Fancy Text Quotes

I will quote one sentence from this text, namely, the one with which it ended. It was also the sentence which finally dissolved the writer’s block that had inhibited the author from starting work. I have since used it whenever I myself have been gripped by fear of the blank sheet in front of me. It is infallible, and its effect is always the same: the knot unravels and a stream of words gushes out on to the virgin paper. It acts like a magic spell and I sometimes fancy it really is one. But, even if it isn’t the work of a sorcerer, it is certainly the most brilliant sentence any writer has ever devised. It runs: ‘This is where my story begins.’

Just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to spatial or temporal laws. It is he—the good, the excellent reader—who has saved the artists again and again from being destroyed by emperors, dictators, priests, puritans, philistines, political moralists, policemen, postmasters, and prigs. Let me define this admirable reader. He does not belong to any specific nation or class. No director of conscience and no book club can manage his soul. His approach to a work of fiction is not governed by those juvenile emotions that make the mediocre reader identify himself with this or that character and “skip descriptions.” The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. The admirable reader does not seek information about Russia in a Russian novel, for he knows that the Russia of Tolstoy or Chekhov is not the average Russia of history but a specific world imagined and created by individual genius. The admirable reader is not concerned with general ideas; he is interested in the particular vision. He likes the novel not because it helps him to get along with the group (to use a diabolical progressive-school cliche); he likes the novel because he imbibes and understands every detail of the text, enjoys what the author meant to be injoyed, beams inwardly and all over, is thrilled by the magic imageries of the master-forger, the fancy-forger, the conjuror, the artist. Indeed of all the characters that a great artist creates, his readers are the best. (“Russian Writers, Censors, and Readers”)

Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another.

My interest in this started one night when I was doing stand-up in a small club in New York. I was talking about texting and I asked for a volunteer who’d met someone recently and had been texting back and forth with them. I read the back-and-forth messages of one gentleman and made jokes about how we were all dealing with some version of this nonsense. I quickly noticed that one woman seemed very puzzled. I asked her why she looked so bewildered, and she explained that this was something that just didn’t happen in France, where she was from. This kind of back-and-forth simply didn’t exist, she claimed. I asked her, “Okay, well, what would a guy in France text you, if you met him at a bar?” She said, “He would write . . . ‘Fancy a fuck?’” And I said, “Whoa. What would you write back?” She said, “I would write yes or no depending on whether I fancied one or not.” I was stunned—that kind of makes so much more sense, right?

Meditation is the primary way in which we guard against the fragmentation of our Scripture reading into isolated oracles. Meditation enters into the coherent universe of God's revelation. Meditation is the prayerful employ of imagination in order to become friends with the text. It must not be confused with fancy or fantasy.

The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text- books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record: "The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps, He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory." Darwin's argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never -seen- in the rocks. Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin's argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study. [Evolution’s Erratic Pace - "Natural History," May, 1977]

The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of bringing forth.

He also doesn’t need to know about the dream I had a few months ago. It wasn’t my fault—we’d been texting before bed, and it had screwed with my subconscious. For all I know, his subconscious gave him wacky dreams too. We were at a fancy restaurant eating math tests and lab reports when he took my face in his hands and kissed me. He tasted like printer ink. My logical side intervened and woke me up, but I couldn’t look him in the eye for an entire week after that. I’d dream-cheated on Spencer with Neil McNair. It was horrifying.

When out of the ordinary reports and studies come from individuals who seem to have their feet on the ground, more thoughtful people pay closer attention. To be open-minded means just that; to compare worldviews and philosophies without pre-judgment, to entertain singular and paradox phenomena, to efficaciously sift the gems of wisdom from common opinions in sacred texts and inspired writings, or even in newspapers or social media. What is true, and how do we know? - things to ponder. This all takes time and thought. The scales of discretion must weigh, over time, between hopeful thinking and prophecy, flights of fancy and common sense, a lucky guess and inspired revelation, and chance and destiny. This could keep one busy for a lifetime. As far as I'm concerned, this is the most important path for those who want to understand What This Is All About.

