Fisher Of Men Quotes

Handsome, fictional men were so much easier to stomach than real life ones who smelled of Christmas and looked like a Calvin Klein model

Newsflash: it's not the guy who determines whether you're a sports fisher or a keeper-it's you. (Don't hate the player, hate the game.) When a man approaches you you're the one with total control over the situation-whether he can talk to you, buy you a drink, dance with you, get your number, take you home, see you again, all of that. We certainly want these things from you; that's why we talked to you in the first place. But it's you who decides if you're going to give us any of the things we want, and how, exactly, we're going to get them. Where you stand in our eyes is dictated by YOUR control over the situation. Every word you say, every move you make, every signal you give to a man will help him determine whether he should try to play you, be straight with you, or move on to the next woman to do a little more sport fishing.

The most wonderful thing in life is to be delirious and the most wonderful kind of delirium is being in love. In the morning mist, hazy and amorous, London was delirious. London squinted as it floated along, milky pink, without caring where it was going.

The crew was mostly men. That's how it was and that's pretty much how it still is. It's a man's world & show business is a man's meal with women generously sprinkled through it like over-qualified spice.

Men don't need linguistic talent; they just need courage and words.

Please, enlighten me, Tom. What exactly did you observe?” “That men fly to you like a bug to a zapper.” “Lovely. That’s a lovely analogy. Yes, I’m a man-eater, Tom.

Ice cream was reliable. Young men were not.

That's why you got married - to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul.

Women are stuck in a cycle of insecurity perpetuated by the way men treat them, and we are constantly fighting to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are okay.

Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.

Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That's what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product.

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

Handsome, fictional men were so much easier to stomach then real life ones.

But there are no men here,” said Mrs. Wilkins, “so how can it be improper? Have you noticed,” she inquired of Mrs. Fisher, who endeavoured to pretend she did not hear, “How difficult it is to be improper without men?

We are chained hand and foot by protocol, enslaved to a static, empty world where men and women can’t read, where the scientific advances of the ages are the preserve of the rich, where artists and poets are doomed to endless repetitions and sterile reworking of past masterpieces. Nothing is new. New does not exist. Nothing changes, nothing grows, evolves, develops. Time has stopped. Progress is forbidden

Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's mercy, then it's his gift of making us unable to lie.

...one of those unfortunate women who did not find nice men interesting. She found undesirables desirable. She sought out unpleasant boyfriends, then complained about them as though the government had allocated them to her.

It is easy to think of potatoes, and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety. Potatoes are one of the last things to disappear, in times of war, which is probably why they should not be forgotten in times of peace.

A woman shouldn’t have to do that. She should feel safe in her marriage. That’s why you got married — to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul.

There is intimacy in quiet, in being with another person and not needing to say anything.

There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.

...sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.

Too many Christians are no longer fishers of men, but the keepers of the aquarium.

Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often.

It's convenient how men get to sign their names to these little creations without doing much more than having an orgasm and assembling a crib.

The sun's champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of the grass, covered by a raspberry umbrella. Only their feet and a little bit of lace could be seen. In the magnificent universe beneath the raspberry umbrella, with closed eyes, they drank in the sparkling madness. 'Extra! Extra! Zeppelins over the North Sea at 3 o'clock.' But under the umbrella, in the raspberry universe, they were immortal. What did it matter that in another far-away universe people would be killing each other?

Love is the divine Mother's arms; when those arms are spread, every soul falls into them. The Sufis of all ages have been known for their beautiful personality. It does not mean that among them there have not been people with great powers, wonderful powers and wisdom. But beyond all that, what is most known of the Sufis is the human side of their nature: that tact which attuned them to wise and foolish, to poor and rich, to strong and weak -- to all. They met everyone on his own plane, they spoke to everyone in his own language. What did Jesus teach when he said to the fishermen, 'Come hither, I will make you fishers of men?' It did not mean, 'I will teach you ways by which you get the best of man.' It only meant: your tact, your sympathy will spread its arms before every soul who comes, as mother's arms are spread out for her little ones.

Hot damn. What does this woman have that I don’t? Why do men like Noah and my husband fall in love with her?

What doesn't kill men makes them stronger. What doesn't kill women makes men breakfast.

I thought back to all the times I’d slept with a girl and not thought twice about it and my gut ached. If a girl doesn’t safeguard herself, who will? I’d always had the mentality that men will change when women change but I never thought about how safeguarding the girls around me was just as much my responsibility as it was theirs.

