“
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women)
“
The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.
”
”
Dave Barry
“
He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He look like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.
”
”
Karl Lagerfeld
“
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
”
”
Maya Angelou (Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women)
“
Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
“
A girl without braids
is like a city without bridges.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
“
These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.
”
”
Karl Lagerfeld
“
You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.
”
”
John Waters (Role Models)
“
With right fashion, every female would be a flame.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Happiness requires a balance. If you feel rejected, you need to pursue love with dignity. If you feel put down you need to restore your dignity in an attractive fashion.
”
”
Julian Short (A Model for Living)
“
Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership.
”
”
John Waters (Role Models)
“
Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
I looked at the fashion model and reassured myself she wasn't dead.
”
”
Tara Moss (The Spider Goddess (Pandora English, #2))
“
It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
In other words, some people in our culture want too much out of a marriage partner. They do not see marriage as two flawed people coming together to create a space of stability, love, and consolation—a “haven in a heartless world,” as Christopher Lasch describes it.37 This will indeed require a woman who is “a novelist/astronaut with a background in fashion modeling”38 or the equivalent in a man.
”
”
Timothy J. Keller (The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God)
“
People like their high-fashion models to look as deeply unhappy as physically possible You can't have beauty and contentment: it would just be unfair.
”
”
Holly Smale (Geek Girl (Geek Girl, #1))
“
It does not take the striking pose of a high-fashion model or the strict stance of someone in uniform to earn respect and admiration.
”
”
Cindy Ann Peterson (My Style, My Way: Top Experts Reveal How to Create Yours Today)
“
Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you place your hands in the prayer positions. Matter of fact, I urge all my followers to forgo nail polish permanently and replace it with expertly applied soot. The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.
”
”
John Waters (Role Models)
“
Any girl with a grin never looks grim.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Real models don't go with the trend, they set the trend.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Protection, therefore, against tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
”
”
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty and Other Essays)
“
You need a break, a complete rest, recharge your batteries.' Recharge your batteries. What the hell does that mean? Nelson prides himself on not needing batteries. He's an old-fashioned, wind-up model.
”
”
Elly Griffiths (A Dying Fall (Ruth Galloway, #5))
“
Like it or not, we are trendsetters. Just as every fashion model ever to strut the runway, we affect the minds of others by what we wear. With usch power it's vital to question ourselves: 'Am I an example of Christ-centeredness? Or have I just gotten comfortable in the "Christian routine" and forgotten why I've chosen to live this way?
”
”
Hannah Farver (Uncompromising: A Heart Claimed By a Radical Love)
“
The power of beauty is that it encapsulates all the bitter sweet elements and mirrors them back as a breathtaking masterpiece.
”
”
Wayne Chirisa
“
Of the little less than a million eligibles roaming around, 5 percent don't know their sign and don't even care. Another 5 percent are tied to their mothers by a food fixation. That leaves only 20 percent who are searching for a girl who will pick up their clothes, run their baths, burn her fingers shelling their three-minute eggs, run their errands, bear them a child every year, look like a fashion model, tend their needs when they are sick, and hold down a full-time job outside the home to make payments on their boat.
”
”
Erma Bombeck (Family - The Ties That Bind...And Gag!)
“
You cannot choose your face but you can choose your dress.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Dresses don't look beautiful on hangers.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Narcissism is as profitable to a model as scruffiness is to a homeless person.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
“
women who looked like fashion models—admitted to knowing, from the time they could first consciously think, that the ideal was someone tall, thin, white, and blond, a face without pores, asymmetry, or flaws, someone wholly “perfect,” and someone whom they felt, in one way or another, they were not. I
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women—a Feminist Critique on Society's Obsession with Flawless Women)
“
(About her first job as a fashion model in New York...) It was mostly hats. I was too short and my breasts were too big, so any fantasies I had about modeling in New York literally went to my head. I wore hats.
”
”
Donna J. Stone
“
Let me outline briefly as I can what seem to me the characteristics of these opposite kinds of mind. I conceive a strip-miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter's goal is money, profit; the nurturer's goal is health -- his land's health, his own, his family's, his community's, his country's. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order -- a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, "hard facts"; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.
”
”
Wendell Berry (The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture)
“
Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
This feminine billboard of Middle-Eastern fashion stopped me on the street last month. She ran her hand over the seam of my jilbab, admiring the color and fabric. She only said a few words. 'We are living in a gender-quake, a modern sexodus. We have a duty to project dis female revolution in da way we dress. Come visit me at the Monkey Bar and tell me who tailors your outfits.' She's been my fashion role model ever since.
”
”
Michael Ben Zehabe (Persianality)
“
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of
”
”
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
“
Fashion models and financial models are similar. They bear a similar relationship to everyday world. Like supermodels, financial models are idealized representations of the real world, they are not real, they don't quite work the way that the real world works. There is celebrity in both worlds. In the end, there is the same inevitable disappointment" - Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money
”
”
Satyajit Das (Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives)
“
Reproductive rights gave Western women control over our own bodies; the weight of fashion models plummeted to 23 percent below that of ordinary women, eating disorders rose exponentially, and a mass neurosis was promoted that used food and weight to strip women of that sense of control.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
What a joke, coming from a woman who worked for the fashion industry. Really. Starving yourself to fit into a size zero — why did that size even exist? Zero referred to the absence of something, but what did it mean in terms of a model's measurements? Her fat? Or her presence? How much could you cut away before the person herself vanished? It was hypocritical, that's what it was. I said as much, adding, “If you're so keen on me being healthy then you should have no problem accepting me for the way I am. That's what's healthy, Mom. Not being focused on all this freaky weight-loss stuff.
”
”
Nenia Campbell (Cloak and Dagger (The IMA, #1))
“
During the shoot in November 2003, I was vaguely aware of the stylist’s sulky demeanor and eye-rolling vibe, but I blocked her out. Some fashion people are snotty drama queens; this is not news. Whatever was going on with her, I was determined to be positive and not get infected by her energy. Later, Fiorella told me that the entire time I was in makeup, the stylist had been clomping up and down the hall, sputtering into her cell phone, “I can’t believe I have to style a FAT GIRL!”
Believe it, bitch.
”
”
Crystal Renn (Hungry: A Young Model's Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves)
“
For Anne to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All 'spirit and fire and dew,' as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Marilla felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Marilla conceived it to be her duty to drill Anne into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Anne into 'deeps of affliction.' The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Marilla had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Anne much better as she was.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)
“
Adorn your beauty with elegant fashion and embellish it with a genuine smile of pride.
”
”
Wayne Chirisa
“
She touched the hearts with her body expressions - she want to take the soul under the moonlight ..
”
”
Imran Shaikh
“
Fashion is artistically designed to express the boldness of beauty.
”
”
Wayne Chirisa
“
Harry padded softly in. He was in linen shirt, breeches, and bare feet, the very model of a gentleman bent on criminal conversation, and the sight made Julius’s chest heave.
”
”
K.J. Charles (A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1))
“
That’s the business, Iris. It’s a ruth- less industry. People’s love lasts but one season.
”
”
Eugenia Melian (Wildchilds)
“
She was beautiful, after a fashion, like a catalog model, with all the parts in the right place but nothing extraordinary that would distract you from the shorts she was selling.
”
”
Emma Straub (All Adults Here)
“
Swankiness get noticed but style get remembered.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sport cars on their sixteenth birthdays, Teachers smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names of the staff. They are the pride of the school.
In Universe #2, they throw parties wild enough to attract college students. They worship stink of Eau de Jocque. They rent beach houses in Cancun during Spring Break and get group-rate abortions before the prom.
But they are so cute. And they cheer on our boys, inciting them to violence and, we hope, victory. They’re are our role models- the Girls Who Have It All. I bet none of them ever stutter or screw up or feel like their brains are dissolving into marshmallow fluff.
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
Here was the real scandal of On Our Backs photography: We were women shooting other women — our names, faces, and bodies on the line — and we all brought our sexual agenda to the lens. Each pictorial was a memoir. That is quite the opposite of a fashion shoot at Vogue or Playboy, where the talent is a prop…
When we began our magazine, female fashion and portrait models — all of them — were shot the same way kittens and puppies are photographed for holiday calendars: in fetching poses, with no intentions of their own.
