredible array of landscapes for nature lovers to explore. For those planning to visit these natural wonders, start your journey with a visa application. ________________________________________ 3. Sri Lankan Hospitality and Warmth "The true beauty of Sri Lanka is found in its people — hospitable, welcoming, and ready to share a smile or story over a cup of tea." The warmth of Sri Lankans is a common highlight for visitors, whether encountered in bustling cities or quiet villages. Tourists are frequently invited to join meals or participate in local festivities, making Sri Lanka a welcoming destination for international travelers. To experience this hospitality firsthand, ensure you have the right travel documents, accessible here. ________________________________________ 4. Beaches and Scenic Coastal Areas "Sri Lanka’s coastline is a place where sun meets sand, and every wave brings with it a sense of peace." With over 1,300 kilometers of beautiful coastline, Sri Lanka offers something for everyone. The south coast is famous for relaxing beaches like Unawatuna and Mirissa, while the east coast’s Arugam Bay draws surfing enthusiasts from around the globe. To enjoy these beaches, start by obtaining a Sri Lanka visa. ________________________________________ 5. Tea Plantations and the Hill Country "The heart of Sri Lanka beats in the hill country, where misty mountains and lush tea plantations stretch as far as the eye can see." The central highlands of Sri Lanka, with towns like Ella and Nuwara Eliya, are dotted with tea plantations that produce some of the world’s finest teas. Visiting a tea plantation offers a chance to see tea processing and sample fresh brews, with the cool climate adding to the serene experience. Secure your entry to the hill country with a visa application. ________________________________________ 6. Sri Lankan Cuisine: A Feast for the Senses "In Sri Lanka, food is more than sustenance — it’s an art form, a burst of flavors that range from spicy curries to sweet desserts." Sri Lankan cuisine is a rich blend of spices and textures. Popular dishes like rice and curry, hoppers, and kottu roti offer a true taste of the island. Food tours and local markets provide immersive culinary experiences, allowing visitors to discover the flavors of Sri Lanka. For a trip centered on food and culture, start your journey here.

Sri Lanka’s Cultural and Historical Richness "Sri Lanka is a place where history lives in harmony with the present. From ancient temples to colonial fortresses, every corner of this island tells a story." Sri Lanka’s history stretches over 2,500 years, featuring incredible landmarks like the Sigiriya Rock Fortress and Anuradhapura's ancient ruins. The country is also home to the famous Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, an important religious site for Buddhists around the world. Each historic site tells a different story, making Sri Lanka a treasure trove of cultural and spiritual experiences. Find out more about planning a visit govt.sl

You’ve probably heard the stories about lottery winners losing it all. They’re not urban legends; they really happen. The depths people fall to after big lottery winnings are heartbreaking and mindboggling. And it isn’t only lottery winners. You’ve also heard the stories about famous movie stars, recording stars, or star athletes who make incredible fortunes, literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and somehow manage to wind up broke and in debt. And when you heard those stories, you probably thought the same thing I did: “Man, I don’t know how they pulled that off, but if I made that kind of money I sure wouldn’t squander it all like that!” But let me ask you a tough question: are you sure about that? Speaking as one who’s made it to the top and then seen it all evaporate, all I can say is, you might be surprised. There’s a reason those lottery winners lose it all again, a reason those shining stars plummet to those dark places: they may have had the big breaks, but they didn’t grasp the slight edge. Their winnings changed their bank account balance—but it didn’t change their philosophy. The purpose of this book is to show you the slight edge philosophy, show you how it works, give you plenty of examples, and show you exactly how to make it a core part of how you see the world and how you live your life every day. Throughout this book, if you look carefully you’ll find dozens of statements that embody this philosophy, statements like “Do the thing, and you shall have the power.” Here are a few more examples that you’ll come across in the following pages: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.

Geert Hofstede, a world-renowned cultural psychologist, concluded in a very famous study about cultural differences that America had the highest level of individualism in the world. That is pretty incredible. We are so programmed to think about “I” that we probably don’t even realize it.