I was something women and men could agree on. They didn’t like me in the same way, but they liked me with the same intensity, and were all fine with the other sex liking me, too. Isn’t that weird? Think about it. And then stop and ponder something actually important. •

Without the risk of getting hurt, there is no probability of falling in love," I tell her. "Vulnerability and love go hand in hand.

--when men approach me to let me know that I was their first love, lets just say I have mixed feelings. Why did all these men find it so easy to be in love with me then and so complex to be in love with me now?

each is associated with different neurochemicals. Lust is associated primarily with the hormone testosterone in both men and women. Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin. And feelings of male-female attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. Moreover,

Most men like dander. There is nothing sweeter than a dangerous woman. Makes us feel a little manlier to be able to call them ours.

Words are a powerful weapon and they never die.

That’s easy to say until the person you love is happy with someone else. Girls always choose men, and men always choose the wrong girls. It’s an endless cycle.

They come dressed in the outfits, and not only are the women in the metal bikini but some men are wearing it, too, and it looks fantastic.

If we are following Jesus--we will be fishers of men. If we are not fishers of men--we are not following Jesus

Men don’t cheat because they’re not in love, they cheat because they don’t feel loved.

Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through the crack in the door across the ceiling. People are walking about by lamplight. Something has happened. The strip moves faster and faster and the dark walls move further and further apart, into infinity. This room is London and there are thousands of doors. The lamps dart about and the strips dart across the ceiling. And perhaps it is all delirium... Something had happened. The black sky above London burst into fragments: white triangles, squares and lines - the silent geometric delirium of searchlights. The blinded elephant buses rushed somewhere headlong with their lights extinguished. The distinct patter along the asphalt of belated couples, like a feverish pulse, died away. Everywhere doors slammed and lights were put out. And the city lay deserted, hollow, geometric, swept clean by a sudden plague: silent domes, pyramids, circles, arches, towers, battlements.

Dot wondered how she was to mention Phryne’s habit of strewing her boudoir with beautiful naked young men. She could not think of a method of introducing the subject and decided to leave it to Phryne to cope with.

The wind blew through the window. The trousers swayed. Doubtless when they were on Mr. Craggs, the trousers looked splendid and went perfectly well together with his body. But like this, isolated in space, Mr. Cragg's trousers were nightmarish. The wind blew through the window. As they swayed, the trousers were alive. A shot, truncated, square creature consisting entirely of legs, belly and what went with them. And now it would get down and start walking among people and over people and grow and...

When our Lord said to the disciples, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19), His reference was not to the skilled angler, but to those who use the drag-net--something which requires practically no skill; the point being that you do not have to watch your "fish," but you have to do the simple thing and God will do the rest. The pseudo-evangelical line is that you must be on the watch all the time and lose no oportunity of speaking to people, and this attitude is apt to produce the superior person. It may be a noble enough point of view, but it produces the wrong kind of character. It does not produce a disciple of Jesus, but too often it produces the kind of person who smells of gunpowder and people are afraid of meeting him. According to Jesus Christ, what we have to do is to watch the source and He will look after the outflow: "He that believeth on me,...out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38).

Then Ghana, and the smell of Ghana, a contradiction, a cracked clay pot: the smell of dryness, wetness, both, the damp of earth and dry of dust. The airport. Bodies pushing, pulling, shouting, begging, touching, breathing. He'd forgotten the bodies. The proximity of bodies. In America the bodies were distant. The warmth of it ...... Why had he hated this view? Of this beach, of the backs of these fishermen, glistening brown, of the long wooden boats, evangelical names in bright tricolor paint on their splintering sides, Black Star Jesus, Jah Reign, Christ the Fisher of Men, in the red, yellow, green of the national flag and the national spirit of open-source ethos, this mixing of Anglican, Rastafarian, Ghanaian? What was there to hate in this? There was only openness. As far as he could see. A cheerful openness. An innocence. An innocent beach on the road to Kokrobite at seven A.M. November 1975, little country lurching, cheerful, unaware, to revolution. Little taxi lurching, blasting revolution, to grief.

I told him about the Oedipal thing, about my father leaving when I was very young so I knew how to pine for men, but not how to love them. So he said, 'You'd probably would have been perfect for somebody in World War Two. You'd meet him and then he would get shipped overseas.' And I said, 'Maybe on our date I could drop you off and you could enlist,' and he said he would just got out and rent a uniform. So he was very funny.