”
”
Susie Bright (Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir)
“
the others he wore simple work clothes—flannels and jeans with work boots. He was tall and handsome, with blue eyes and dirty-blond hair and a Donegal-style beard running along his broad jaw. He was athletically built with a charismatic, compelling look—like some rustic fashion model. And he had a vaguely familiar appearance. Grady felt certain he’d seen him somewhere before. Grady eyed the man warily. “Are you the foreman
”
”
Daniel Suarez (Influx)
“
Yes," I continued, "I discovered this model recently and her style never fails to be mathematically perfect. She seems to come by it naturally. As if she were born resonant. I notice Japanese models tend to do this. Like I said, they seem to have resonance somewhere deep in their culture. But Yuri Nakagawa, she's the best I've ever seen. The best model, with the most powerful resonance. I need her to probe deeper
into this profound mathematical instinct, which I call resonance.
”
”
Alexei Maxim Russell (Trueman Bradley: The Next Great Detective)
“
Like Jesus, Satan seeks to have others imitate him but not in the same fashion and not for the same reasons. He wants first of all to seduce. Satan as seducer is the only one of his roles that the modern world condescends to remember a bit, primarily to joke about it. Satan likewise presents himself as a model for our desires, and he is certainly easier to imitate than Christ, for he counsels us to abandon ourselves to all our inclinations in defiance of morality and its prohibitions.
”
”
René Girard (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning)
“
The young can't help playacting; themselves incomplete, they are thrust by life into a completed world where they are compelled to act fully grown. They therefore adopt forms, patterns, models— those that are in fashion, that suit, that please—and enact them.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Joke)
“
I guess I just like myself the way I am. Sorry if I’m not fancy or fashionable enough for you. I’m not like the cheerleaders or all those models and pop stars whose pictures you have plastered all over your room. But you know what? I’m a nice person, and I don’t judge people on how they look or how much money they have, and I don’t have to give a person a pop quiz to decide if I’ll let them hang out with me or not!
”
”
Scott Cawthon (Into the Pit: An AFK Book (Five Nights at Freddy’s: Fazbear Frights #1))
“
It wasn't enough to push open the doors. You had to change minds. How could girls truly make their mark if their role models were houseplants, if their fashions scarcely allowed them to breathe? If any expression of opinion on any subject was considered by young men to be a threat? And even more so, how could they escape the basic fact that no matter how horrid the boys were, the young women still wanted to please them - because what choice had they, really? Where could they go besides back to their own homes, where they would rest under the heavy thumbs of their own mothers, or into the home of a man - with the hopes that this man would be indulgent, like Papa, and not oppressive or cruel, like so many others?
”
”
Elizabeth Letts (Finding Dorothy)
“
The goal is not to “fix” people but rather to empower them. What the psychological flexibility model provides is a characterization of key features that can be changed, but it does not specify how to link history to those features, nor precisely how to intervene in a step-by-step fashion.
”
”
Steven C. Hayes (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change)
“
My words are not for the rich businessmen and women, bureaucrats, fashion models, and other affluent people living in our world. My words are for the strugglers, and the fighters, who need them to continue the fight against injustice, oppression, inequality and discrimination against them by an insensitive world.
”
”
Avijeet Das
“
You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop—the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents—that is the key to fashion leadership.
”
”
John Waters (Role Models)
“
Another kind of transcendence myth has been dramatization of human life in terms of conflict and vindication. This focuses upon the situation of oppression and the struggle for liberation. It is a short-circuited transcendence when the struggle against oppression becomes an end in itself, the focal point of all meaning. There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that those devoted to a cause have found their whole meaning in the struggle, so that the desired victory becomes implicitly an undesirable meaninglessness. Such a truncated vision is one of the pitfalls of theologies of the oppressed. Sometimes black theology, for example that of James Cone, resounds with a cry for vengeance and is fiercely biblical and patriarchal. It transcends religion as a crutch (the separation and return of much old-fashioned Negro spirituality) but tends to settle for being religion as a gun. Tailored to fit only the situation of racial oppression, it inspires a will to vindication but leaves unexplored other dimensions of liberation. It does not get beyond the sexist models internalized by the self and controlling society — models that are at the root of racism and that perpetuate it. The Black God and the Black Messiah apparently are merely the same patriarchs after a pigmentation operation — their behavior unaltered.
”
”
Mary Daly (Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation)
“
I learned that, while rejection is the name of the game, I’m always going to be exactly what someone is looking for, eventually. Whether it is looks or personality, be it in the professional world or the dating world, what others have over me is irrelevant, because there’s always someone out there looking for an exact type of someone – a someone that I can completely fulfill. I’m not going to be everyone’s ideal, so focusing on the times I get passed over – be it the modeling industry or in real life – is a colossal waste of time.
”
”
Abby Rosmarin (I'm Just Here for the Free Scrutiny: One Model's Tale of Insanity and Inanity in the Wonderful World of Fashion)
“
Some models are actually very weird-looking.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
“
An old fashioned outfit is not a costume, it's a comedy.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Everything will land sunny side up: all I need to do is stay positive.
”
”
Holly Smale (Sunny Side Up (Geek Girl))
“
models ate pizza before a fashion show, then threw it up quietly before showtime. That would take a lot of practice, since you’d have to be neat and clean about it.
”
”
Portia de Rossi (Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain)
“
We’re all looking for a bit of recognition, even if it’s the unconscious and hypocritical need for attention over the fact that we’re not publically seeking out attention.
”
”
Abby Rosmarin (I'm Just Here for the Free Scrutiny: One Model's Tale of Insanity and Inanity in the Wonderful World of Fashion)
“
Leslie Ann was now modeling a conservative thunderstorm gray business suit/dress with lightning flashes streaking down her legs, and 1G rain splashing her silvery galoshes.
”
”
@hg47 (Daughter Moon)
“
You need beauty to be a model but not to be a role model.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Modeling is not just beauty and smile, it takes boldness and style.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Walk like it's for sale and the rent is due tonight!
”
”
Miss J.
“
That’s the business, Iris. It’s a ruthless industry. People’s love lasts but one season.
”
”
Eugenia Melian (Wildchilds)
“
The military just used different terms—modeled influence attribution or target profiles observed acting in concert. But in fashion, we just call that a trend.
”
”
Christopher Wylie (Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America)
“
Every girl should have at least two things, fun and fashion.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Conservatives point out the shortages, food lines, and outright famines in Venezuela, Stalin’s Russia, and Mao’s China, while American socialists stubbornly cling to the only “socialist” model left that has any claim to success—Scandinavia. Unfortunately for them, the so-called socialist success of Scandinavia is, in fact, due to good old-fashioned private property and capitalism!
”
”
Rand Paul (The Case Against Socialism)
“
Lambs are on a constant, unrealistic, irrational, and unnatural quest for perfection. They seek to have bodies with no blemishes or disease; that do not age; that have perfect eyes, noses, and lips all in the right places; that are thin like fashion models’ or muscular like athletes’; that are tall, lacking warts, extra fingers, pimples, scars; that always smell fresh like flowers; etc. There are no Lamb cultures where people do not strive for this inferior thing called perfection, no matter their definition of it. We Leopard folk are nothing like this. We embrace those things that make us unique or odd. For only in these things can we locate and then develop our most individual abilities. Even you, free agent, have an ability given to you by the omnipotent, distracted Supreme Creator.
”
”
Nnedi Okorafor (Akata Witch (The Nsibidi Scripts #1))
“
But in reality what Einstein had done was devise a theory that was decades ahead of its time. Experimental measurements had to catch up to his model of gravity, which had been fashioned from pure intuitive thought.
”
”
Marcia Bartusiak (Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved)
“
Have you anything that is ready to wear today? I'd like nothing better than to be rid of that thing she has on now. You can use her measurements to fashion a few more."
"I have one or two I could quickly alter to her size. In fact there is one right there." She pointed to a pale yellow day dress draped over a dressmaker's model. Dunford was just about to say that it would do when he saw Henry's face.
She was staring at the dress like a starving woman.