The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall. Mist

Daniel Galvin Sr., OBE Daniel Galvin Sr., OBE, is one of Britain’s biggest names in hairdressing. His specialization in hair coloring has revolutionized the field over the past four decades, and he continues to be in high demand by the rich and famous worldwide. For his contributions to the industry, he was honored with an OBE in 2006. I had the pleasure of knowing Diana and doing her hair color for ten years. She was truly a breath of fresh air each time she came into the salon. She was always happy, always full of life, and full of grace. We have a private room available in our salon, but Diana never requested to use it. She was happy to sit next to other clients and often chatted away merrily with them and staff members. In our business, confidentiality is so important. Anything she discussed with me will never go any further. She used to tell me off for my suntan--telling me it wasn’t good for me and to be careful. Her last words to me before that tragic weekend in France were “Daniel, I don’t believe it, but for the first time I’m browner than you!” She was incredibly down-to-earth, unaffected, and perfectly charming on all occasions. She was a tremendous asset to the monarchy and to this country. There was an amazing aura that glowed around her--she was as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. It was always an honor to be of service to her.

From time to time, Musk will send out an e-mail to the entire company to enforce a new policy or let them know about something that’s bothering him. One of the more famous e-mails arrived in May 2010 with the subject line: Acronyms Seriously Suck: There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees. That needs to stop immediately or I will take drastic action—I have given enough warnings over the years. Unless an acronym is approved by me, it should not enter the SpaceX glossary. If there is an existing acronym that cannot reasonably be justified, it should be eliminated, as I have requested in the past. For example, there should be no “HTS” [horizontal test stand] or “VTS” [vertical test stand] designations for test stands. Those are particularly dumb, as they contain unnecessary words. A “stand” at our test site is obviously a *test* stand. VTS-3 is four syllables compared with “Tripod,” which is two, so the bloody acronym version actually takes longer to say than the name! The key test for an acronym is to ask whether it helps or hurts communication. An acronym that most engineers outside of SpaceX already know, such as GUI, is fine to use. It is also ok to make up a few acronyms/contractions every now and again, assuming I have approved them, eg MVac and M9 instead of Merlin 1C-Vacuum or Merlin 1C-Sea Level, but those need to be kept to a minimum. This

Chris Tarrent, OBE British radio broadcaster and television presenter Chris Tarrant is perhaps best known for his role as host on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? A hugely successful entertainment personality, Chris Tarrant is also active in many charitable causes, including homelessness and disadvantaged children. He was honored with an OBE in 2004 for his extensive work in these areas. The first time I met her I was terribly nervous. I was working on the breakfast show at Capital Radio in London in those days, and I’d been seated next to her at a charity lunch. She’d become the patron of Capital’s charity for needy children in London, and her appearance at our big lunch of the year made it a guaranteed sellout. She was already probably the most famous person in the world, and I was terrified about what on earth I was going to say to her. I needn’t have worried--she immediately put me at ease with an incredibly rude joke about Kermit the Frog. Because she was our patron, we saw a lot of her over the next few years. She was great fun, and brilliant with the kids. She used to listen to my show in the mornings while she was swimming or in the gym, and she’d often say things like “Who on earth was that loopy woman that you had on the phone this morning?” There was a restaurant in Kensington that had a series of alcoves where she’d often go to hide, perhaps with just a detective for company. I remember chatting to her one lunchtime while I was waiting for my boss to join me at my table, and she disappeared round the corner. “Hello, Richard,” I said, when he turned up. “I’ve just been chatting with Lady Di.” “Yes, of course you have,” said Richard. “And there goes a flying pig!” When she reappeared a few moments later and just said, “Good-bye,” on her way out, this big, tough, hard-nosed media executive was absolutely incapable of speech.