I was doing stand-up in a small club in New York. I was talking about texting and I asked for a volunteer who’d met someone recently and had been texting back and forth with them. I read the back-and-forth messages of one gentleman and made jokes about how we were all dealing with some version of this nonsense. I quickly noticed that one woman seemed very puzzled. I asked her why she looked so bewildered, and she explained that this was something that just didn’t happen in France, where she was from. This kind of back-and-forth simply didn’t exist, she claimed. I asked her, “Okay, well, what would a guy in France text you, if you met him at a bar?” She said, “He would write . . . ‘Fancy a fuck?’” And I said, “Whoa. What would you write back?” She said, “I would write yes or no depending on whether I fancied one or not.” I was stunned—that kind of makes so much more sense, right?

In fact, a whole ex-girlfriend themed ghost train sounded genuinely terrifying. You'd get in and instead of a mummy mannequin covered in toilet roll popping out, it's her and you look down and you're wearing a baggy old jumper with a stain on the front. You turn the corner and you find yourself being forced to scroll through her Instagram and there are replies from a girl with tattoos and she looks exactly like the celebrity your ex fancies most. Right at the end, they play a video on a loop that's just screenshots of all the pathetic texts you sent when you were too heartbroken to have any dignity.

So,” he began, after several minutes of silence, “how much did it kill you having to text me?” I chuckled. “A lot. I was just glad I didn’t throw away the receipt – I didn’t fancy digging through bags of rubbish.” Danny threw me another half-smile. “So you didn’t throw it out after all? I knew it!” I rolled my eyes. “Your arrogance astounds me … could you be anymore conceited?” “Could you be anymore attracted to me?” He quipped back. I scoffed at him. “In your dreams! Do you really get girls like this?” He quirked an eyebrow and flashed me that adorable crooked grin. “Many. Why – you jealous?” “Hardly,” I shot back at him, “you’re not my type so don’t flatter yourself.” He shrugged. “One hour with me turning on the charm and you’d be singing a different tune … trust me on that.” I laughed. “You know there’s a fine line between being charming and being cocky … and you my friend, fall into the latter. And it’s not something to be proud of – it’s not an attractive quality.” Danny smirked yet again. “Ouch. You really know how to insult a guy. Are you always this pleasant?” “Are you always this obnoxious?” I retorted back. “Ooh touché. You know – if I didn’t know any better – I’d almost mistake your frostiness for flirting.” He flashed me another half-smile and threw me a knowing look. I rolled my eyes again. “Well you would, wouldn’t you Mr Overly-sure-of-himself?” I watched as his confidence seemed to go into overdrive. “Say what you will, but I know you’re secretly charmed by me.” I shrugged. “Whatever … just don’t be too disappointed when I don’t fall at your feet.” He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. “Well, try not to be too surprised when you do.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t hold your breath.

No one could quite believe that Ronan had used his phone. Ronan Lynch had many habits that irritated his friends and loved ones - swearing, drinking, street-racing - but the one that maddened his acquaintances the most was his inability to answer phone calls and send texts. When Adam had first met Ronan, he had found Ronan's aversion to the fancy phone so complete that he had assumed there must have been a story behind it. Some reason why, even in the press of an emergency, Ronan's first response was to hand his phone to someone else. Now that Adam knew him better, he realized it had more to do with a phone not allowing for any posturing. Ninety per cent of how Ronan conveyed his feelings was through his body language, and a phone simply didn't care.

I don’t flirt with the women who come into the bar. I don’t spend all day staring at my door, waiting to see if she’ll come in. I don’t get fancy fuckin’ wine just so I can see the smile on her face when I tell her I stocked it. I sure as fuck don’t give out my number in case she needs emotional support, and I definitely don’t stare at my phone for a week waiting for someone to text me.