”
”
Julia Quinn (Minx (The Splendid Trilogy, #3))
“
Today, Medina is simultaneously the archetype of Islamic democracy and the impetus for Islamic militancy. Islamic Modernists like the Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammad’s community in Medina as proof that Islam advocated the separation of religious and temporal power, while Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Iran have used the same community to fashion various models of Islamic theocracy. In their struggle for equal rights, Muslim feminists have consistently drawn inspiration from the legal reforms Muhammad instituted in Medina, while at the same time, Muslim traditionalists have construed those same legal reforms as grounds for maintaining the subjugation of women in Islamic society. For some, Muhammad’s actions in Medina serve as the model for Muslim-Jewish relations; for others, they demonstrate the insurmountable conflict that has always existed, and will always exist, between the two sons of Abraham. Yet regardless of whether one is labeled a Modernist or a Traditionalist, a reformist or a fundamentalist, a feminist or a chauvinist, all Muslims regard Medina as the model of Islamic perfection. Simply put, Medina is what Islam was meant to be.
”
”
Reza Aslan (No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)
“
My smile lights up a million stars always. I create beauty with my hands and I radiate beauty from within. I make a fashion statement wherever I go and I always see beauty wherever I go. Life is an experience that brings out the best in me. I triumph when my days are blue because I know my next experience will be much brighter than my worst. I am unique, beautiful, positive , strong-willed lady and above all, I welcome a challenge because that's what makes me who I am and I am an over-comer
”
”
Jenelle Joanne Ramsami
“
Even though men have very little interest in wearing women’s clothes, this has not prevented a gigantic industry from arising, dedicated to satisfying women’s desires in fashion. Industries which provide makeup, hair styling, nail polish, hair removal, and weight loss services are similarly “biased” in the direction of females: they disproportionately serve women. These phenomena would be very difficult to understand on the feminist model that female wants are ignored or deprecated in the male’s favor.
”
”
Walter Block (The Case for Discrimination)
“
No one ever knew they were old-fashioned; everyone always thought they were up-to-the-minute: Rickety Model T cars weren't rickety when they were invented, scratchy radio wasn't scratchy until television, and silent movies weren't a feeble precursor of talkies until there were talkies. Your two-piece telephone that demanded that you hold a cylinder to your ear while you screeched into the wall demanding a particular exchange of a harried, plug-juggling operator was the highest of high-tech. To know it was anything less would have been like acknowledging you were going to die and life was transient and you were already halfway to being a memory or worse. The real and worst tragedy of twentieth-century East Europeans: They had known they were old-fashioned before they could do anything about it.
”
”
Arthur Phillips (Prague)
“
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
”
”
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
“
Reality is never what you imagined it would be. Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s worse. And sometimes it’s just different. It’s not worth wasting time and energy trying to predict how things are going to turn out. Just go with the flow and keep your eyes and ears peeled.
”
”
Abby Rosmarin (I'm Just Here for the Free Scrutiny: One Model's Tale of Insanity and Inanity in the Wonderful World of Fashion)
“
Even though the woman was not human—the land—or was less than human—a cow—farming had the symbolic overtones of old-fashioned agrarian romance: plowing the land was loving it, feeding the cow was tending it. In the farming model, the woman was owned privately; she was the homestead, not a public thoroughfare. One farmer worked her. The land was valued because it produced a valuable crop; and in keeping with the mystique of the model itself, sometimes the land was real pretty, special, richly endowed; a man could love it. The cow was valued because of what she produced: calves, milk; sometimes she took a prize. There was nothing actually idyllic in this. As many as one quarter of all acts of battery may be against pregnant women; and women die from pregnancy even without the intervention of a male fist. But farming implied a relationship of some substance between the farmer and what was his: and it is grander being the earth, being nature, even being a cow, than being a cunt with no redeeming mythology. Motherhood ensconced a woman in the continuing life of a man: how he used her was going to have consequences for him. Since she was his, her state of being reflected on him; and therefore he had a social and psychological stake in her welfare as well as an economic one. Because the man farmed the woman over a period of years, they developed a personal relationship, at least from her point of view: one limited by his notions of her sex and her kind; one strained because she could never rise to the human if it meant abandoning the female; but it was her best chance to be known, to be regarded with some tenderness or compassion meant for her, one particular woman.
”
”
Andrea Dworkin (Right-Wing Women)
“
Climate Change is caused by human emissions; it moves faster or slower partly in response to our rate of emissions, but also because of natural "tipping points" that make the planet take things in its own hands. So, for example, during one of the last great climactic shifts, the planet may have gone from being fairly warm to an ice age in less than ten years; and then the ice age may have ended in a single season! These things are very hard to model, but projections for the future that imagine Climate Change will occur in a gradual and orderly fashion are probably wrong.
”
”
Sharon Astyk (Depletion & Abundance: Life on the New Home Front)
“
Mr. Wonderful was probably taking his sweet time, right?”
“No, it was actually my fault this morning. I was busy with…paperwork.”
“Oh. Well, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it. What kind of paperwork?”
He smiled. “Nothing important.”
Mr. Kadam held the door for me, and we walked out into an empty hallway. I was just starting to relax at the elevator doors when I heard a hotel room door close. Ren walked down the hall toward us. He’d purchased new clothes. Of course, he looked wonderful. I took a step back from the elevator and tried to avoid eye contact.
Ren wore a brand new pair of dark-indigo, purposely faded, urban-destruction designer jeans. His shirt was long-sleeved, buttoned-down, crisp, oxford-style and was obviously of high quality. It was blue with thin white stripes that matched is eyes perfectly. He’d rolled up the sleeves and left his shirt untucked and open at the collar. It was also an athletic cut, so it fit tightly to his muscular torso, which made me suck in an involuntary breath in appreciation of his male splendor.
He looks like a runway model. How in the world am I going to be able to reject that? The world is so unfair. Seriously, it’s like turning Brad Pitt down for a date. The girl who could actually do it should win an award for idiot of the century.
I again quickly ran through my list of reasons for not being with Ren and said a few “He’s not for me’s.” The good thing about seeing his mouthwatering self and watching him walk around like a regular person was that it tightened my resolve. Yes. It would be hard because he was so unbelievably gorgeous, but it was now even more obvious to me that we didn’t belong together.
As he joined us at the elevator, I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “Figures. The guy is a tiger for three hundred and fifty years and emerges from his curse with expensive taste and keen fashion sense too. Incredible!”
Mr. Kadam asked, “What was that, Miss Kelsey?”
“Nothing.”
Ren raised an eyebrow and smirked.
He probably heard me. Stupid tiger hearing.
The elevator doors opened. I stepped in and moved to the corner hoping to keep Mr. Kadam between the two of us, but unfortunately, Mr. Kadam wasn’t receiving the silent thoughts I was projecting furiously toward him and remained by the elevator buttons. Ren moved next to me and stood too close. He looked me up and down slowly and gave me a knowing smile. We rode down the elevator in silence.
When the doors opened, he stopped me, took the backpack off my shoulder, and threw it over his, leaving me with nothing to carry. He walked ahead next to Mr. Kadam while I trialed along slowly behind, keeping distance between us and a wary eye on his tall frame.
”
”
Colleen Houck (Tiger's Curse (The Tiger Saga, #1))
“
In spite of this newly developed media literacy, however, I’ve also
noticed that it is now an increasingly sexualized ideal that younger and
younger girls are beginning to feel they must live up to. The notorious
Calvin Klein ad campaigns eroticized sixteen-year-olds when I was a
teenager, then eroticized fourteen-year-old models in the early nineties,
then twelve-year-olds in the late nineties. GUESS Jeans ads now pose
what look like nine-year-olds in provocative settings. And the latest fashions for seven- and eightyear-
olds re-create the outfits of pop stars who dress like sex workers.
Is this progress? I doubt it.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
Humans have undoubtedly evolved mechanisms that assess their own mate value relative to others in their social environment. Ancestral environments were populated with relatively small groups of people containing around 50 to 150 individuals. Assessments of relative mate value were probably fairly accurate. One function of accurate assessments would have been to focus attraction tactics on potential mates within their own mate value range. In our current environment, however, the population is substantially larger, and the images to which individuals are exposed through television and the internet show an unprecedented comparison standard. Fashion models and actresses, for example, are often highly physically attractive. Extremely attractive women are a tiny fraction of the population, yet images of these women are presented at a misleadingly high frequency. This might have the effect of artificially lowering women’s judgments of their value as a potential mate relative to competitors in the local pool of potential mates. This, in turn, might escalate intrasexual competition between women or cause them to take drastic measures to try to increase their attractiveness—a possible cause of body image problems, eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, or depression (Faer et al., 2005).
