Foolish Husband Quotes

It is a foolish woman who expects her husband to be to her that which only Jesus Christ Himself can be: always ready to forgive, totally understanding, unendingly patient, invariably tender and loving, unfailing in every area, anticipating every need, and making more than adequate provision. Such expectations put a man under an impossible strain

I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I've always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch.

It has always been simple, but making it hard was always your way of avoiding pain. If you want to change your life, you have to change what you are doing. It wasn't his fault, her fault, their fault or the circumstances. It was your inability to choose. So, life chose for you. Somewhere in that crazy mind of yours time stopped. You thought someone would rescue you, but they didn't. You have to rescue yourself. This is not a fire you can put out; you have to walk through it, in order to reach life. Getting burned is apart of growth, didn't you know?

Lady Maccon stopped suddenly. Her husband got four long strides ahead before he realized she had paused. She was starring thoughtfully up into the aether, twirling the deadly parasol about her head. "I have just remembered something," Alexia said when he returned to her side. "Oh, that explains everything. How foolish of me to think you could walk and remember at the same time.

I was mistaken when I said you live in my heart. How absurd I was when you live in my fingertips so that everything I touch is you. How foolish I was when you live in my toes so that everywhere I go there's you. How senseless of me to say you live in my heart when you breathe in my lungs, walk on my mind, and drink in my mouth. I came to pen another poem for you, but even every unwritten poem is you.

Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law. Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love. All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.' If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been. All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.

It will always be foolish to ask a cheater if they would ever cheat on you.

LORD GORING: (after a long pause) Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.

The lucky ones are the people like your husband there. The ones who find work that means something to them. That they can really put their heart into, however foolish it might look to other people.

Such deluded persons, symptomatically, dwell in dualities of dishonor and honor, misery and happiness, woman and man, good and bad, pleasure and pain, etc., thinking, "This is my wife; this is my house; I am the master of this house; I am the husband of this wife." These are the dualities of delusion. Those who are so deluded by dualities are completely foolish and therefore cannot understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Her neighbor’s husband fell in love with a girl who served coffee to him every morning. She was twenty-three and wanted to be a dancer or a poet or a physical therapist. When he left his family, his wife said, “Does it matter to you how foolish you look? That all our friends find you ridiculous?” He stood in the doorway, his coat in his hand. “No,” he said. The wife watched her neighbor get fat over the next year. The Germans have a word for that. Kummerspeck. Literally, grief bacon.

Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.

Being divorced does not necessarily make one’s advice on marriage useless … or useful.

You make concessions when you're married a long time that you don't believe you'll ever make when you're beginning. You say to yourself when you're young, oh, I wouldn't tolerate this or that or the other thing, you say love is the most important thing in the world and there's only one kind of love and it makes you feel different than you feel the rest of the time, like you're all lit up. But time goes by and you've slept together a thousand nights and smelled like spit-up when babies are sick and seen your body droop and get soft. And some nights you say to yourself, it's not enough, I won't put up with another minute. And then the next morning you wake up and the kitchen smells like coffee and the children have their hair all brushed and the birds are eating out of the feeder and you look at your husband and he's not the person you used to think he was but he's your life. The house and the children and so much more of what you do is built around him and your life, too, your history. If you take him out it's like cutting his face out of all the pictures, there's a big hole and it's ugly. It would ruin everything. It's more than love, it's more important than love... It's hard. And it's hard to understand unless you're in it. And it's hard for you to understand now because of where you are and what you're feeling. But I wanted to say it...because I won't be able to say it when I need to, when it's one of those nights and you're locking the front door because of foolishness about romance, about how things are supposed to be. You can be hard, and you can be judgmental, and with those two things alone you can make a mess of your life the likes of which you won't believe. It's so much easier...the being happy. It's so much easier, to learn to love what you have instead of yearning always for what you're missing, or what you imagine you're missing. It's so much more peaceful.

I've married a man who owns nine cows," said Jinjur to Ozma, "and now I am happy and contented and willing to lead a quiet life and mind my own business." "Where is your husband?" asked Ozma. "He is in the house, nursing a black eye," replied Jinjur, calmly. "The foolish man would insist upon milking the red cow when I wanted him to milk the white one; but he will know better next time, I am sure.

how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man -- my greatest enemy -- for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage, and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation --crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery -- as far as man can do it -- it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband -- I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him -- I hate him!