The Gospels were written in such temporal and geographical proximity to the events they record that it would have been almost impossible to fabricate events. Anyone who cared to could have checked out the accuracy of what they reported. The fact that the disciples were able to proclaim the resurrection in Jerusalem in the face of their enemies a few weeks after the crucifixion shows that what they proclaimed was true, for they could never have proclaimed the resurrection under such circumstances had it not occurred. The Gospels could not have been corrupted without a great outcry on the part of orthodox Christians. Against the idea that there could have been a deliberate falsifying of the text, no one could have corrupted all the manuscripts. Moreover, there is no precise time when the falsification could have occurred, since, as we have seen, the New Testament books are cited by the church fathers in regular and close succession. The text could not have been falsified before all external testimony, since then the apostles were still alive and could repudiate any such tampering with the Gospels. The miracles of Jesus were witnessed by hundreds of people, friends and enemies alike; that the apostles had the ability to testify accurately to what they saw; that the apostles were of such doubtless honesty and sincerity as to place them above suspicion of fraud; that the apostles, though of low estate, nevertheless had comfort and life itself to lose in proclaiming the gospel; and that the events to which they testified took place in the civilized part of the world under the Roman Empire, in Jerusalem, the capital city of the Jewish nation. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the apostles’ testimony concerning the miracles and resurrection of Jesus. It would have been impossible for so many to conspire together to perpetrate such a hoax. And what was there to gain by lying? They could expect neither honor, nor wealth, nor worldly profit, nor fame, nor even the successful propagation of their doctrine. Moreover, they had been raised in a religion that was vastly different from the one they preached. Especially foreign to them was the idea of the death and resurrection of the Jewish Messiah. This militates against their concocting this idea. The Jewish laws against deceit and false testimony were very severe, which fact would act as a deterrent to fraud. Suppose that no resurrection or miracles occurred: how then could a dozen men, poor, coarse, and apprehensive, turn the world upside down? If Jesus did not rise from the dead, declares Ditton, then either we must believe that a small, unlearned band of deceivers overcame the powers of the world and preached an incredible doctrine over the face of the whole earth, which in turn received this fiction as the sacred truth of God; or else, if they were not deceivers, but enthusiasts, we must believe that these extremists, carried along by the impetus of extravagant fancy, managed to spread a falsity that not only common folk, but statesmen and philosophers as well, embraced as the sober truth. Because such a scenario is simply unbelievable, the message of the apostles, which gave birth to Christianity, must be true. Belief in Jesus’ resurrection flourished in the very city where Jesus had been publicly crucified. If the people of Jerusalem thought that Jesus’ body was in the tomb, few would have been prepared to believe such nonsense as that Jesus had been raised from the dead. And, even if they had so believed, the Jewish authorities would have exposed the whole affair simply by pointing to Jesus’ tomb or perhaps even exhuming the body as decisive proof that Jesus had not been raised. Three great, independently established facts—the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the origin of the Christian faith—all point to the same marvelous conclusion: that God raised Jesus from the dead.

ALL POST-COMMUNIST SOCIETIES ARE uprooted ones because Communism uprooted traditions, so nothing fits with anything else,” explained the philosopher Patapievici. Fifteen years earlier, when I had last met him, he had cautioned: “The task for Romania is to acquire a public style based on impersonal rules, otherwise business and politics will be full of intrigue, and I am afraid that our Eastern Orthodox tradition is not helpful in this regard. Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Russia, Greece—all the Orthodox nations of Europe—are characterized by weak institutions. That is because Orthodoxy is flexible and contemplative, based more on the oral traditions of peasants than on texts. So there is this pattern of rumor, lack of information, and conspiracy….”11 Thus, in 1998, did Patapievici define Romanian politics as they were still being practiced a decade and a half later. Though in 2013, he added: “No one speaks of guilt over the past. The Church has made no progress despite the enormous chance of being separated from the state for almost a quarter century. The identification of religious faith with an ethnic-national group, I find, is a moral heresy.” Dressed now in generic business casual and wearing fashionable glasses, Patapievici appeared as a figure wholly of the West—more accurately of the global elite—someone you might meet at a fancy