”
”
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
“
Phenomenal Woman
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
”
”
Maya Angelou
“
She was a tall and slender woman, possibly in her early thirties. Her skin had the extraordinary fineness of grain, and the translucence you see in small children and fashion models. In her fine long hands, delicacy of wrists, floating texture of dark hair, and in the mobility of the long narrow sensitive structuring of her face there was the look of something almost too well made, too highly bred, too finely drawn for all the natural crudities of human existence. Her eyes were large and very dark and tilted and set widely. She wore dark Bermuda shorts and sandals and a crisp blue and white blouse, no jewelry of any kind, a sparing touch of lipstick.
”
”
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By)
“
noted Philby’s unique sartorial swagger: “The old Secret Service professionals were given to spats and monocles long after they passed out of fashion,” but the new intake of officers could be seen “slouching about in sweaters and gray flannel trousers, drinking in bars and cafés and low dives … boasting of their underworld acquaintances and liaisons. Philby may be taken as a prototype and was indeed, in the eyes of many of them, a model to be copied.” Elliott began to dress like Philby. He even bought the same expensive umbrella from James Smith & Sons of Oxford Street, an umbrella that befitted an establishment man of the world, but one with panache.
”
”
Ben Macintyre (A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal)
“
If a model did anything too obviously bizarre—flooded the Sahara or tripled interest rates—the programmers would revise the equations to bring the output back in line with expectation. In practice, econometric models proved dismally blind to what the future would bring, but many people who should have known better acted as though they believed in the results. Forecasts of economic growth or unemployment were put forward with an implied precision of two or three decimal places. Governments and financial institutions paid for such predictions and acted on them, perhaps out of necessity or for want of anything better. Presumably they knew that such variables as “consumer optimism” were not as nicely measurable as “humidity” and that the perfect differential equations had not yet been written for the movement of politics and fashion. But few realized how fragile was the very process of modeling flows on computers, even when the data was reasonably trustworthy and the laws were purely physical, as in weather forecasting.
”
”
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
“
When I modeled, it was definitely a bonus, but I did it because it was fun, kept me in the fashion world, and allowed me to meet very creative people. My modeling career has done so much for me. Modeling has given me a completely different group of colleagues and friends who I wouldn’t have known if I just remained a dietitian and mixed with scientists
”
”
Maye Musk (A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success)
“
I mean, let’s face it--I know I’m nothing special. I’m not beauty-pageant perfect like Morgan, or fashion-model gorgeous like Lucy. Unlike Ryder and Nan, I don’t have state-championship trophies lining my walls. My singing voice is only so-so, I can’t draw or play a musical instrument, and if the school plays are any indicator, I can’t act for shit, either.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
I am a proud father in the accomplishments of my son, who fills my heart with joy and my mind with favourable wonderings. He enhances my purpose on this wondrous planet.
Parents, be aware that not only are you a model for your children, but in some fashions they are models for you— taking life easy, with a spirit of adventure. Encourage your kids to be kids!
”
”
Rob Kozak (Finding Fatherhood)
“
The tabloids wanted to know whether the dragon was receiving benefits. The gossip magazines claimed to have found a woman who was bearing the dragon's baby. The fashion magazines did spreads on draconian style. This apparently consisted of gaunt models with sunken eyes, swathed in clouds of chiffon and arranged in awkwardly erotic positions on piles of gold coins.
”
”
Zen Cho (Spirits Abroad)
“
It also must be hard to have a wife like Mrs. Indianapolis. She’s in the fashion industry. She’s not a model or designer, but she is a buyer—not for a retail outlet, but for her four closets, whose combined square footage is probably comparable to Rhode Island. If an article of clothing is leopard print or neon colored, Mrs. Indianapolis either owns it, or soon will.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Gosh, I probably shouldn't publish this.)
“
I know hiding your prejudice behind your ignorance isn’t enough. Because I have been the mom scrambling to provide my four-year-old with a somewhat intelligent, unproblematic answer when he went through a phase of questioning bindis (and fashioning his own replicas out of modeling clay). Ignoring things I don’t understand can’t be an option given that I am guiding the next generation.
”
”
Bellamy Shoffner
“
The "Old-Fashioned Girl" is not intended as a perfect model, but as a possible improvement upon [Page] the Girl of the Period, who seems sorrowfully ignorant or ashamed of the good old fashions which make woman truly beautiful and honored, and, through her, render home what it should be,-a happy place, where parents and children, brothers and sisters, learn to love and know and help one another.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (An Old-Fashioned Girl)
“
Burry did not think investing could be reduced to a formula or learned from any one role model. The more he studied Buffett, the less he thought Buffett could be copied; indeed, the lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual. “If you are going to be a great investor, you have to fit the style to who you are,” Burry said. “At one point I recognized
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
“
The modeling world – and the world at large – is a pretty cruel place. It’s up to you to decide whether or not that turns you into a cruel person as well. Are you going to be mean and selfish because some of the people around you are, or are you going to overcome that and walk away a decent human being? The world gives you every reason in the book to become callous. It’s your job not to become that way as well.
”
”
Abby Rosmarin (I'm Just Here for the Free Scrutiny: One Model's Tale of Insanity and Inanity in the Wonderful World of Fashion)
“
Consumption was understood as a manner of appearing, and that appearance became a staple of nineteenth-century manners. It became rude to eat heartily. It was glamorous to look sickly. “Chopin was tubercular at a time when good health was not chic,” Camille Saint-Saëns wrote in 1913. “It was fashionable to be pale and drained; Princess Belgiojoso strolled along the boulevards … pale as death in person.” Saint-Saëns was right to connect an artist, Chopin, with the most celebrated femme fatale of the period, who did a great deal to popularize the tubercular look. The TB-influenced idea of the body was a new model for aristocratic looks—at a moment when aristocracy stops being a matter of power, and starts being mainly a matter of image. (“One can never be too rich. One can never be too thin,” the Duchess of Windsor once said.) Indeed, the romanticizing of TB is the first widespread example of that distinctively modern activity, promoting the self as an image. The tubercular look had to be considered attractive once it came to be considered a mark of distinction, of breeding. “I cough continually!” Marie Bashkirtsev wrote in the once widely read Journal, which was published, after her death at twenty-four, in 1887. “But for a wonder, far from making me look ugly, this gives me an air of languor that is very becoming.” What was once the fashion for aristocratic femmes fatales and aspiring young artists became, eventually, the province of fashion as such. Twentieth-century women’s fashions (with their cult of thinness) are the last stronghold of the metaphors associated with the romanticizing of TB in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
”
”
Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors)
“
At a newsstand, Owen read a German newspaper while Vivie and I paged through the Hungarian fashion magazines, and discussed how the models looked less tormented than models in American magazines. “Maybe it’s like how, in cultures where everyone is starving, the standard of beauty is less skinny,” Vivie said. We both looked for a moment at the confident Hungarian women, each of whom knew tens of thousands of the words closest to Ivan.
”
”
Elif Batuman (The Idiot)
“
in Ambiguum 42, where he describes the distinctive but connected origins of body and soul, and their synthesis in a single human species, and more importantly, the assumption by the New Adam of the first Adam’s soul-body constitution.40 In the incarnation, the Logos who created universal humanity fashioned his own manhood in a (prelapsarian) Adamic perfection; he himself modeled the perfect co-existence of intelligent soul and material body.
”
”
Maximus the Confessor (On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ)
“
In northwest Seattle, there is an immensely popular 'old-fashioned' ice cream parlor. It is modern, spotless, and gleaming, bursting with comfortable looking people on a warm summer evening. The parlor is dedicated to nostalgia, from the old-time decor to the striped candy, the ragtime music, the costumes of the smiling young waiters, the Gibson-girl menu with its gold-rush type, and the open-handed hospitality of the Old West. It serves sandwiches, hamburgers, and kiddie 'samiches,' but its specialty is ice-cream concoctions, all of them with special names, including several so vast and elaborate that they cost several dollars and arrive with so much fanfare that all other activities stop as the waiters join in a procession as guards of honor. Nobody seems to care that the sandwiches and even the ice cream dishes have a curious blandness, so that everything tastes rather alike and it is hard to remember what one has eaten. Nothing mars the insistent, bright, wholesome good humor that presses on every side. Yet somehow there is pathos as well. For these patrons are the descendants of pioneers, of people who knew the frontiers, of men who dared the hardships of Chilkoot Pass to seek gold in the Klondike. That is their heritage, but now they only sit amid a sterile model of the past, spooning ice cream while piped-in ragtime tinkles unheard.