Richard Kay Richard Kay became friends with Diana, Princess of Wales, through his job as royal correspondent for London’s Daily Mail. After her separation in 1992, he used his knowledge to give a penetrating and unique insight into Diana’s troubled life, and they remained friends until the end. Richard is now diary editor or the Daily Mail and lives in London with his wife and three children. Over the years, I saw her at her happiest and in her darkest moments. There were moments of confusion and despair when I believed Diana was being driven by the incredible pressures made on her almost to the point of destruction. She talked of being strengthened by events, and anyone could see how the bride of twenty had grown into a mature woman, but I never found her strong. She was as unsure of herself at her death as when I first talked to her on that airplane, and she wanted reassurance about the role she was creating for herself. In private, she was a completely different person form the manicured clotheshorse that the public’s insatiable demand for icons had created. She was natural and witty and did a wonderful impression of the Queen. This was the person, she told me, that she would have been all the time if she hadn’t married into the world’s most famous family. What she hated most of all was being called “manipulative” and privately railed against those who used the word to describe her. “They don’t even know me,” she would say bitterly, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her apartment in Kensington Palace and pouring tea from a china pot. It was this blindness, as she saw it, to what she really was that led her seriously to consider living in another country where she hoped she would be understood. The idea first emerged in her mind about three years before her death. “I’ve got to find a place where I can have peace of mind,” she said to me. She considered France, because I was near enough to stay in close touch with William and Harry. She thought of America because she--naively, it must be said--saw it as a country so brimming over with glittery people and celebrities that she would be able to “disappear.” She also thought of South Africa, where her brother, Charles, made a home, and even Australia, because it was the farthest place she could think of from the seat of her unhappiness. But that would have separated her form her sons. Everyone said she would go anywhere, do anything, to have her picture taken, but in my view the truth was completely different. A good day for her was one where her picture was not taken and the paparazzi photographers did not pursue her and clamber over her car. “Why are they so obsessed with me?” she would ask me. I would try to explain, but I never felt she fully understood. Millions of women dreamed of changing places with her, but the Princess that I knew yearned for the ordinary humdrum routine of their lives. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” she would say. On Saturday, just before she was joined by Dodi Al Fayed for their last fateful dinner at the Ritz in Pairs, she told me how fed up she was being compared with Camilla. “It’s all so meaningless,” she said. She didn’t say--she never said--whether she thought Charles and Camilla should marry. Then, knowing that as a journalist I often work at weekends, she said to me, “Unplug your phone and get a good night’s sleep.

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

In many respects, the skill set of an artist is similar to that of a programmer. Michelangelo was the archetypal renaissance man: a painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Perhaps he would have made an incredible programmer. When asked about how he created one of his most famous works, the statue of David, he said: I looked into the stone and saw him there, and just chipped away everything else. Is that what you do? Do you reduce and remove the complexities of the problem space, chipping them all away until you reach the beautiful code you were aiming for?

This is a fascinating glamour of the spiritual path. It must be understood that GOD created everyone with a certain unique puzzle piece in the Divine Plan. It is only when all people fulfill their puzzle piece that the Divine Plan can work out. What the negative ego will do, however, is tell a person that it wants them to live out someone else’s puzzle piece. The negative ego feels that their puzzle piece is not glamorous enough. The negative ego may tell you to write a book, when it is not really your dharma to do so. The negative ego may want you to be famous and a player on the world stage, when that is not your puzzle piece. The negative ego may tell you that it wants you to be a channel or spiritual lecturer on a large scale, however, that is not your puzzle piece. I have seen many lightworkers and spiritual leaders get incredibly fouled up and fragmented by allowing this glamour of the negative ego to seduce them. True inner peace and fulfillment can only be found by living out the puzzle piece that is your true destiny, as GOD would have it be. This is also the puzzle piece that will bring you the greatest amount of success and the least amount of stress!