Focus intently and beat procrastination.    Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break).    Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives.    Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up.    Set up a distraction-free environment.    Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck.    When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode.    After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck.    Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests.    When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply.    Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating.    Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed.    Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself.    Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory.    Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones.    Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory.    Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently.    Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace.    Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly.    Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems.    Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any.    Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline.    Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings.    Improve your habits.    Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself.    Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks.    Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.    Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set.    Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively.    Preview the text before reading it in detail.    Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests.    Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan.    Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible.    During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers.    Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner.    Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust.    Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.

My dear brothers and sisters,* how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? 2 For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting* dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. 3 If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor”—well, 4 doesn’t this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives?

Use manual sanity checks in data pipelines. When optimizing data processing systems, it’s easy to stay in the “binary mindset” mode, using tight pipelines, efficient binary data formats, and compressed I/O. As the data passes through the system unseen, unchecked (except for perhaps its type), it remains invisible until something outright blows up. Then debugging commences. I advocate sprinkling a few simple log messages throughout the code, showing what the data looks like at various internal points of processing, as good practice — nothing fancy, just an analogy to the Unix head command, picking and visualizing a few data points. Not only does this help during the aforementioned debugging, but seeing the data in a human-readable format leads to “aha!” moments surprisingly often, even when all seems to be going well. Strange tokenization! They promised input would always be encoded in latin1! How did a document in this language get in there? Image files leaked into a pipeline that expects and parses text files! These are often insights that go way beyond those offered by automatic type checking or a fixed unit test, hinting at issues beyond component boundaries. Real-world data is messy. Catch early even things that wouldn’t necessarily lead to exceptions or glaring errors. Err on the side of too much verbosity.

What simpletons we are! Whatever our natural age, how childish we are in spiritual things! What great simpletons we are when we first believe in Christ! We think that our being pardoned involves a great many things which we afterwards find have nothing whatever to do with our pardon. For instance, we think we shall never sin again. We fancy that the battle is all fought; that we have got into a fair field, with no more war to wage;  that in fact we have got the victory, and have only just to stand up and wave the palm branch; that all is over, that God has only got to call us up  to himself and we shall enter into heaven without having to fight any enemies upon earth. Now, all these are obvious mistakes. Though the text has a great meaning, it does not mean anything of this kind.

Text speak is code for the illiterate. If you can’t read it, it seems to be because you are not supposed to. You don’t have the cool factor, so be gone with you. You with your fancy high school diploma.

Liking yourself is a radical act,’ Clem had instructed Jo and myself. ‘Never more so than when you’ve had a crap time from a man.’ So when you get turned down for a second date, when you find out you were one of seven options, when your texts have the Read receipt, when the WhatsApp shows two blue ticks and your Facebook messages say SEEN – Clem says do the opposite of wallowing. She prescribes: spend an entire day treating yourself as you’d wish to be treated. Take yourself for margaritas, see a film you fancy, have a long walk. Buy something frivolous which brings you joy, order a takeaway. Get sheets with high thread count and lie like a starfish on them, naked. ‘It’s like aggressive hygge. Celebrate how great you are and what a nice time you have by yourself. Refuse to partake in the self-loathing we’re virtually commanded to, in this sick society.

A fancy text generator is a great way to make your text more stylish and appealing. It is an online tool whose primary function is to generate fancy text fonts by converting them into specific stunning designs that don’t look ordinary or boring.