Was he a bad man or just a foolish one? He didn't feel bad to himself. As a husband he believed himself to be essentially good and loyal. It just wasn't written in a man's nature to be monogamous, that was all. And he owed something to his nature even when his nature was at odds with his desire, which was to stay at home and cherish his wife. It was his nature – all nature, the rule of nature – that was the bastard, not him.

The bond between husband and wife is a strong one. Suppose the man had hunted her out and brought her back. The memory of her acts would still be there, and inevitably, sooner or later, it would be cause for rancor. When there are crises, incidents, a woman should try to overlook them, for better or for worse, and make the bond into something durable. The wounds will remain, with the woman and with the man, when there are crises such as I have described. It is very foolish for a woman to let a little dalliance upset her so much that she shows her resentment openly. He has his adventures--but if he has fond memories of their early days together, his and hers, she may be sure that she matters. A commotion means the end of everything. She should be quiet and generous, and when something comes up that quite properly arouses her resentment she should make it known by delicate hints. The man will feel guilty and with tactful guidance he will mend his ways. Too much lenience can make a woman seem charmingly docile and trusting, but it can also make her seem somewhat wanting in substance. We have had instances enough of boats abandoned to the winds and waves. It may be difficult when someone you are especially fond of, someone beautiful and charming, has been guilty of an indiscretion, but magnanimity produces wonders. They may not always work, but generosity and reasonableness and patience do on the whole seem best.

When man don't love you, more you try, more he hate you, man like that. If you love them they treat you bad, if you don't love them they after you night and day bothering your soul case out. I hear about you and your husband,' she said. 'But I cannot go. He is my husband after all.' She spat over her shoulder. 'All women, all colours, nothing but fools. Three children I have. One living in this world, each one a different father, but no husband, I thank my God. I keep my money. I don't give it to no worthless man.' 'When must I go, where must I go?' 'But look me trouble, a rich white girl like you and more foolish than the rest. A man don't treat you good, pick up your skirt and walk out. Do it and he come after you.

There are psychologists who think that consciousness accompanies brain processes and is determined by them but doesn't itself exert any influence on them. Something like the reflection of a tree in water; it couldn't exist without the tree, but it doesn't in any way affect he tree. I think it's all stuff and nonsense to say that there can be love without passion; when people say love can endure after passion is dead they're talking of something else, affection, kindliness, community of taste and interest, and habit . . . Of course there can be desire without love. Desire isn't passion. Desire is the natural consequence of the sexual instinct . . . That's why women are foolish to make a song and dance if their husbands have an occasional flutter when the time and place are propitious . . . what is sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose . . . Unless love is passion, it's not love, but something else; and passion thrives not on satisfaction but impediment . . . When passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive . . . and if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum.

There’s the foolish green puppy love that we start out with, then at some later time there’s the common-sense, lukewarm sense of caring that keeps a husband and a wife together.  Somewhere in between, there’s that deep love that comes once in a lifetime,

Thunder, Perfect Mind 'I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am (the mother) and the daughter... I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband... I am knowing, and ignorance... I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear... I am foolish, and I am wise... I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.

Any fool can marry, but only the wise live happily ever after.

On Love - Any husband who stammers that he's just been too busy to tell his wife he loves her is a lazy fool or a liar.

In a second or two he would get up and join her in the shower he could hear running--consolidate his place with some very passionate seed-sowing and at the same time he would make Nell fall in love with him again.

Katrina hated to see the widows in black. They struck her as relics of their own making, frozen in permanent deference to reckless or foolish or simply unfortunate men who were nonetheless dead and sealed away in the earth forever. Husbands never wore black. Husbands were never confined to that kind of passive declaration, were never compelled to sulk across the world for the remainder of their lives, walking signposts of mourning. Husbands were permitted rage, permitted wrath, permitted to avenge their loss by marching out and inflecting on others the very same carnage once inflicted on them. It seemed to Karina further proof that wartime was the only time the world became as simple and carnivorously liberating as it must exist at all times in men's minds. Some of the women she met never used their own names again - she knew them only as Widow This or Widow That - but she'd never met a Widower Anything.