During mating with a honey bee, the drone’s genitals explode and his penis snaps right off.

It was the truth! For the truth to make a difference, it needs to be said by one person at a time, until there’s a noise loud enough to make a difference.

Love is something that happens to you. You don’t necessarily invite it in.

Enough with this guy, enough with all guys. You could order a dildo right to your mailbox. Men needed to learn how dire that situation was for them. “My

Why did all these men find it so easy to be in love with me then and so complex to be in love with me now?

Men are all alike. Grown-up children.

But now I see the truth: women are stuck in a cycle of insecurity perpetuated by the way men treat them, and we are constantly fighting to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are okay.

(The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.) The

It is common knowledge that a well-bred man should as far as possible have no face. That is to say, not so much be completely without one, but rather, should have a face and yet at the same time appear faceless. It should not stand out, just as a shirt made by a good tailor does not stand out. Needless to say, the face of a well-bred man should be exactly like that of other (well-bred) men and of course in no circumstances whatsoever should it alter. Naturally houses, trees, streets, sky and everything else in the world must satisfy the same conditions to have honor of being known as respectable and well-bred.

I was something women and men could agree on. They didn't like me in the same way, but they liked me with the same intensity, and were all fine with the other sex liking me, too. Isn't that weird? Think about it. And then stop and ponder something actually important.

He looked around, saw himself mirrored in that man walking back with his rifle. And suddenly, it seemed possible to him that we might love ourselves the most when we are suffering and seen to suffer. The pursuits of men seemed only the more shocking, if this were true.

When I left, I had just been one of his heartbreaks, not his first. The first was powerful; it changed you. My own had been so devastating, altering the way I looked at men and love. And it wasn’t something that just wore off with time, returning you to your previous state of belief. Once you lost your faith, it was gone.

If my years have taught me anything, it's this: there are many roads to God and all men and women have a right to choose their own. And yet...there are those who want to set a tollbooth at every junction, demanding that you pay and pay and pay, that you walk only on the road they have walked, the only one they say is open.

History shapes the lives of all men, women and children ... sometimes unraveling humanity into an undesired mess.

His voice is like raspy sandpaper dipped in whisky.

the folly of men makes me seriously angry.

In a world where you’re given everything, the thing they tell you not to want is what you want the most.

Ruth did not approve of young men. So noisy.

That’s why you got married — to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul. I’d yielded my soul to Caleb willingly. Offered it up like a sacrificial lamb.

Handsome, fictional men were so much easier to stomach than real life ones who smelled of Christmas and looked like a Calvin Klein model.

Phryne had defences against almost any argument, but not against two pretty young men at her feet. Very decorative they were and she might have uses for them.

Recently, evolutionary psychologist have turned their sights on love and divorce. It didn´t take long to notice that when people fall in love, there´s period of up to three years during which the zeal and infatuation ride at a peak. The internal signals in the body and breain are literally a love drug. And then it beginds to decline. From this perspective, we are preprogramed to lose interest in a sexual partner after the time required to raise a child has passed – which is, on average, about 4 years. In psychologist Helen Fisher´s view, the internally generated love drug love drug is simply an efficient mechanism to get men and women to stick together long enough to increase the survival likehood of their young.

One can never call me a quitter I take something right and see it through till it’s wrong Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder Going once, going twice Gone Sold to the man for the price of disdain Some are sold for a song I don’t rate a refrain I guess it was all going just a little too well If I wasn’t careful I’d be happy pretty soon Heaven’s no place for one who thrives on hell, One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon. Then just when I’d almost resigned myself to winning When it seemed my bright future would never dim When my luck looked as though it was only beginning I met him. Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man The type who pours out the beer and eats the can A tall guy with a cultivated leer One you can count on to diaprove or disappear I knew right away that he was a find Given this, he was the kindest man I’d ever met Back came my sense of worthlessness And my long lost pangs of regret I was my old self again, lost and confused Reunited with that old feeling Of being misunderstood and misused. Sold to the man for the price of disdain All of this would be interesting If it weren’t so mundane

Mark, and the Fisher-King man and this preposterous Indian fakir simply as Men—complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle.