So here’s to love and loving your portable handheld telecommunication device. Stay inside where it’s temperature-controlled and there are no bugs and spend some time celebrating your beloved today. Make a delicious homemade casserole (look up the recipe on your phone), dip out to pick up a fancy bottle of wine (request a Lyft from your phone), sit next to a cozy fire (YouTube a fireplace video on your phone), sing along to your favorite jams (find it on Spotify on your phone), listen to your favorite book (open Audible on your phone), watch some cheesy movies (did you know you can get Netflix on your phone?!), send an update to the family members you haven’t seen in a while (use e-mail from your phone), order some Indian takeout (Grubhub dot com on your phone), text your homegirl some juicy gossip from your phone, and since you’re playing around on it anyway, why not do a little shopping on your phone? Is it holiday time? If so, maybe you could stop being a huge grinch for a change and just buy everyone in your circle the one thing we’ve been conditioned to constantly want: A NEW PHONE.

Difficulties of technical translation: features, problems, rules Technical translation is one of the most important areas of written translation in modern translation practice. Like the interpretation technique, it has its own characteristics and requirements. The need for this type of work is due to economic and scientific and technical progress, as well as the development of international relations. Thanks to technical translation, people share experience, knowledge and developments in various fields. What are the features of this type of translation? What pitfalls can be encountered on the translator's path? You will learn about this and much more from our article. ________________________________________ Technical translation is one of the most difficult types of legal translation. This is due to the large number of requirements for such work. Technical translation includes all scientific and technical texts, documents, instructions, reports, reference books and dictionaries. The texts of this plan contain a lot of specific terminology, which is the main difficulty of technical translation. A term is a word or a combination of words that accurately names a phenomenon, subject or scientific concept, revealing its meaning as much as possible. The most common technical texts in the following areas: • engineering; • defense; • physics and mathematics; • aircraft construction; • oil industry; • shipbuilding, etc. The main feature of technical translation is the requirement for its high accuracy (equivalence). The task of the translator is to convey information as close as possible to the original. Otherwise, distortions may appear in the text, leading to a misunderstanding of important information. Vocabulary selection is carried out carefully and carefully. The construction of phrases should be logical and meaningful. Other technical translation requirements include adequacy and informativeness. It is equally important to maintain the style of such texts. This includes not only vocabulary, but also the grammatical structure of the text, as well as the way the material is presented. Most often, this is a formal and logical style. Unlike artistic translation, where the main task is to convey the content, and the translator can use his imagination, include fancy turns and various figures of speech, the presence of emotionality and subjectivity is unacceptable in technical translation. Let's consider the peculiarities of technical translation in English. According to the well-known linguist and translator Y. Y. Retsker, English technical literature is characterized by the predominant use of complex or complex sentences, which include adjectives, nouns, as well as impersonal forms of verbs (infinitives, gerundial inflections, etc.). Passive constructions are also often found. In this direction, it is permissible to use only generally accepted grammatical structures. Another feature of such texts may be the absence of a predicate or subject and a large number of enumerations. In addition, the finished text should have an appropriate layout equivalent to the original. Let's consider the basic rules of technical translation for a specialist: • knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar and word structure of the foreign language from which the translation is performed (at the level required for understanding the source text); • knowledge of the language into which the translation is performed (at a level sufficient for a competent presentation of the material); • excellent knowledge of the specifics of texts and terminology; • ability to use linguistic and technical sources of information; • familiarity with the specifics of the field

It being the digital age and all, I can comprehend why one would choose the mobile phone, the most convenient and indispensable device , as a tool to be insolent towards antediluvian people like me who still have not lost faith in down-to-earth face-to-face interactions. It always begins with an impulsive need to pick up the phone and browse through apps. This need then, with the speed of the wind would gain a sense of immediacy whereupon, Mr./Ms. Presumptuous would make unconvincing excuses about having to take a call or text to a family member to check on his/her welfare. Leaving me in the middle of an interesting development that I am so willing to share, Mr./Ms. Presumptuous walks few meters away from where I am seated and comes back twenty minutes later only to steer the conversation away to a subject that he/she fancies.