”
”
Charles A. Reich (The Greening of America)
“
Or, so I thought it could all make sense if I felt it all the way through, no matter which direction or sense of purpose. What started me on this insane path to begin with? Women, death or luck; perhaps all three
I knew that much, this nuke dream filled with silver wet screens. California was on fire, my heart was racing and I thought it was still about to make sense at any moment until I was a tidal wave of matrix information approaching the beach I stood upon.
”
”
Brandon Villasenor (Prima Materia (Radiance Hotter than Shade, #1))
“
The example cited most often was a gradual change in eye color among Moirans. Eve Moira’s eyes had been hazel: relatively light in color by the standards of black people, but not all that unusual. By the end of the Second Millennium, many Moirans had eyes so pale in color as to appear golden in strong light. On the walls of the Great Chain’s fashion stores, blown up to ten times life size, Moiran fashion models still gazed at you through shockingly yellow, catlike eyes. Because pale eyes had been a distinctive characteristic of Eve Moira, it had become thought of as beautiful and desirable, and Moirans with pale eyes had found it easier to mate and reproduce, intensifying the trait over time, to the point of caricature. Kath Two herself, no model, was frequently complimented on the lightness of her eyes, which were closer to green than yellow. But modern, appearance-conscious Moirans were frequently startled when they saw photographs of their Eve with her eyes that were merely greenish-brown.
”
”
Neal Stephenson (Seveneves)
“
Some had said that they could not write because of military censorship, but the fact was that, war or no war, they had not the slightest idea how to write honestly on any subject. Truth or real feeling in writing had nothing to do with censorship. In whatever period these gentry had happened to live, their personalities would have been bound to display the same emptiness. They changed in accordance with the prevailing fashion and took for their models expression culled from popular novels of the day.
”
”
Ango Sakaguchi
“
Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.
”
”
John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
“
Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.).
However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures.
Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc.
If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field.
Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice.
Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
The non-event is not when nothing happens.
It is, rather, the realm of perpetual change, of a ceaseless updating, of an incessant succession in real time, which produces this general equivalence, this indifference, this banality that characterizes the zero degree of the event.
A perpetual escalation that is also the escalation of growth - or of fashion, which is pre-eminently the field of compulsive change and built-in obsolescence. The ascendancy of models gives rise to a culture of difference that puts an end to any historical continuity. Instead of unfolding as part of a history, things have begun to succeed each other in the void. A profusion of language and images before which we are defenceless, reduced to the same powerlessness, to the same paralysis as we might show on the approach of war.
It isn't a question of disinformation or brainwashing. It was a naIve error on the part of the FBI to attempt to create a Disinformation Agency for purposes of managed manipulation - a wholly useless undertaking, since disinformation comes from the very profusion of information, from its incantation, its looped repetition, which creates an empty perceptual field, a space shattered as though by a neutron bomb or by one of those devices that sucks in all the oxygen from the area of impact. It's a space where everything is pre-neutralized, including war, by the precession of images and commentaries, but this is perhaps because there is at bottom nothing to say about something that unfolds, like this war, to a relentless scenario, without a glimmer of uncertainty regarding the final outcome.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact (Talking Images))
“
The social pyramid established during the Pyramid Age in the Fertile Crescent continued to be the model for every civilized society, long after the building of these geometric tombs ceased to be fashionable. At the top stood a minority, swollen by pride and power, headed by the king and his supporting ministers, nobles, military leaders, and priests. This minority's main social obligation was control of the megamachine, in either its wealth-producing or its illth-producing form. Apart from this, their only burden was the 'duty to consume.' In this respect the oldest rulers were the prototypes of the style-setters and taste-makers of our own over-mechanized mass society.
”
”
Lewis Mumford (Technics and Human Development (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 1))
“
Esperanza Impossible Sonnet 18
Clothes or the lack of it, don't make,
A person obscene, only behavior does.
Who are you to judge someone's expression,
But, here there are plenty grey areas!
Problem is, when obscenity becomes expression,
Misbehavior is deemed declaration of independence.
Too many people confuse attention with admiration,
And a stunt as some wonderful achievement.
Accepting obscenity as freedom of expression,
Is like showing tolerance to intolerance.
Posing butt naked on instagram, unless you're pornstar,
Is like barging into capitol with a flag confederate.
We must find a balance between comfort and conscience.
Civilization falls apart when we can't tell the difference.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence)
“
IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream—my vision—was in place. The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one. From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one
”
”
Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
“
Suddenly she came racing into the lounge. She wore one of my big blue towels in sarong fashion, and had a white towel wrapped around her head. Her face looked narrow and intent. Her features looked more pointed. “That last trip,” she said. “I don’t know if it will help. We stopped at some sort of a boat yard in Miami. I can’t even remember the name. Something about a new generator. He kept complaining about the noise the generator made. They took up the hatches and got down in the bilge and did a lot of measuring. The man said it would take a long time to get the one Junior Allen wanted. It made him angry. But he ordered it anyway. He left a down payment on it. He ordered some kind of new model that had just been introduced.
”
”
John D. MacDonald (The Deep Blue Good-By)
“
Daniel opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a bell-sleeved shirt that was tiny enough to have fit Trixie when she was eight. Had she ever worn this in public?
He sank down onto the floor, holding the shirt, wondering if all this had been his own fault. He'd forbidden Trixie to buy certain clothes, like the pants she had had on last night, in fact, and that she must have purchased and hidden from him.
You saw outfits like those in fashion magazines, outfits so revealing they bordered on porn, in Daniel's opinion. Women glanced at those photo spreads and wished they looked that way, men glanced at them and wished for women who looked that way, and the sad reality was that most of those models were not women at all, but girls about Trixie's age.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (The Tenth Circle)
“
Suzanne rolled her eyes. “I didn’t mean you were modeling kites, George,” she explained. “I just meant that in a fashion show, everyone takes a turn walking down the runway. When one person finishes, the next one goes.” “You mean take turns,” Manny said. Suzanne nodded. “Exactly.” “Why didn’t you just say that?” Kevin asked. “Because then it wouldn’t have been a Suzanne idea,” Katie told the boys. The kids all laughed. That was true. Suzanne definitely had her own way of saying things. “How will we know who wins the contest if the kites don’t fly at the same time?” Manny asked. “Dudes, you’re all winners,” Mr. G. assured the boys. “You made kites that are designed to fly high for a long time.” “Yeah, that’s true,” Jeremy said. “We’re the kings of kites,” George agreed
”
”
Nancy E. Krulik (Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow! (Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo, #34))
“
Why would a semi-nude woman walking down the street — and the society around her — have a problem with a woman wearing a hijab? Because, deep down, both she and society are aware: silently, countless eyes are undressing her, treating her as a sexual object, looking at her as a showpiece of sex. It's not just about religion. It's a matter of an inferiority complex — something that, somewhere deep inside, feels like a quiet shame imposed on her dignity by her own choice of clothing and fashion. And so, for the sake of self-satisfaction, they want to snatch the hijab from another woman — a woman who chose the hijab just as another chooses semi-nude fashion. The woman in hijab pays the price for refusing to participate in the shame society and fashion tries to impose on her.
”
”
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
“
She cannot help but see a lifespan as a journey, indeed as a pilgrimage. This isn’t fashionable these days, but it’s her way of seeing. A life has a destination, an ending, a last saying. She is perplexed and exercised by the way that now, in the twenty-first century, we seem to be inventing innumerable ways of postponing the sense of arrival, the sense of arriving at a proper ending. Her inspections of evolving models of residential care and care homes for the elderly have made her aware of the infinitely clever and complex and inhumane delays and devices we create to avoid and deny death, to avoid fulfilling our destiny and arriving at our destination. And the result, in so many cases, has been that we arrive there not in good spirits, as we say our last farewells and greet the afterlife, but senseless, incontinent, demented, medicated into amnesia, aphasia, indignity.