My bridal gown. So beautiful in design but it was never sewed. So lovely, ivory lace, ivory silk, sheer lace back, pleated bodice and flared skirt never sewed. My veil, my "train." (So foolish the bridal train, trailing along the ground, on dirty steps. What possible purpose, beautiful and costly dazzling-white silk so quickly spoiled.) The bridal design held us captive. My dear mother, and me. And so, when I was married to my husband it seemed to me a second marriage.

pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.”  Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of.  We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed

Mrs Woodburn was not an enthusiastic young wife, but knew very well that marriage had its drawbacks, and had come to an age at which she could appreciate the comfort of having her own way without any of the bother. She gave a furtive glance after Lucilla, and could not but acknowledge to herself that it would be very foolish of Miss Marjoribanks to marry, and forfeit all her advantages, and take somebody else's anxieties upon her shoulders, and never have any money except what she asked from her husband.

Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing.  Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.

What does this mean, sir?  You don’t mean to say that this charming, clever young lady has been so foolish as to accept you?

You preach to me constantly the gospel of ‘saving’ and ‘abstinence’. Good! I will, like a sensible saving owner, husband my sole wealth, labour-power, and abstain from all foolish waste of it.

Niccolo Machiavelli folded his arms across his chest and looked at the alchemyst. “I always knew we would meet again,” he said in French. “Though I never imagined it would be in these circumstances,” he added with a smile. “I was certain I’d get you in Paris last Saturday.” He bowed, an old-fashioned courtly gesture as Perenelle joined her husband. “Mistress Perenelle, it seems we are forever destined to meet on islands.” “The last time we met you had poisoned my husband and attempted to kill me,” Perenelle reminded him, speaking in Italian. Over three thousand years previously, the Sorceress and the Italian had fought at the foot of Mount Etna in Sicily. Although Perenelle had defeated Machiavelli, the energies they unleashed caused the ancient volcano to erupt. Lava flowed for five weeks after the battle and destroyed ten villages. “Forgive me. I was younger then, and foolish. And you emerged the victor of the encounter. I carry the scars to this day.” “Let us try and not blow up this island,” she said with a smile. Then she stretched out her hand. “I saw you try to save me earlier. There is no longer any enmity between us.” Machiavelli took her fingers in his and bent over them. “Thank you. That pleases me.

Of course she loved the komita more -- he must have been her sweetheart, her first big love. Most likely, they made plans together, imagined a little house, a pair of children. She wouldn't keep his diary for so many years otherwise. And then, with their love peaking, he was killed. I know that much without yet having read the end. At first she felt betrayed. He'd put some strange ideals, brotherhood and freedom, before his love for her. She hated him for that. But then one morning, almost a year after his death, the postman brought a package with foreign stamps. She read the diary, still hating him. She read it every day. She learned each letter by heart, and with the months her hatred thinned, and in the end his death turned their love ideal, doomed not to die. Yes, that's what I've come to think now. Their love was foolish, childish, sugar-sweet, the kind of love that, if you are lucky to lose it, flares up like a thatched roof but burns as long as you live. While our love...I am her husband, she is my wife.

Is It possible to live in such a world where everyone does what he pleases? No one is punished by God or man and no one has to earn a living? Are there such women who follow every whim? Men such foolish weaklings, who succumb to every little desire, every little dream of happiness? Where are the honest husbands who work to earn their bread, who think of the best ways to protect their children from fate and the cruel world? Where are the people who understand a piece of cheese, a glass of wine, a warm house at the end of the day is reward enough? Who are these people who yearn for some mysterious happiness? What an uproar they make of life, what tragedies they brew up out of nothing.

She told him the White Kingdom was where husbands and wives lived after death. He had never believed her; when he was dead, he’d just be dead, he always countered. Now he saw how foolish he was to never give thought to anything beyond this life.

disturbs me that there’s a part of my heart or mind, or some spot where the two meet, a spot that isn’t mine because I’m a wife. This part isn’t really me at all, but a promise I made on a snowy day. A promise to stay and to be with Arturo and to be good to him, and when there’s no other way, I have to go to that promise to find my feeling for my husband. We walk the finest of foolish, foolish lines. How can Webster still love Ted? How can anybody love anybody else for more than five minutes?