practice power posing. Popularized by Amy Cuddy in her famous TED Talk, power posing is a simple 1-2 minute exercise that has incredible results on your confidence, happiness, and even cognitive functioning. I highly recommend that you check out her TED Talk, but if you don’t have time here is a quick primer on how to power pose. Before an event that you’re feeling nervous about, simply go somewhere quiet (like a bathroom stall) then strike and hold a power pose. A power pose is any standing position that represents a powerful stance, a classic example is the superhero pose – hands on your hips, chest out, head help high and a feeling of dominance. This may sound ridiculous, but the research behind it is outstanding. Try it just once, it only takes 1-2 minutes, and you will feel the difference instantly.   The physical space you occupy also plays a role in the impression you signal to people. You’re going to want to pay particular attention to personal space and touching. In a business setting, most people are fine with a handshake and not much more than that.

The reactions of our personal friends may reflect to a large degree Diana’s worldwide and lasting appeal. We received letters and phone calls from friends living, literally, all over the world--Malaysia, Sumatra, Brazil, Australia, Europe, and throughout America--many of whom had not known of our connection with Diana until they saw me on television. The fact that so many of our far-flung and diverse friends were watching the television coverage of Diana’s death and funeral spoke volumes in itself. They were shocked and saddened by Diana’s death but acknowledged, “It must be so much worse for you. You knew her.” One comment I heard repeated by men and women friends alike, was, “I didn’t really follow her that closely, so I was surprised at how upset I was by her death.” Again, that undeniable and universal appeal. Women friends, mothers my own age, referred to her so often as “that poor child.” Incredible. Diana was beautiful, rich, the most famous woman of her era, yet what spoke to all of us was her vulnerability.

seem banal, but it was an incredibly powerful experience for many of the UAW employees. The TPS makes building quality into products the highest priority, so a problem must be fixed as soon as possible after it’s discovered, and the system must then be improved to try and prevent that from happening again. Workers and managers cooperate to make this possible. The moment a worker discovers a problem, he or she can summon the manager by pulling on a cord (the famous andon cord). The manager will then come and help to try and resolve the problem. If the problem cannot be resolved within the time available, the worker can stop the production line until the problem is fixed. The team will later experiment with, and implement, ideas to prevent the problem from occurring again.

Steve Irwin, the famous “crocodile hunter,” was killed by a stingray in 2006. He accidentally got too near one and, feeling threatened, it turned and lashed at it him with its tail, the barb piercing his heart.

Meeting incredible people with beautiful souls is one of life’s greatest gifts. The opportunity to leave a lasting imprint on someone’s life, to uplift and inspire them, brings a deep sense of fulfillment. It’s in those genuine, loving connections that we make a positive difference, creating a ripple effect that carries forward, touching lives in the most meaningful ways.

Apple is famous for not having product managers who throw product specs over the wall. Developers are given problems and can solve them however they think is best—the essence of the Ask Your Developer methodology. The result of that trust in developers is that Apple produces beautiful software, which in turn has led to its incredible success in the market.

Edison epitomized the new entrepreneur at the heart of a brand-new phase in the development of market societies: an inventor who innovated in order to create monopoly power for himself – not so much for the riches that it provided, but for its own sake; for the sheer glory and the sheer power of it all. He was an entrepreneur who inspired, in equal measure, incredible loyalty from his overworked staff and loathing from his adversaries. He was a friend of Henry Ford, who also famously played a key role in bringing machinery into the lives of ordinary people while, at the same time, turning workers into the nearest a person can come to a machine.