”
”
Margaret Drabble (The Dark Flood Rises)
“
Yet the letter was not addressed to my mistress, but to another person in the building whose name was different but had been mistaken for hers. The letter was written not in a coded format but in poor French, because it had been written by an American lady, who was indeed one of Saint-Loup’s friends, as he informed me himself. And the strange way in which this American lady formed some of her letters had given the appearance of a nickname to a perfectly authentic but foreign surname. I had therefore been entirely wrong in my suspicions that day. But the intellectual framework that had linked these facts together in my mind did provide a perfectly correct and unanswerable model for the truth when my mistress (who at the time had been thinking of spending her whole life with me) did leave me three months later, for it happened in a fashion absolutely identical to the way I had imagined on the previous occasion.
”
”
Marcel Proust (The Fugitive: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 6 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition))
“
Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own
”
”
John Stuart Mill
“
Preachers and counselors can spend their energy exhorting people to change their behavior. But the human will is not a free entity. It is bound to a person’s understanding. People will do what they believe. Rather than making a concerted effort to influence choices, preachers first need to be influencing minds. When a person understands who Christ is, on what basis he is worthwhile, and what life is all about, he has the formulation necessary for any sustained change in lifestyle. Christians who try to “live right” without correcting a wrong understanding about how to meet personal needs will always labor and struggle with Christianity, grinding out their responsible duty in a joyless, strained fashion. Christ taught that when we know the truth, we can be set free. We now are free to choose the life of obedience because we understand that in Christ we now are worthwhile persons. We are free to express our gratitude in the worship and service of the One who has met our needs.
”
”
Larry Crabb (Effective Biblical Counseling: A Model for Helping Caring Christians Become Capable Counselors)
“
Bust magazine, back when it was a more outwardly feminist publication, used to ask each of their female interview subjects whether or not they identified as feminist. In 2005, the musician Björk said no, and that interview is still used in these online lists as of this year. Björk is a female artist often credited with being one of the most innovative and daring musicians of her generation, regardless of gender. She has collaborated with and supported women musicians, fashion designers, video directors. She has spoken frankly and openly in interviews about the difficulties of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. She has proven herself to be an exemplary human being and creator, and she is a tremendous role model for young aspiring musicians. If we understand that the problem feminists have with Björk has nothing to do with her actions and is only about her language and way of identifying herself, then we can recognize that this is about a feminist marketing campaign and not a philosophy. Compare
”
”
Jessa Crispin (Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto)
“
Terror is an artery.
Running unfailing channels of bloodied thoroughfares by dint of the wilds beyond our knowing. Fluctuations and murmurs are audible within the splintered leeway of our preserve as a consequence of interstices modeled in such brutality. This appended artery offers no direction; idle and at times desultory. Bloodstained tracks and avenues guide casualties.
Terror, like death, is not complicated, nor is it simple. It is but routine—natural. To call it otherwise is to parsimoniously say that birth is effortless, hurricanes are facile, and earthquakes are meek when they are a lot more.
Myths, parables, and allegories lie in the construct of terror. Kings have fallen and succeeded in the yarns of terror. Simple men have been turned into heroes due to terror. Villains have been great orchestrators in the art of terror, allowing sole individuals and denizens to feel their makings. A soul never needed God to feel terror. The most nihilistic can undergo such a dreadful emotion. Animals are perfect examples of this. They are well-equipped creations to the world of terror and death, holding no cognizance to deity or creator.
Terror is quite exclusive as it is a function of the mind, conducted by the intersections and throughways of nerves and bounded to that alone. Although it approaches with university, like hunger or sickness, it is selfish by fashion and segregating in nature. But death is quite opposite… death is all embracing. Disregarded and glossed over, it is never reserved or inaudible, especially if you listen hard enough.
Death transmits a signal that can be discerned if you listen hard enough. Frail in birthing, the airing is not limited to the clairvoyant, though they are a standard audience. The most simple-minded can hear this. But they choose to ignore it for whatever grounds. Even in the obviousness of it when it comes in dream, awaking its public in night terrors and cold sweats, it should be heeded.
In lurk of dark uncertainties the signal should be adhered in this societal horrific caprice.
Death is a declaration waiting to broadcast the haunting awareness of our own deterrence.
And within these pages is its proclamation.
”
”
J.C. Whitfield
“
per hour. Handbrake knew that he could keep up with the best of them. Ambassadors might look old-fashioned and slow, but the latest models had Japanese engines. But he soon learned to keep it under seventy. Time and again, as his competitors raced up behind him and made their impatience known by the use of their horns and flashing high beams, he grudgingly gave way, pulling into the slow lane among the trucks, tractors and bullock carts. Soon, the lush mustard and sugarcane fields of Haryana gave way to the scrub and desert of Rajasthan. Four hours later, they reached the rocky hills surrounding the Pink City, passing in the shadow of the Amber Fort with its soaring ramparts and towering gatehouse. The road led past the Jal Mahal palace, beached on a sandy lake bed, into Jaipur’s ancient quarter. It was almost noon and the bazaars along the city’s crenellated walls were stirring into life. Beneath faded, dusty awnings, cobblers crouched, sewing sequins and gold thread onto leather slippers with curled-up toes. Spice merchants sat surrounded by heaps of lal mirch, haldi and ground jeera, their colours as clean and sharp as new watercolor paints. Sweets sellers lit the gas under blackened woks of oil and prepared sticky jalebis. Lassi vendors chipped away at great blocks of ice delivered by camel cart. In front of a few of the shops, small boys, who by law should have been at school, swept the pavements, sprinkling them with water to keep down the dust. One dragged a doormat into the road where the wheels of passing vehicles ran over it, doing the job of carpet beaters. Handbrake honked his way through the light traffic as they neared the Ajmeri Gate, watching the faces that passed by his window: skinny bicycle rickshaw drivers, straining against the weight of fat aunties; wild-eyed Rajasthani men with long handlebar moustaches and sun-baked faces almost as bright as their turbans; sinewy peasant women wearing gold nose rings and red glass bangles on their arms; a couple of pink-faced goras straining under their backpacks; a naked sadhu, his body half covered in ash like a caveman. Handbrake turned into the old British Civil Lines, where the roads were wide and straight and the houses and gardens were set well apart. Ajay Kasliwal’s residence was number
”
”
Tarquin Hall (The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri, #1))
“
What is a “pyramid?” I grew up in real estate my entire life. My father built one of the largest real estate brokerage companies on the East Coast in the 1970s, before selling it to Merrill Lynch. When my brother and I graduated from college, we both joined him in building a new real estate company. I went into sales and into opening a few offices, while my older brother went into management of the company. In sales, I was able to create a six-figure income. I worked 60+ hours a week in such pursuit. My brother worked hard too, but not in the same fashion. He focused on opening offices and recruiting others to become agents to sell houses for him. My brother never listed and sold a single house in his career, yet he out-earned me 10-to-1. He made millions because he earned a cut of every commission from all the houses his 1,000+ agents sold. He worked smarter, while I worked harder. I guess he was at the top of the “pyramid.” Is this legal? Should he be allowed to earn more than any of the agents who worked so hard selling homes? I imagine everyone will agree that being a real estate broker is totally legal. Those who are smart, willing to take the financial risk of overhead, and up for the challenge of recruiting good agents, are the ones who get to live a life benefitting from leveraged Income. So how is Network Marketing any different? I submit to you that I found it to be a step better. One day, a friend shared with me how he was earning the same income I was, but that he was doing so from home without the overhead, employees, insurance, stress, and being subject to market conditions. He was doing so in a network marketing business. At first I refuted him by denouncements that he was in a pyramid scheme. He asked me to explain why. I shared that he was earning money off the backs of others he recruited into his downline, not from his own efforts. He replied, “Do you mean like your family earns money off the backs of the real estate agents in your company?” I froze, and anyone who knows me knows how quick-witted I normally am. Then he said, “Who is working smarter, you or your dad and brother?” Now I was mad. Not at him, but at myself. That was my light bulb moment. I had been closed-minded and it was costing me. That was the birth of my enlightenment, and I began to enter and study this network marketing profession. Let me explain why I found it to be a step better. My research led me to learn why this business model made so much sense for a company that wanted a cost-effective way to bring a product to market. Instead of spending millions in traditional media ad buys, which has a declining effectiveness, companies are opting to employ the network marketing model. In doing so, the company only incurs marketing cost if and when a sale is made. They get an army of word-of-mouth salespeople using the most effective way of influencing buying decisions, who only get paid for performance. No salaries, only commissions. But what is also employed is a high sense of motivation, wherein these salespeople can be building a business of their own and not just be salespeople. If they choose to recruit others and teach them how to sell the product or service, they can earn override income just like the broker in a real estate company does. So now they see life through a different lens, as a business owner waking up each day excited about the future they are building for themselves. They are not salespeople; they are business owners.