He was there,keeping watch over her, which meant he expected something to happen.What? That she would be so foolish as to try to escape? Not for a moment did she believe he would seek to trap her like that. No,he was waiting for someone else,the real villain who had sought to harm them both. Waiting and hoping to lure him out by the simple expediency of using her as...bait. That husband of hers-that dear, darling husband of hers-was going to have some serious apologizing to do when this was over. Fearing that the sheer expanse of her smile would give the plan away, Rycca pulled a corner of a blanket up over her face. A short time later, she drifted off to sleep again,secure in the knowledge that she lay under the watchful eye of the Dragon.

See how he treats me? I looked away. You have made your choices, chérie, just as I have made mine. I knew what sort of man my husband was when I married him; I’m sure it was the same for you. If not—well, you’re even more of a foolish little tart than I thought.

Love, she told herself, would one day release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience. Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were variously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even made a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to sit next to them at dinner. Her own case, of course, would be different.

I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I’ve always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined.

It is easy to see why so many people view empathy as a powerful force for goodness and moral change. It is easy to see why so many believe that the only problem with empathy is that too often we don’t have enough of it. I used to believe this as well. But now I don’t. Empathy has its merits. It can be a great source of pleasure, involved in art and fiction and sports, and it can be a valuable aspect of intimate relationships. And it can sometimes spark us to do good. But on the whole, it’s a poor moral guide. It grounds foolish judgments and often motivates indifference and cruelty. It can lead to irrational and unfair political decisions, it can corrode certain important relationships, such as between a doctor and a patient, and make us worse at being friends, parents, husbands, and wives.

The bell of Limehouse Church rang as each of them, in this house, drifted into sleep - suddenly once more like children who, exhausted by the day's adventures, fall asleep quickly and carelessly. A solitary visitor, watching them as they slept, might wonder how it was that they had arrived at such a state and might speculate about each stage of their journey towards it: when did he first start muttering to himself, and not realise that he was doing so? When did she first begin to shy away from others and seek the shadows? When did all of them come to understand that whatever hopes they might have had were foolish, and that life was something only to be endured? Those who wander are always objects of suspicion and sometimes even of fear: the four people gathered in this house by the church had passed into a place, one might almost say a time, from which there was no return. The young man who had been bent over the fire had spent his life in a number of institutions - an orphanage, a juvenile home and most recently a prison; the old woman still clutching the brown bottle was an alcoholic who had abandoned her husband and two children many years before; the old man had taken to wandering after the death of his wife in a fire which he believed, at the time, he might have prevented. And what of Ned, who was now muttering in his sleep?

* THE OLD WOMAN remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat. Then the woman and the swan sailed across an ocean many thousands of li wide, stretching their necks toward America. On her journey she cooed to the swan: “In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.” But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” *

We can at least give them our names,” Jeff insisted. They were very sweet about it, quite willing to do whatever we asked, to please us. As to the names, Alima, frank soul that she was, asked what good it would do. Terry, always irritating her, said it was a sign of possession. “You are going to be Mrs. Nicholson,” he said, “Mrs. T.O. Nicholson. That shows everyone that you are my wife.” “What is a ‘wife’ exactly?” she demanded, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “A wife is a woman who belongs to a man,” he began. But Jeff took it up eagerly: “And a husband is the man who belongs to a woman. It is because we are monogamous, you know. And marriage is a ceremony, civil and religious, that joins the two together—“until death do us part,” he finished, looking at Celia with unutterable devotion. “What makes us feel foolish,” I told the girls, “is that here we have nothing to give you—except, of course, our names.” “Do your women have no names before they are married?” Celis suddenly demanded. “Why, yes,” Jeff explained. “They have their maiden names—their father’s names, that is.” “And what becomes of them?” asked Alima. “They change them for their husband’s, my dear,” Terry answered her. “Change them? Do the husbands then take the wives’ ‘maiden names’?” “Oh no,” he laughed. “The man keeps his own and gives it too her, too.” “Then she just loses hers and takes a new one—how unpleasant! We won’t do that!” Alima said decidedly.

The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him. If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want. He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations. His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.