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

If I read the Bible with the appropriate perspective and humility I don’t use the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus as a proof-text to condemn others to hell. I use it as a reminder that I’m a rich man and Lazarus lies at my door. I don’t use the conquest narratives of Joshua to justify Manifest Destiny. Instead I see myself as a Rahab who needs to welcome newcomers. I don’t fancy myself as Elijah calling down fire from heaven. I’m more like Nebuchadnezzar who needs to humble himself lest I go insane. I have a problem with the Bible, but all is not lost. I just need to read it standing on my head. I need to change my perspective. If I can accept that the Bible is trying to lift up those who are unlike me, then perhaps I can read the Bible right.

They know it is all false. Their beliefs. The fanciful tales and fables and miracles of the past written down in ancient texts. They know deep down it is all nonsense. Yet still they believe. And the cycle of madness and delusion will never cease. It just doesn’t matter. Destroy all scripture? I think not. Everything can be redone. Everything is endless. The disfunction and folly will go on until mankind . . . until mankind is no more.

Progress, divinity, all will come, First you gotta stand as human being. Daring tech and daring text are equally worthless, if wielded by a fancy fiend.

Daring tech and daring text are equally worthless, if wielded by a fancy fiend.

Text after text, scholars never tired of trying to compensate for sentencing women to eternal drudgery, which they themselves abhorred, by dreaming up fancy ways of labeling it, easing their consciences and allowing them to view their self-serving little world of men-gods as a fair, nay noble, thing.

Visit art galleries and museums Read history books and texts Devour autobiographies and biographies of people I admire who exhibit the character traits I value Take classes on anything that takes my fancy (I recently signed up for a stand-up comedy class. What?) Keep up to date on current affairs Study finance, the markets and business in general Hang out with old folks who have done stuff with their lives Go to watch opera, plays and dramas Study philosophy and some of the great thinkers of our time and past times Travel to fucking weird places where I can’t speak the language and hang out with the locals Watch documentaries on some of the weirdest subjects you can imagine

The most famous of these books is probably De Secretis Mulierum (Women’s Secrets), a late medieval text compiled by anonymous monks. Even by the standards of the day, the authors’ conception of female anatomy is fanciful. The text declares that menses is not blood but excess food; asks if said menses comes out the anus; and suggests that urine comes from the vagina. Its grasp on male anatomy is shaky, too. Male readers are warned that if they consume sage on which a cat has ejaculated—which is a really weird hypothetical—they will become pregnant with kittens. The esophagus would have to serve as the birth canal, and the father would need to vomit them out.

Neither Judaism nor Eastern Christianity has ever held to the doctrine of original sin; they simply do not believe that the choice of Adam and Eve permanently altered the nature of all human beings. And ministers and scholars across the theological spectrum have long questioned the notion that Genesis 3 describes a single, historic moment in which humankind somehow lost its connection to God. Such a reading relies on flights of theological fancy far beyond the text itself and diminishes what is established in the first chapter of Genesis- that God created the world out of love, blessed it and called it good, and impressed upon each person the very image and likeness of the divine.

Why are we running after beautiful texts, perfect language, fancy vocabulary! Forget the Grammar, forget those perfect writers. Remember writers write from their heart, so just pen down your thoughts and throw away external fancies.

She hadn't meant to fall asleep, but she was a bit like a cat herself, forever wandering in the woods, chasing after squirrels and rabbits as fast as her skinny legs could take her when the fancy struck, climbing trees like a possum, able to doze in the sun at a moment's notice. And sometimes with no notice at all. (This text is originally from A Circle of Cats, which was revised and re-adapted by the author for The Cats of Tanglewood Forest)

She is not political. She is not political yet. She is halting, she is silent, she is unsure. She has not formed any opinions that are her own. Sometimes she hears someone else’s opinion, someone more forceful than herself (which is almost anyone) and she says that’s good for me too. So malleable she changes identities easily. How else does one figure out who one is? She has flashes of who she could be someday. She speaks in advertising jingles and silly catchphrases and slang. I am not really into politics she would say. She is self-involved. She is volunteering for her own Party of One. The Me Party. Campaigning under the Woe Is Me ticket. My seductive little solipsist. Does she know there is a war going on? Is there a war going on? Turning on the television I thought there was a sale going on, and a season finale, and some celebrities getting a divorce. She knows there is a war waging inside of her. Yet she doesn’t know who is winning. She did not vote in the last presidential election. I can’t believe it either, but there you are. She is the apathetic youth we always read about. They are silent when not texting away on fancy mobiles or talking on their cell phones about their new game console.