”
”
Brian Carruthers (Building an Empire:The Most Complete Blueprint to Building a Massive Network Marketing Business)
“
New sciences developed, based on observation of the real world, rather than speculation. Rational thought was valued over inspiration, and logic over magic. All the natural world was closely observed and recorded by self-styled "scientists" who thought that the rich diversity in nature would be understood by being defined and categorized. The diversity of human beings, the one human body, that could have both male and female qualities, and change from female to male, did not fit this new hunger for precise and limited labeling. The new philosophers decided that there were only two sexes, fixed and unchanging, completely opposite, male and female, normal and other. They saw this simple binary model because they favored it. They found it because they looked for it, because it fitted their ideas of male and female status. When they saw behaviors or nature that did not support a rigid binary model, they explained them away. The changing sex of the developing fetus, the presence of all the sex organs in early development was ignored. Two sexes, completely opposite, were never a genuine observation, supported by all the other evidence, but an intellectual fashion, in all modernizing Europe thought, invented to explain and justify sexual inequality.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History)
“
Hinayana Buddhism also teaches meditation practice based on "insight into impurity." But what is impurity? Let us say a beautiful woman appear, perhaps a very famous model or actress. She has very beautiful makeup on, and her hair is styled very fashionably. She is wearing beautiful clothes and has very expensive perfume on. She has a big diamond necklace, maybe ten carats. Everybody sees her and thinks, "Oh, she is wonderful! So beautiful!" Maybe some man will kill another man in order to sleep with her every day. But inside she has shit. On the outside, she is truly very beautiful; but inside, she is carrying two or three pounds of shit around with her wherever she goes. Even though she may have beautiful clothes, and sweet perfume, and a shiny diamond necklace, and wonderful makeup to cover this shit, everybody understands that that shit-thing inside is not beautiful, you know? Everybody sees these beautiful things on the outside, and they forget for some time about this shit. They are deluded by temporary appearance of her body and makeup and clothes and diamonds. They don't see that what they crave is deeply marked with impurity. This is humans' basic delusion: our desire and attachment leads us to crave and covet things that cannot help out lives.
”
”
Seung Sahn (The Compass of Zen (Shambhala Dragon Editions))
“
The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food.
This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered womanly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating a lot, to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.
”
”
Padma Lakshmi (Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir)
“
I conceive a strip miner to be a model exploiter, and as a model nurturer I take the old-fashioned idea or ideal of a farmer. The exploiter is a specialist, an expert; the nurturer is not. The standard of the exploiter is efficiency; the standard of the nurturer is care. The exploiter’s goal is money, profit; the nurturer’s goal is health—his land’s health, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s. Whereas the exploiter asks of a piece of land only how much and how quickly it can be made to produce, the nurturer asks a question that is much more complex and difficult: What is its carrying capacity? (That is: How much can be taken from it without diminishing it? What can it produce dependably for an indefinite time?) The exploiter wishes to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer expects, certainly, to have a decent living from his work, but his characteristic wish is to work as well as possible. The competence of the exploiter is in organization; that of the nurturer is in order—a human order, that is, that accommodates itself both to other order and to mystery. The exploiter typically serves an institution or organization; the nurturer serves land, household, community, place. The exploiter thinks in terms of numbers, quantities, “hard facts”; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.
”
”
Wendell Berry (The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry)
“
IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream—my vision—was in place. The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one. From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one Now,
”
”
Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
“
All of this, undoubtedly, follows from an extremely potent and persuasive model of freedom, one that would not have risen to such dominance in our culture if it did not give us a sense of liberty from arbitrary authority, and of limitless inner possibilities, and of profound personal dignity. There is nothing contemptible in this, and there is no simple, obvious moral reproach to be brought against it. Nevertheless, as I have said, it is a model of freedom whose ultimate horizon is, quite literally, nothing. Moreover, if the will determines itself principally in and through the choices it makes, then it too, at some very deep level, must also be nothing: simply a pure movement of spontaneity, motive without motive, absolute potentiality, giving birth to itself. A God beyond us or a stable human nature within us would confine our decisions within certain inescapable channels; and so at some, usually unconscious level—whatever else we may believe—we stake ourselves entirely upon the absence of either. Those of us who now, in the latter days of modernity, are truest to the wisdom and ethos of our age place ourselves not at the disposal of God, or the gods, or the Good, but before an abyss, over which presides the empty power of our isolated wills, whose decisions are their own moral index. This is what it means to have become perfect consumers: the original nothing ness of the will gives itself shape by the use it makes of the nothingness of the world—and thus we are free.
”
”
David Bentley Hart (Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies)
“
I once heard a story about Tom Watson, the founder of IBM. Asked to what he attributed the phenomenal success of IBM, he is said to have answered: IBM is what it is today for three special reasons. The first reason is that, at the very beginning, I had a very clear picture of what the company would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream—my vision—was in place. The second reason was that once I had that picture, I then asked myself how a company which looked like that would have to act. I then created a picture of how IBM would act when it was finally done. The third reason IBM has been so successful was that once I had a picture of how IBM would look when the dream was in place and how such a company would have to act, I then realized that, unless we began to act that way from the very beginning, we would never get there. In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one. From the very outset, IBM was fashioned after the template of my vision. And each and every day we attempted to model the company after that template. At the end of each day, we asked ourselves how well we did, discovered the disparity between where we were and where we had committed ourselves to be, and, at the start of the following day, set out to make up for the difference. Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business. We didn’t do business at IBM, we built one Now,
”
”
Michael E. Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It)
“
In 1972, Sara Kapp had been living for some time at Karmê Chöling without daring to ask to speak to Chögyam Trungpa. But when a New York modeling agency wanted to sign her as a model, she decided to ask his advice. Posing in front of the camera all day did not seem appropriate for someone who was trying to cut through her ego.
Chögyam Trungpa asked her why she wanted to become a model. She explained how she had experienced some difficulty in sticking to any one thing after finishing college. So she thought that maybe picking out something for a few years might be beneficial.
If that is the reason, he replied, then there’s no problem. He encouraged her to follow her career, and as she continued to hesitate, he told her: “The only obstacle I can see is if you do this work hoping to earn lots of money or to be on the cover of Vogue. That would be sad, because you’d be losing youself in the future. It’s a real shame when people regret not having enough money, or having missed a career opportunity, because they are then fixing themselves in the past. It’s very, very sad.” Then staring into her eyes, he repeated: “It’s very, very, very sad because that way we miss out on the present, and the present is marvelous.” She went on to become one of the best-known runway models of her day. For a period of time, one could find mannequins of Sara Kapp in Saks and other epxensive department stores throughout the United States. Her last major modeling contract was as the first Princes Borghese for Revlon. She now works behind the scenes in the fashion industry in Milan.
”
”
Fabrice Midal (Chogyam Trungpa: His Life and Vision)
“
When I first started coming to the seminar, Gelfand had a young physicist, Vladimir Kazakov, present a series of talks about his work on so-called matrix models. Kazakov used methods of quantum physics in a novel way to obtain deep mathematical results that mathematicians could not obtain by more conventional methods. Gelfand had always been interested in quantum physics, and this topic had traditionally played a big role at his seminar. He was particularly impressed with Kazakov’s work and was actively promoting it among mathematicians. Like many of his foresights, this proved to be golden: a few years later this work became famous and fashionable, and it led to many important advances in both physics and math. In his lectures at the seminar, Kazakov was making an admirable effort to explain his ideas to mathematicians. Gelfand was more deferential to him than usual, allowing him to speak without interruptions longer than other speakers. While these lectures were going on, a new paper arrived, by John Harer and Don Zagier, in which they gave a beautiful solution to a very difficult combinatorial problem.6 Zagier has a reputation for solving seemingly intractable problems; he is also very quick. The word was that the solution of this problem took him six months, and he was very proud of that. At the next seminar, as Kazakov was continuing his presentation, Gelfand asked him to solve the Harer–Zagier problem using his work on the matrix models. Gelfand had sensed that Kazakov’s methods could be useful for solving this kind of problem, and he was right. Kazakov was unaware of the Harer–Zagier paper, and this was the first time he heard this question. Standing at the blackboard, he thought about it for a couple of minutes and immediately wrote down the Lagrangian of a quantum field theory that would lead to the answer using his methods. Everyone in the audience was stunned.