Will you see Dad when you get back?” “Yes,” said Miral, without having to pause to think about it. B’Elanna was startled by the swift response. “Enough time has passed so that there should not be pain. And if there is then we will simply have to push through it. The child you and your husband have borne carries both our blood. It is foolish to let years of personal resentment deny the girl our wisdom.” Torres stared. Sometimes, when you least expected it, Klingons could be so very practical. • • • Seven

I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I’ve always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch.

ON THE A TRAIN There were no seats to be had on the A train last night, but I had a good grip on the pole at the end of one of the seats and I was reading the beauty column of the Journal-American, which the man next to me was holding up in front of him. All of a sudden I felt a tap on my arm, and I looked down and there was a man beginning to stand up from the seat where he was sitting. "Would you like to sit down?" he said. Well, I said the first thing that came into my head, I was so surprised and pleased to be offered a seat in the subway. "Oh, thank you very much," I said, "but I am getting out at the next station." He sat back and that was that, but I felt all set up and I thought what a nice man he must be and I wondered what his wife was like and I thought how lucky she was to have such a polite husband, and then all of a sudden I realized that I wasn't getting out at the next station at all but the one after that, and I felt perfectly terrible. I decided to get out at the next station anyway, but then I thought, If I get out at the next station and wait around for the next train I'll miss my bus and they only go every hour and that will be silly. So I decided to brazen it out as best I could, and when the train was slowing up at the next station I stared at the man until I caught his eye and then I said, "I just remembered this isn't my station after all." Then I thought he would think I was asking him to stand up and give me his seat, so I said, "But I still don't want to sit down, because I'm getting off at the next station." I showed him by my expression that I thought it was all rather funny, and he smiled, more or less, and nodded, and lifted his hat and put it back on his head again and looked away. He was one of those small, rather glum or sad men who always look off into the distance after they have finished what they are saying, when they speak. I felt quite proud of my strong-mindedness at not getting off the train and missing my bus simply because of the fear of a little embarrassment, but just as the train was shutting its doors I peered out and there it was, 168th Street. "Oh dear!" I said. "That was my station and now I have missed the bus!" I was fit to be fled, and I had spoken quite loudly, and I felt extremely foolish, and I looked down, and the man who had offered me his seat was partly looking at me, and I said, "Now, isn't that silly? That was my station. A Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street is where I'm supposed to get off." I couldn't help laughing, it was all so awful, and he looked away, and the train fidgeted along to the next station, and I got off as quickly as I possibly could and tore over to the downtown platform and got a local to 168th, but of course I had missed my bus by a minute, or maybe two minutes. I felt very much at a loose end wandering around 168th Street, and I finally went into a rudely appointed but friendly bar and had a martini, warm but very soothing, which cost me only fifty cents. While I was sipping it, trying to make it last to exactly the moment that would get me a good place in the bus queue without having to stand too long in the cold, I wondered what I should have done about that man in the subway. After all, if I had taken his seat I probably would have got out at 168th Street, which would have meant that I would hardly have been sitting down before I would have been getting up again, and that would have seemed odd. And rather grasping of me. And he wouldn't have got his seat back, because some other grasping person would have slipped into it ahead of him when I got up. He seemed a retiring sort of man, not pushy at all. I hesitate to think of how he must have regretted offering me his seat. Sometimes it is very hard to know the right thing to do.

I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I’ve always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch. I could hear the tale, how everyone would love

Many women think their husbands are not worth the effort. They feel they are forced to humble themselves in order to love him when he is the guilty party. Do not be deceived. When a woman is willing to forgive and win back her husband’s affection, she is winning more than just his affection. Once a man comes to his senses and sees how close he came to losing all that he holds dear, he will be profoundly thankful to the good woman who loved him through his foolishness. She will win his respect as well as his love, because he will know that she is the kind of woman who will stand by her man. Few

Empathy has its merits. It can be a great source of pleasure, involved in art and fiction and sports, and it can be a valuable aspect of intimate relationships. And it can sometimes spark us to do good. But on the whole, it’s a poor moral guide. It grounds foolish judgments and often motivates indifference and cruelty. It can lead to irrational and unfair political decisions, it can corrode certain important relationships, such as between a doctor and a patient, and make us worse at being friends, parents, husbands, and wives. I am against empathy, and one of the goals of this book is to persuade you to be against empathy too.