Men are jerks. If I were a woman I'd be a lesbian. You get to make love to other women and have little to do with asshole men. Lesbians are better lovers, too, because they know where everything is.

We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and intelligent young men out in the word with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be.

(The crew was mostly men. That’s how it was and that’s pretty much how it still is. It’s a man’s world and show business is a man’s meal, with women generously sprinkled through it like overqualified spice.)

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

There is no logic in love, little thief. It starts small and grows into something very big and endless. Something you’re willing to die for. Don’t you long to feel something like that? Instead of all the emptiness you’re so used to…

Oh well,' said Jack: and then, 'Did you ever meet Bach?' 'Which Bach?' 'London Bach.' 'Not I.' 'I did. He wrote some pieces for my uncle Fisher, and his young man copied them out fair. But they were lost years and years ago, so last time I was in town I went to see whether I could find the originals: the young man has set up on his own, having inherited his master's music-library. We searched through the papers — such a disorder you would hardly credit, and I had always supposed publishers were as neat as bees — we searched for hours, and no uncle's pieces did we find. But the whole point is this: Bach had a father.' 'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. Yet upon recollection I seem to have known other men in much the same case.' 'And this father, this old Bach, you understand me, had written piles and piles of musical scores in the pantry.' 'A whimsical place to compose in, perhaps; but then birds sing in trees, do they not? Why not antediluvian Germans in a pantry?' 'I mean the piles were kept in the pantry. Mice and blackbeetles and cook-maids had played Old Harry with some cantatas and a vast great passion according to St Mark, in High Dutch; but lower down all was well, and I brought away several pieces, 'cello for you, fiddle for me, and some for both together. It is strange stuff, fugues and suites of the last age, crabbed and knotted sometimes and not at all in the modern taste, but I do assure you, Stephen, there is meat in it. I have tried this partita in C a good many times, and the argument goes so deep, so close and deep, that I scarcely follow it yet, let alone make it sing. How I should love to hear it played really well — to hear Viotti dashing away.

Men and women are different. One is not inferior or superior, nor is one isn’t lesser or greater. Rather we are complementary. We are serving each other to complete each other. What we lack the other sex fills. Where we excel the other sex lacks.

Suzanne sat in Roger's chair, staring at the reflection of her dread morning face. Roger browsed his cassette rack. "Do you want calming or stimulating?" he asked her. Suzanne mulled it over for a few moments. It was a question she had asked herself about men.

I often feel very grateful to God that I have undergone fearful depression. I know the borders of despair and the horrible brink of that gulf of darkness into which my feet have almost gone. But hundreds of times I have been able to give a helpful grip to brethren and sisters who have come into that same condition, which grip I could never have given if I had not known their despondency. So I believe that the darkest and most dreadful experience of a child of God will help him to be a fisher of men if he will but follow Christ. Charles Spurgeon, 2200 Quotations from the Writings of Charles H. Spurgeon

The trout fisher, like the landscape painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude and his own thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all of these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow men.

Anthropologists have long observed that women are “face-to-face” communicators, while men do so “side-by side.” This means that women are much more comfortable with direct eye contact, which probably has a lot to do with the female history of nursing, cuddling, and generally fawning over their infants all the while staring lovingly into those big baby eyes. Men, on the other hand, find direct eye contact extremely confrontational. As Helen Fisher wrote in her remarkable book, Why We Love, “this response probably stems from men’s ancestry. For many millennia men faced their enemies; they sat or walked side by side as they hunted game with their friends.

Why should not old men be mad? Some have known a likely lad That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist Turn to a drunken journalist; A girl that knew all Dante once Live to bear children to a dunce; A Helen of social welfare dream, Climb on a wagonette to scream. Some think it a matter of course that chance Should starve good men and bad advance, That if their neighbours figured plain, As though upon a lighted screen, No single story would they find Of an unbroken happy mind, A finish worthy of the start. Young men know nothing of this sort, Observant old men know it well; And when they know what old books tell And that no better can be had, Know why an old man should be mad.

Her parties are always the best. She gets the top shelf liquor and plays only eighties music, which is fine by me. Dancing drunk to the eighties is life. But, more than that, she makes a point of inviting handsome men as an incentive for her girlfriends to attend. I’d be fine with just the expensive booze, but I suppose the scenery is a nice plus.