The Secret on How to Write Comedy In a fashionable context, comedy is a subjective element. Making humans funny is an incredibly difficult job and developing a chunk of comedy is even more difficult. If you are an aspiring comedy writer, there is loads to be found out and Filipino concert in Las Vegas( ticklemecomedy.com) in case you lack that writing skills, there's no way you may produce an excellent comedy piece. So how do you write stuff that is actually funny and will make everyone roll round in laughter? Are there definitely techniques on how to write comedy or steps with a view to decorate your comedic writing? Maybe these are the questions rambling around your thoughts now. Well, happily, there are some easy strategies on for writing humorous cloth. Tips on How to Write Comedy Like all different forms of writing, comedy writing is no one of a kind. It additionally takes exercise to get it right. Some comedic writers might also master the artwork of comedy writing with only a little exercise while a few conflict lots before getting Filipino show in Las Vegas to know it. With that being said, every person who wants to realize the secret to writing high-quality comedy need to consider some easy pointers. Whether you come to be being funny or no longer, the most essential element is which you have discovered how to excellent write comedic cloth and are capable of produce quality comedy pieces. To assist you emerge as a very good comedic writer, beneath are some guidelines. • Choose the type of comedy - One tip on how to write comedic portions is to pick out the type of humor you need to exhibit. There are various forms of comedy along with slapstick, parody, dark humor, edgy humor, own family humor, dry observational humor, and plenty of others. You simply need to select one in your comedy piece and paintings on it. Failure to consciousness on one sort of humor will end result on your audience being careworn. • Use warfare - Another golden rule is to discover the battle in anything and play on the boundaries. Professional comedic writers say that anger is frequently the middle of all comedy. But this doesn't suggest however that you need to be a raging psycho simply so one can realize the way to write comedy. This virtually approach that you got to have the ability to address a conflict in a humorous manner. • Carefully choose your words - Successful comedic playwrights realize nicely the way to maximize the comedic impact. Obviously, they are experts in finding the funniest in everything. Choose phrases that sound funny and discover ways to tweak your paintings to give you actual funny piece. • Know how and whilst to magnify - In comedy, "extra" is generally better. Think approximately conditions that might be funnier if things have been exaggerated a chunk. Something mildly humorous can quickly Las Vegas Filipino shows become hilarious with a little bit of embellishment. • Timing - In comedy, timing is the whole thing. It is a totally critical component in writing comedy. You want to inject the proper joke inside the proper location and in the right time. This is in which your punch traces ought to appear. This also manner understanding whilst to end. But take word that timing depends significantly at the sort of comedy you're pursuing. Practice makes best After being given these few hints on how to write comedy, you need to have a terrific begin composing fine, comedic work. But as the famous adage says "Practice makes best" so preserve to exercise and work at your stuff. You don't always want to be intrinsically humorous to study comedic writing but it'll help.

If you picked mostly Cs: JOSHUA is your Bad Boyz Best Friend Forever!!! He is incredibly loyal and selfless and will go to the ends of the earth to ensure that he’s the BFF who has your back for LIFE! Joshua is super intelligent and ambitious and can intuitively spot your vulnerabilities to know when you really need his help and when you want a little space to yourself for that needed alone time. Although this BFF tends to be generally quiet and unassuming, you’d be surprised to know how passionate Joshua is about his friendships, social issues, and how he stays true to his beliefs and can bravely stand up for what’s right. He is a natural born leader and can astutely talk about all kinds of unusual topics. (Yeah, we said “astutely.” Your vocabulary will definitely grow with this guy around!) Like you, Joshua enjoys fun adventures and the summer months along with all their cool activities. He can’t wait to spend quality time with you, his new BFF. This dude is charming, crazy handsome, and really talented, and he has a great personality. He can hang out with the rich and famous and still make time for the important things in his life, like being the best Bad Boyz BFF EVER!