”
”
Edward Frenkel (Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality)
“
God’s Message to Women When I created the heavens and the earth, I spoke them into being. When I created man, I formed him and breathed life into his nostrils. But you, woman, I fashioned after I breathed the breath of life into man because your nostrils are too delicate. I allowed a deep sleep to come over him so I could patiently fashion you. Man was put to sleep so he could not interfere with the creativity. From one bone I fashioned you, and I chose the bone that protects man’s life. I chose the rib, which protects his heart and lungs and supports him as you are meant to do. Around this one bone, I shaped and modeled you. I created you perfectly and beautifully. Your characteristics are as the rib, strong yet delicate and fragile. You provide protection for the most delicate organ in man, his heart. His heart is the center of his being; his lungs hold the breath of life. The rib cage will allow itself to be broken before it will allow damage to the heart. Support man as the rib cage supports the body. You were not taken from his feet to be under him, nor were you taken from his head to be above him. You were taken from his side to be held close as you stand beside him. I have caressed your face in your deepest sleep. I have held your heart close to Mine. Adam walked with Me in the cool of the day and yet he was lonely. He could not see or touch Me but could only feel My presence. So I fashioned in you everything I wanted Adam to share and experience with Me: My holiness, My strength, My purity, My love, My protection and support. You are special because you are an extension of Me. Man represents My image–woman My emotions. Together, you represent the totality of God. So man, treat woman well. Love and respect her, for she is fragile. In hurting her, you hurt Me. In crushing her, you only damage your own heart. Woman, support man. In humility, show him the power of emotion I have placed within you. In gentle quietness show your strength. In love, show him that you are the rib that protects his inner self. —Author Unknown
”
”
Ruth Harvey (Desired by the King)
“
Some think that money and what it can buy will make
them happy and so concentrate on earning it. But acquiring
a better car, a nicer house, a better position, or more
comfort will never satisfy them, for they are filled with the
desire to have more. For example, some people have a
passion for cars. It is very important that their car is a good
make and the latest model; it has to have good engineering
and a quality music system. They grow very emotionally
attached to their auto and do not want it to have the
slightest dent or scratch. But their satisfaction from driving
a nice car does not last long. Soon a new model comes
out, and theirs becomes an outdated model. It pains them
to read that a faster car with more accessories and more
advanced engineering is now on the market, and in an
instant moment they lose all the pleasure they had in their
once-coveted possession. Also, their wardrobe becomes a
major problem for ignorant people. Some people want to
follow the latest clothing fashions, even though they may
not have enough money to do so. They buy an outfit that
they like and find attractive, but stop liking it when it goes
out of style or they see it on someone they do not like or,
even worse, a rival. The outfit abruptly loses its appeal and
becomes a source of irritation. In much the same way, seeing
someone wearing nicer clothing than theirs makes
them quite miserable. No matter how nice their own outfits
are, they are worried that they are no more than ordinary,
which makes then unhappy. Their habits, social activities,
material means, or possessions will not make them happy,
and their constant search for more will make them even
more miserable. When they realize that they have really
consumed and wasted all of this life’s pleasures, they generally
get “angry at life.” Unwilling to solve their problems
through belief, they remain mired in confusion and unhappiness.
Therefore, in spite of all their efforts, they remain
confused and unhappy. However, if they practiced religious
morality, they would have a joy deeper than they
could imagine.
”
”
Harun Yahya (Those Who Exhaust All Their Pleasures In This Life)
“
For a moment we just sit there silently, our heads tipped back as we stare at the sky. A minute passes, maybe two. And then Ryder’s hand grazes mine before settling on the ground, our pinkies touching.
I suck in a breath, my entire body going rigid. I’m wondering if he realizes it, if he even knows he’s touching me, when just like that, he draws away.
Ryder clears his throat. “So…I hear you’re going out with Patrick on Friday.”
“And?” I ask. That brief connection that we’d shared is suddenly gone--poof, just like that.
“And what?” he answers with a shrug.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve got an opinion on this--one you’re just dying to share.” Because Ryder has an opinion on everything.
“Well, it’s just that Patrick…” He shakes his head. “Never mind. Forget I brought it up.”
“No, go on. It’s just that Patrick what?”
“Seriously, Jemma. It’s none of my business.”
“C’mon, Ryder, get it out of your system. What? Patrick is looking to get a piece? Is using me? Is planning on standing me up?” I can’t help myself; the words just tumble out.
“I was going to say that I think he really likes you,” he says, his voice flat.
I bite back my retort, forcing myself to take a deep, calming breath instead. That was not what I had expected him to say--not at all--and it takes me completely by surprise. Patrick really likes me? I’m not sure how I feel about that--not sure I want it to be true.
“What do you mean, he really likes me?” I ask stupidly.
“Just what I said. It’s pretty simple stuff, Jemma. He likes you. I think he always has.”
“And you know this how?”
He levels a stare at me. “Trust me on this, okay? He’s got problems, sure, but he’s a decent guy. Don’t break his heart.”
I scramble to my feet. “I agreed to go out with him--once. And I’m probably going to cancel, anyway, because after today’s news, I’m really not in the mood. But the last thing I need is dating advice from you.”
“How come every conversation we have ends like this--with you going off on me? You didn’t use to be like this. What happened?”
He’s right, and I hate myself for it--hate the way he makes me feel inside, as if I’m not good enough. I mean, let’s face it--I know I’m nothing special. I’m not beauty-pageant perfect like Morgan, or fashion-model gorgeous like Lucy. Unlike Ryder and Nan, I don’t have state-championship trophies lining my walls. My singing voice is only so-so, I can’t draw or play a musical instrument, and if the school plays are any indicator, I can’t act for shit, either.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
If the symbolic father is often lurking behind the boss--which is why one speaks of 'paternalism' in various kinds of enterprises--there also often is, in a most concrete fashion, a boss or hierarchic superior behind the real father. In the unconscious, paternal functions are inseparable from the socio-professional and cultural involvements which sustain them. Behind the mother, whether real or symbolic, a certain type of feminine condition exists, in a socially defined imaginary context. Must I point out that children do not grow up cut off from the world, even within the family womb? The family is permeable to environmental forces and exterior influences. Collective infrastructures, like the media and advertising, never cease to interfere with the most intimate levels of subjective life. The unconscious is not something that exists by itself to be gotten hold of through intimate discourse. In fact, it is only a rhizome of machinic interactions, a link to power systems and power relations that surround us. As such, unconscious processes cannot be analyzed in terms of specific content or structural syntax, but rather in terms of enunciation, of collective enunciative arrangements, which, by definition, correspond neither to biological individuals nor to structural paradigms...
The customary psychoanalytical family-based reductions of the unconscious are not 'errors.' They correspond to a particular kind of collective enunciative arrangement. In relation to unconscious formation, they proceed from the particular micropolitics of capitalistic societal organization. An overly diversified, overly creative machinic unconscious would exceed the limits of 'good behavior' within the relations of production founded upon social exploitation and segregation. This is why our societies grant a special position to those who specialize in recentering the unconscious onto the individuated subject, onto partially reified objects, where methods of containment prevent its expansion beyond dominant realities and significations. The impact of the scientific aspirations of techniques like psychoanalysis and family therapy should be considered as a gigantic industry for the normalization, adaption and organized division of the socius.
The workings of the social division of labor, the assignment of individuals to particular productive tasks, no longer depend solely on means of direct coercion, or capitalistic systems of semiotization (the monetary remuneration based on profit, etc.). They depend just as fundamentally on techniques modeling the unconscious through social infrastructures, the mass media, and different psychological and behavioral devices...Even the outcome of the class struggle of the oppressed--the fact that they constantly risk being sucked into relations of domination--appears to be linked to such a perspective.
”
”
Félix Guattari (Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977)
“
Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons.
Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common.
Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May.
Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923.
As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.
”
”
Hank Bracker