You’re wearing that dress simply because you like it. You don’t dress to make men look at you — you hate men. But, your body is ridiculous and it happens anyway. You walk and your hips sway from side to side, but you don’t walk that way to get attention, it’s just the way you move — and everyone looks. Everyone. And when you listen to people speak, you unconsciously bite your lower lip and then let your teeth slide across it. And when you order wine at dinner, you play with the stem of your wine glass. You run your fingers up and down. You are sex and you don’t even know it. Which makes you even sexier. So, when I think dirty thoughts, forgive me. I’m just under your spell like everyone else.

Men with high baseline levels of testosterone marry less frequently, have more adulterous affairs, commit more spousal abuse, and divorce more often. As a man’s marriage becomes less stable, his levels of testosterone rise. With divorce, his testosterone levels rise even more. And single men tend to have higher levels of testosterone than married men.65 The

...this doesn't change our friendship." I smile tightly. "Of course it doesn't. Because he's not mine. If he were, you wouldn't be okay with me." "That's not true," she says. "I want him to be happy." "That's easy to say until the person you love is happy with someone else. Girls always choose men, and men always choose the wrong girls. It's an endless cycle.

I want to implore you not to hurt yourselves. Not to cut your skin, or swallow pills, or drink to drown pain. Not to hand yourselves over so easily to men for validation. Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You’ll inherit flaws; you’ll develop new ones. And that’s okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don’t kill others; don’t kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don’t be ashamed of where you’ve come from, or the mistakes you’ve made. In blindness, love will exhume you.

A total of 105 patrol officers died on the job in 2012. Less half of those (51) died as the result of violence, and another 48 died in traffic accidents. Between 1961 and 2012, 3,847 cops were murdered and 2,946 died in accidents—averaging about 75 murders and 58 fatal accidents in a typical year. Naturally it is not to be lost sight of that these numbers represent human lives, not widgets or sacks of potatoes. But let’s also remember that there were 4,383 fatal work injuries in 2012. As dangerous professions go, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, policing is not even in the top ten. In terms of total fatalities, more truck drivers are killed than any other kind of worker (741 in 2012). A better measure of occupational risk, however, is the rate of work-related deaths per 100,000 workers. In 2012, for example, it was 17.4 for truck drivers. At 15.0 deaths per 100,000, policing is slightly less dangerous than being a maintenance worker (15.7) and slightly more dangerous than supervising the gardener (14.7). The highest rate of fatalities is among loggers at 127.8 per 100,000, just ahead of fishers at 117.0. The rate for all occupations, taken together, is 3.2 per 100,000 workers. Where are the headlines, the memorials, the honor guards, and the sorrowful renderings of Taps for these workers? Where are the mayoral speeches, the newspaper editorials, the sober reflections that these brave men and women died, and that others risk their lives daily, so that we might continue to enjoy the benefits of modern society?

The country was so vast, of course, that one or a hundred or a thousand men could have very little effect. And how, anyway, could one fault a people bringing schools and churches and all the goods of industry? Still, there was always something about newcomers laying claim that made him uneasy, as though he were being robbed some way, or made to give over something he had never thought to value.

Men's ideas, though, continue to run in the old channels about oysters as well as God and war and women. Even when they know better they insist that months with R in them are all right, but that oysters in June or July or May or August will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing.

For many, the call to be a Christian can seem demanding, even overwhelming. But we need not be afraid or feel inadequate. The Savior has promised that He will make us equal to His work. 'Follow me,' He said, 'and I will make you fishers of men.' As we follow Him, He blesses us with gifts, talents, and the strength to do His will, allowing us to go beyond our comfort zones and do things we've never before thought possible.

My wedding day took place on a non-descript afternoon in the middle of January, well away from any big deal occasions like Christmas or Valentine’s Day. I was thirty-five and I’d never even lived with a man before. Not because I was the last nun in the convent – too late to pull that stunt with my ten-year-old son, Sam, in tow – but because I was addicted to wrong ’uns. The sort of men who would have dads bundling their daughters into basements and throwing burning oil out of the top window. But

The catastrophe in Children of Men is neither waiting down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster; the world doesn't end with a bang, it winks out, unravels, gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur, who knows; its cause lies long in the past, so absolutely detached from the present as to seem like the caprice of a malign being: a negative miracle, a malediction which no penitence can ameliorate. Such a blight can only be eased by an intervention that can no more be anticipated than was the onset of the curse in the first place. Action is pointless; only senseless hope makes sense. Superstition and religion, the first resorts of the helpless, proliferate. But what of the catastrophe itself? It is evident that the theme of sterility must be read metaphorically, as the displacement of another kind of anxiety. I want to argue this anxiety cries out to be read in cultural terms, and the question the film poses is: how long can a culture persist without the new? What happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises?