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From ‘Kokor Hekkus the Killing Machine’, Chapter IV of The Demon Princes, by Caril Carphen (Elucidarian Press, New Wexford, Aloysius, Vega): If Malagate the Woe can be characterized by the single word ‘grim’ and Howard Alan Treesong by ‘incomprehensible’, then Lens Larque, Viole Falushe and Kokor Hekkus all lay claim to the word ‘fantastic’. Which one exceeds the other two in ‘fantasy’? It is an amusing if profitless speculation. Consider Viole Falushe’s Palace of Love, Lens Larque’s monument, the vast and incredible outrages Kokor Hekkus has visited upon humanity: such extravagances are impossible to comprehend, let alone compare. It is fair to say, however, that Kokor Hekkus has captured the popular imagination with his grotesque and eerie humor. Let us listen to what he has to say in an abstract from the famous telephoned address, The Theory and Practice of Terror, to the students of Cervantes University: “… To produce the maximum effect, one must identify and intensify those basic dreads already existing within the subject. It is a mistake to regard the fear of death as the most extreme fear. I find a dozen other types to be more poignant, such as: The fear of inability to protect a cherished dependent. The fear of disesteem. The fear of noisome contact. The fear of being made afraid. “My goal is to produce a ‘nightmare’ quality of fright, and to maintain it over an appreciable duration. A nightmare is the result of the under-mind exploring its most sensitive areas, and so serves as an index for the operator. Once an apparently sensitive area is located the operator to the best of his ingenuity employs means to emphasize, to dramatize this fear, then augment it by orders of magnitude. If the subject fears heights, the operator takes him to the base of a tall cliff, attaches him to a slender, obviously fragile or frayed cord and slowly raises him up the face of the cliff, not too far and not too close to the face. Scale must be emphasized, together with the tantalizing but infeasible possibility of clinging to the vertical surface. The lifting mechanism should be arranged to falter and jerk. To intensify claustrophobic dread the subject is conveyed into a pit or excavation, inserted head-foremost into a narrow and constricted tunnel which slants downward, and occasionally changes direction by sharp and cramping angles. Whereupon the pit or excavation is filled and subject must proceed ahead, for the most part in a downward direction.

The good news, existentialists say, is that the answer is entirely up to us. Not God or human nature. There is no human nature, only possible natures. Or, as Beauvoir said: “Man’s nature is to have no nature.” This is incredibly empowering—and terrifying. We are, in the famous words of Sartre, “condemned to be free.” We yearn for freedom but also fear it, for if we are truly free we have no one but ourselves to blame for our unhappiness.

You feel these men with their photographs in magazines care deeply about having their photographs in magazines. Derive immense meaning.' 'I do. They must. I would. Else why would I burn like this to feel as they feel?' 'The meaning they feel, you mean. From the fame.' 'Lyle don't they?' ... 'LaMont, perhaps they did at first. The first photograph, the first magazine, the gratified surge, the seeing themselves as others see them, the hagiography of image, perhaps. Perhaps the first time: enjoyment. After that, do you trust me, trust me: they do not feel what you burn for. After the first surge, they care only that their photographs seem awkward or unflattering, or untrue, or that their privacy, this thing you burn to escape, what they call their privacy is being violated. Something changes. After the first photograph has been in a magazine, the famous men do not enjoy their photographs in magazines so much as they fear that their photographs will cease to appear in magazines. They are trapped, just as you are.' 'Is this supposed to be good news? This is awful news.' 'LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?' 'Okey-dokey.' 'The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.' "maybe I ought to be getting back.' 'LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Change: namely Micheal Change's enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMong-Chu. No such animal.' 'Animal?' 'You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.' 'The burning doesn't go away?' 'What fire dies when you feed it?' ... 'Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn't make me feel very much better at all?' "LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage' 'So I'm stuck in the cage from either side Fame or tortured envy of fame. There's no way out.' 'You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage. And I believe I see a drop on your temple, right ... there ....' Etc.

Welcome here too, in this ordinary patch of Connecticut soil, will be the honey-green fleshed Jenny Lind, beloved musk melon of the 19th century, cast aside by commerce just because it is said that her rind wasn’t tough enough to travel… Incredible don’t you think, to have two such different women of the 19th century commemorated in one garden, the wife of Josephine’s gardener, certainly one of history’s faceless and forgotten, and then the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, perhaps the most famous woman of her time, soprano idolized on both sides of the Atlantic, the century’s Madonna. It is said that her beauty and coloratura set millions to swooning. Come July when those melons start to swell I will be thinking of her, and of her bosom, I guess, for why else would someone name a melon after a sex-symbol?