The story of Jonah reads more like a parable than history, employing fanciful literary conventions and language, so why impose literalism on a text when the genre doesn’t seem to demand it? And yet the epistles of Paul and the accounts of Luke, whether you believe them or not, purport a different purpose and employ a different literary style than Jonah, so it seems just as disingenuous to impose metaphor where those authors likely presumed fact.

In late 1968, Manson seized upon a new text for his prophecies: a musical training manual designed to help him create an army out of his cult—the Beatles’ 1968 album known as “the White Album.” Manson said that the Beatles had channeled his own teachings and used them to create the White Album, which he saw as a vehicle for sharing those teachings with the world. Whether Manson truly believed this fanciful idea is difficult to discern, but his starving, acid-frazzled followers believed it wholeheartedly. According to Manson, the White Album expressed the Beatles’ need for a spiritual savior and contained coded messages explicitly directed at him. Manson was, he believed, the savior the Beatles were looking for. Manson also used the coincidence of the Beatle’s song “Sexy Sadie,” his nickname for follower Susan Atkins, to prove his point and focused on the lyrics of “Piggies,” a song about class struggle, assuring his followers that they were the piggies the Beatles were writing about.

Kitty’s been running around with her friends, and she’s deigned to help me out at the cake walk for an hour when Peter walks in with his little brother, Owen. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” is playing. Kitty goes over to say hello, while I busy myself looking at my phone as she’s showing them the cakes. I’ve got my head down, pretend-texting, when Peter comes up beside me. “Which cake is yours? The coconut one?” My head snaps up. “I would never buy a grocery-store cake for this.” “I was joking, Covey. Yours is the caramel one. I can tell by the way you frosted it so fancy.

We’re all going to die, everyone knows that, but back in our time we keep ourselves so busy, so occupied with cell phones and texting, television shows, movies, parties, bars, nightclubs, fancy restaurants, sixty-hour-a-week jobs, shopping, buying clothes and furniture and jewelry, working to save up for a car, a house, a second house, a beach house.  Here people have time to live, really live.  I’ve done more, I mean drawing, making friends, doing things that really matter, than I did my entire life before.

Instead of face to face conversation, We soon preferred to chat on our device, Or text a message of our persuasion, Inaudible convenience rather nice, As fit to make a ready occasion, Not half-concerned we pay a growing price, To make a more unnatural creature, Devises that replace the human feature. 27. Indeed, they yield a social substitute, The lonely and excluded dearly seek, That spreads a strange and artificial root, Yet still enjoys a genuine mystique, That works as rapidly as we compute, A dialogue between savant and freak, Beyond our residence a fertile land, Designed to strike our fancy and expand

When circumstances determine the subject to be treated, and we have to look for a text, one can almost always be found which will have some real, though it be a general relation to the subject. If there be rare cases in which it is otherwise, it will then be better to have no text than one with which the subject has only a fanciful or forced connection.

To this day, I am convinced that the three years I spent at Exeter left me more stupid than when I arrived. I did little to no work; I went from being a voracious bookworm to not reading a single page of a book that wasn’t a set text (and I don’t think I even finished one of those). From September 2006 to July 2009, all I did was drink and shag. All anyone did was drink and shag, pausing only briefly to eat a kebab, watch an episode of Eggheads or shop for a fancy-dress outfit for a ‘Lashed of the Summer Wine’ themed pub crawl. Far from being the hub of radical thinking and passionate activism I had hoped for, it was the most politically apathetic place I had ever been” Excerpt From Everything I Know About Love Dolly Alderton This material may be protected by copyright.