Fisher outlines the different hormones and personalities for me. Those with lots of dopamine, she says, are likely to be "Explorers," optimistic risk takers. Serotonin breeds "Builders," who tend to be calm and organized and work well in groups. Those brimming with testosterone she calls "Directors." Two thirds of them are men. They're analytical, logical, and often musical. (They sound suspiciously like Numerati to me.) In the fourth group, their brains coursing with estrogen, are the negotiators. They're verbal and intuitive, and have good people skills. You'd think they'd be built for relationships. But sometimes, Fisher says, "they're so pliable that they turn into placaters. You don't know who they are.

And the day when the soul realizes itself, that day a new life begins, a new birth. It is the self-realized soul which grows, which expands. So long as the soul has not realized itself, it does not develop, it does not grow. Therefore it is at the moment when the soul begins to realize itself that a man really begins to live in the world. But it must be understood that the magnetism of the selfrealized soul is greater than any magnetism one could ever imagine. It is power, it is wisdom, it is peace, it is intelligence, it is all. It is this magnetism that heals, heals bodies and heals minds; and it is this magnetism that raises those fallen into difficulties, in pain and sorrows. It is this magnetism that brings others out of their confusion, their darkness. It is by this magnetism that the illuminated souls spread out their love, thereby attracting all beings. It is of this magnetism that Christ said to the fishermen, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” It is with this magnetism that the great ones, such as Buddha, such as Moses, Christ, Muhammad, came and attracted humanity. And humanity during the ages has not forgotten. It is their magnetism which, after their having left this earth, has held millions and millions of people in one bond of brotherhood, of sympathy, of friendship. The immense power that the soul-magnetism gives shows that it is divine magnetism. It is a proof of something behind the seen world.

Reade drew a deep breath. He said with resignation, "All right. I'll try to explain. But it's rather difficult. You see, I've devoted my life to the problem of why certain men see visions. Men like Blake and Boehme and Thomas Traherne. A psychologist once suggested that it's a chemical in the bloodstream—the same sort of thing that makes a dipsomaniac see pink elephants. Now obviously, I can't accept this view. But I've spent a certain amount of time studying the action of drugs, and taken some of them myself. And it's become clear to me that what we call 'ordinary consciousness' is simply a special, limited case. . . But this is obvious after a single glass of whiskey. It causes a change in consciousness, a kind of deepening. In ordinary consciousness, we're mainly aware of the world around us and its problems. This is awfully difficult to explain. . ." Fisher said, "You're being very clear so far. Please go on." "Perhaps an analogy will help. In our ordinary state of consciousness, we look out from behind our eyes as a motorist looks from behind the windscreen of a car. The car is very small, and the world out there is very big. Now if I take a few glasses of whiskey, the world out there hasn't really changed, but the car seems to have grown bigger. When I look inside myself, there seem to be far greater spaces than I'm normally aware of. And if I take certain drugs, the car becomes vast, as vast as a cathedral. There are great, empty spaces. . . No, not empty. They're full of all kinds of things—of memories of my past life and millions of things I never thought I'd noticed. Do you see my point? Man deliberately limits his consciousness. It would frighten him if he were aware of these vast spaces of consciousness all the time. He stays sane by living in a narrow little consciousness that seems to be limited by the outside world. Because these spaces aren't just inhabited by memories. There seem to be strange, alien things, other minds. . ." As he said this, he saw Violet de Merville shudder. He said, laughing, "I'm not trying to be alarming. There's nothing fundamentally horrible about these spaces. One day we shall conquer them, as we shall conquer outer space. They're like a great jungle, full of wild creatures. We build a high wall around us for safety, but that doesn't mean we're afraid of the jungle. One day we shall build cities and streets in its spaces.