Your writing is going to make you famous. Your mind is incredible. If I could fuck it, I would.

I'd wanted to travel through Asia most of my life, sample all the incredible street food in Thailand and Vietnam, tour Japan's famous convenience stores that sold food as good as their restaurants, slurp cumin lamb hand-torn noodles in China.

3 Reasons Why You Should Visit Galapagos Islands Are you have been planning to spend their vacation in most of the beautiful place in the world. Then the Galapagos Islands is one of the most beautiful places in the world. The famous archipelago in the Pacific Ocean is a demand and desired destination for travelers all around the world. The Galapagos isn’t probably the easiest and cheapest accessible place in the world but still attracts huge numbers of visitors, although there is a limit on how many people can arrive in the Galapagos. These are not budget-friendly travel destination Islands, but there are some ways how to arrange your week in paradise from cruising the living onboard and archipelago to making the day trip from one of the islands. You have most already heard or read all superlatives Galapagos Island can offer many visitors. But if you hesitate if the time and money will be worth it, we’ve put a list of three reasons why we should visit the Galapagos Islands. After reading these reasons, we believe that there won’t be any hesitation. The Galapagos Legend should be on every traveler. Pristine beaches You come to Galapagos Island to see fantastic wildlife but firstly mention the beaches. The stretches of fine white sand are on every island, and although you won’t have that much time to relax and lay down here just because of that there is so much to do, so we are looking at you sea lions only walking on those beaches from one to another end is a great unforgettable experience. Never expect deck chairs, bars, or umbrellas beaches on the Galapagos have nothing familiar with those touristy and crowded places form travel catalogs. Wildlife When we think and talk about the Galapagos Islands, we have a suspicion that the wildlife would be something marvelous and unique. What we never know was that these superlatives would get a new dimension on the Galapagos. All the wildlife animal species from iguanas, birds, tortoises, sea lions crabs to fish are incredible, and nothing can make you on their natural behavior that is dissimilar from the animal's behavior we know from our countries. The Galapagos animals never feel fear human at all, so you can get close to them and take images of a lifetime. Island hikes There are many designed ways on islands of Galapagos that will help you to walk through a unique landscape and will also help you to understand the evaluation process better, evaluation of not only the islands but also of the flora and fauna which live here in unbelievable symbiosis. The hikes are short, so visitors are allowed to walk on the island on their own so that you want a certified guide to show you around. Hikes were one of the best activities we did on the Galapagos as it combined the exploration of almost barren volcanic islands and watching wildlife. Galapagos Legend help you plan the trip you have dreamed about. You can choose onshore activities that cater to your interests, from a wildlife safari to a side trip to the fabulous annual Carnival in Rio, Brazil. As you stay on shore before and after your trip, you have the option of staying at a delightful boutique-style hotel or in a 5-star hotel setting.

Experience has shown that the mass-armies of “democratic” states fight with greater zeal when they are animated by hatred and supported by a hate-crazed populace that fancies it is fighting a holy war. Lies have therefore become military equipment, a kind of mental logistics; but it is the essence of such propaganda that its spuriousness is known only to the persons who manufacture it. The model of such operations is the famous lie-factory managed by Lord Bryce during the First World War, in which a corps of expert technicians forged photographs, while expert liars, including Arnold Toynbee, concocted stories of “atrocities” to inspire the emotionally overwrought British with a fanatic’s hatred of the incredibly bestial Germans and with a noble Christian ardour to kill them.

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.