The ordinary sapper is a great deal better educated than the common soldier, and they discussed the peculiar conditions of the possible fight with some acuteness. I described the Heat-Ray to them, and they began to argue among themselves. "Crawl up under cover and rush 'em, say I," said one. "Get aht!" said another. "What's cover against this 'ere 'eat? Sticks to cook yer! What we got to do is to go as near as the ground'll let us, and then drive a trench." "Blow yer trenches! You always want trenches; you ought to ha' been born a rabbit Snippy." "Ain't they got any necks, then?" said a third, abruptly--a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe. I repeated my description. "Octopuses," said he, "that's what I calls 'em. Talk about fishers of men--fighters of fish it is this time!" "It ain't no murder killing beasts like that," said the first speaker. "Why not shell the darned things strite off and finish 'em?" said the little dark man. "You carn tell what they might do." "Where's your shells?" said the first speaker. "There ain't no time. Do it in a rush, that's my tip, and do it at once." So they discussed it.

The late American golfing coach and writer, Harvey Penick, held that any who played golf was his friend – in the politer sense of Arcades ambo, I gather. … I myself hold with Honest Izaak that there is – and that I am a member of – a communion of, if not saints, at least anglers and very honest men, some now with God and others of us yet upon the quiet waters. … The man is a mere brute, and no true angler, whose sport is measured only in fish caught and boasted of. For what purpose do we impose on ourselves limits and conventions if not to make sport of a mere mechanical harvest of protein? The true angler can welcome even a low river and a dry year, and learn of it, and be the better for it, in mind and in spirit. So, No: the hatch is not all that it might be, for if it is warm enough and early with it, it is also in a time of drought; and, No: I don’t get to the river as often as I should wish. But these things do not make this a poor year: they are an unlooked-for opportunity to delve yet deeper into the secrets of the river, and grow wise. … Rejoice, then, in all seasons, ye fishers. The world the river is; both you and I, And all mankind, are either fish or fry. We must view it with judicious looks, and get wisdom whilst we may. And to all honest anglers, then, I wish, as our master Izaak wished us long ago, ‘a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.

In 1995, the gray wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park after a seventy-year hiatus. Scientists expected an ecological ripple effect, but the size and scope of the trophic cascade took them by surprise.7 Wolves are predators that kill certain species of animals, but they indirectly give life to others. When the wolves reentered the ecological equation, it radically changed the behavioral patterns of other wildlife. As the wolves began killing coyotes, the rabbit and mouse populations increased, thereby attracting more hawks, weasels, foxes, and badgers. In the absence of predators, deer had overpopulated the park and overgrazed parts of Yellowstone. Their new traffic patterns, however, allowed the flora and fauna to regenerate. The berries on those regenerated shrubs caused a spike in the bear population. In six years’ time, the trees in overgrazed parts of the park had quintupled in height. Bare valleys were reforested with aspen, willow, and cottonwood trees. And as soon as that happened, songbirds started nesting in the trees. Then beavers started chewing them down. Beavers are ecosystem engineers, building dams that create natural habitats for otters, muskrats, and ducks, as well as fish, reptiles, and amphibians. One last ripple effect. The wolves even changed the behavior of rivers—they meandered less because of less soil erosion. The channels narrowed and pools formed as the regenerated forests stabilized the riverbanks. My point? We need wolves! When you take the wolf out of the equation, there are unintended consequences. In the absence of danger, a sheep remains a sheep. And the same is true of men. The way we play the man is by overcoming overwhelming obstacles, by meeting daunting challenges. We may fear the wolf, but we also crave it. It’s what we want. It’s what we need. Picture a cage fight between a sheep and a wolf. The sheep doesn’t stand a chance, right? Unless there is a Shepherd. And I wonder if that’s why we play it safe instead of playing the man—we don’t trust the Shepherd. Playing the man starts there! Ecologists recently coined a wonderful new word. Invented in 2011, rewilding has a multiplicity of meanings. It’s resisting the urge to control nature. It’s the restoration of wilderness. It’s the reintroduction of animals back into their natural habitat. It’s an ecological term, but rewilding has spiritual implications. As I look at the Gospels, rewilding seems to be a subplot. The Pharisees were so civilized—too civilized. Their religion was nothing more than a stage play. They were wolves in sheep’s clothing.8 But Jesus taught a very different brand of spirituality. “Foxes have dens and birds have nests,” said Jesus, “but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”9 So Jesus spent the better part of three years camping, fishing, and hiking with His disciples. It seems to me Jesus was rewilding them. Jesus didn’t just teach them how to be fishers of men. Jesus taught them how to play the man! That was my goal with the Year of Discipleship,