Iron Man‘s success more than made up for that July’s Incredible Hulk. The result of Marvel’s most difficult production right up to the present, the second Hulk film starred Ed Norton, who proved a terrible fit for Maisel and Feige’s philosophy that studio executives should be the ultimate creative authority. Undeniably one of the best actors of his generation, Norton is also famous in Hollywood for being “difficult” and highly opinionated, refusing to allow artistic choices he disagrees with and seeking to rewrite scripts he doesn’t like, which is what he did on The Incredible Hulk. The clashes intensified in post-production, and the director, Louis Letterier, sided with Norton over the studio. They both learned who has the ultimate power at Marvel, though, when Feige took control of editing. He excised many of the darkest scenes, including a suicide attempt meant to portray how much the scientist Bruce Banner wants to rid himself of the curse of transforming into the Hulk when he’s mad. The resulting movie was still darker and more dramatic than any other Marvel Studios production and not different enough from the Hulk movie of 2003. It grossed only $263 million at the box office and barely broke even, the worst performance for any Marvel Studios film to date. The Incredible Hulk never got a sequel, but the character has returned in Avengers films, played by the easygoing Mark Ruffalo. The usually cheerful Feige stated that the decision to recast the role was “rooted in the need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented cast members.

That’s what a life is—a flip, a trick. It’s our spirit coming to time. We can showboat. We can be famous. We can discover some incredible thing. We can do some awful thing. Often we’re going to belly flop. We’re going to come into the world, dive into time, look around, be completely perplexed, completely fuck up in every single way, and fall back into the nothingness with a weird look of, like, ‘What the fuck happened?’ on our face. That’s the usual way to do it, and there’s nothing wrong with it.

Once, several years ago, I was looking around for something and moved a piece of furniture only to behold behind it a fuzzy little ball of...what? I looked closer, which is always a bad idea, adn jumped back with a screech. Of course, it was a dead mouse. A dead mouse that had been there long enough that it looked a little--what?--petrified. So I did what any normal person would do in a similar circumstance. I immediately, that very minute, sat down and wrote a story about it. I wrote and wrote until I was pleased with the dead mouse story. And then I used a piece of cardboard to life and slide the little mouse corpse into a small white box--the kind you use for jewelry. After all, I reasoned, I had just written a story about him! It felt like something worse than abandonment to get rid of him now...we were linked! Connected through the sacred ritual of storytelling. And anyway, what if this story ended up, you know, famous? What if my dead mouse story ended up being my "The Lottery"? Wouldn't it be incredibly neat to still have the original thing that inspired it? Yes, this is the way I think. So you can see the situation is bad. I have at least one dead rodent that I have kept ON PURPOSE.

Never give up; many who were completely unknown just yesterday are incredibly rich and famous today.

On several occasions, whether the scuttling of the liturgy of the dead or even that incredible enterprise to expurgate the Psalms for use in the Divine Office,102 Bugnini ran into an opposition that was not only massive but also, one might say, close to unanimous. In such cases, he didn’t hesitate to say: “But the Pope wills it!” After that, of course, there was no question of discussing the matter any further. Yet, one day when he had made use of that argument I had a lunch appointment with my friend Msgr. Del Gallo, who as privy Chamberlain had a flat right above the papal apartments at the time.103 As I was coming back down—after the siesta, of course—and came out of the lift onto the Cortile San Damaso,104 Bugnini in person was emerging from the staircase on his way in from the Bronze Gate. At the sight of me, he didn’t just turn pale: he was visibly aghast. I straightaway understood that, knowing me to be notus pontifici,105 he supposed I had just been with the pope. But in my innocence I simply could not guess why he would be so terrorized at the idea that I might have had an interview with the pope regarding our affairs. I would be given the answer, though weeks later, by Paul VI himself. As he was discussing our famous work with me, work which he had finally ratified without being much more satisfied with it than I was, he said to me: “Now why did you do [x] in the reform?” At this point, I must confess that I no longer recall specifically which of the details I have already mentioned was bothering him.106 Naturally, I answered: “Why, simply because Bugnini had assured us that you absolutely wished it.” His reaction was instantaneous: “Can this be? He told me himself that you were unanimous on this!

whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.

The words of the famous Declaration of Arbroath echo across the ages: ‘It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.