I had a new persona, not of my choosing. I was Average Dumb Woman Married to Average Shitty Man. He had single-handedly de-amazed Amazing Amy. I know women whose entire personas are woven from a benign mediocrity. Their lives are a list of shortcomings: the unappreciative boyfriend, the extra ten pounds, the dismissive boss, the conniving sister, the straying husband. I’ve always hovered above their stories, nodding in sympathy and thinking how foolish they are, these women, to let these things happen, how undisciplined. And now to be one of them! One of the women with the endless stories that make people nod sympathetically and think: Poor dumb bitch.

The LORD through His prophet, Jeremiah, said, “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’ in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.” (Jeremiah 4: 22). Will this rebuke hold true for you? Sad to note that our knowledge of the LORD is at a play school level. In contrast to our knowledge on the heads of the government, politics, politicians, sports, celebrities, elders, believers, neighbours, friends, relatives, wife, husband, children, our own subjects of expertise etc., which can fetch us a doctoral degree! Shameful, isn’t it? Time to get back on course to pursue after the knowledge of the LORD.

Sorry I am at Mrs. —— falling short of your warm-hearted ideas about her! Can you understand a woman’s hating a girl because it is not a boy — her first child too? I understand it so little that scarcely I can believe it. Some women have, however, undeniably an indifference to children, just as many men have, though it must be unnatural and morbid in both sexes. Men often affect it — very foolishly, if they count upon the scenic effects; affectation never succeeds well, and this sort of affectation is peculiarly unbecoming, except in old bachelors, for there is a pathetic side to the question so viewed. For my part and my husband’s, we may be frank and say that we have caught up our parental pleasures

The LORD through His prophet, Jeremiah, said, “For my people are foolish; they know me not; they are stupid children; they have no understanding. They are ‘wise’ in doing evil! But how to do good they know not.” (Jeremiah 4: 22). Will this rebuke hold true for you? Sad to note that our knowledge of the LORD is at a play school level, in contrast to our knowledge on the heads of the government, politics, politicians, sports, celebrities, elders, believers, neighbours, friends, relatives, wife, husband, children, our own subjects of expertise etc., which can fetch us a doctoral degree! Shameful, isn’t it? The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding (Proverbs 9: 10).

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat. Then the woman and the swan sailed across an ocean many thousands of li wide, stretching their necks toward America. On her journey she cooed to the swan: “In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.” But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.” And she waited year after year, for the day she could tell her daughter this in perfect American English.

Of the Poet’s Youth" When the man behind the counter said, “You pay by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all? Ah, Sandy, vou were clearly the deluxe doll, modish and pert in your plastic nurse whites, official hostess to our halcyon days, where you bobbed in the doorway of our dishabille apartment, a block downwind from the stockyards. Holding court on the corroded balcony, K. and I passed hash brownies, collecting change for the building’s monthly pool to predict which balcony would fall off next. That’s when K. was fucking M. and M. was fucking J., and even B. and I threw down once on the glass-speckled lawn, adrift in the headlights of his El Camino. Those were immortal times, Sandy! Coke wasn’t addictive yet, condoms prevented herpes and men were only a form of practice for the Russian novel we foolishly hoped our lives would become. Now it’s a Friday night, sixteen years from there. Don’t the best characters know better than to live too long? My estranged husband house-sits for a spoiled cockatoo while saving to buy his own place. My lover’s gone back to his gin and the farm-team fiancée he keeps in New York. What else to do but read Frank O’Hara to my tired three-year-old? When I put him to bed, he mutters “more sorry” as he turns into sleep. Tonight, I find you in a box I once marked “The Past.” Well, therapy’s good for some things, Sandy, but who’d want to forgive a girl like that? Frank says Destroy yourself if you don’t know! Deflated, you’re simply the smile that surrounds a hole. I don’t know anything.

I have this special license burning a hole in my pocket, so I was thinking we might go find a vicar and use it. Pinter and Freddy can be witnesses.” He looked anxiously at her. “What do you think?” “Don’t you want your family present when we marry? I thought you lordly sorts had to have grand weddings.” “Is that what you want?” In truth, she’d never been one to dream of her wedding day as a brilliant spectacle. Clandestine weddings were always what captured her imagination, complete with a dangerous, brooding fellow and mysterious goings-on. In this instance, she had both. He said, “Let me put it this way: we can spend an untold number of days sneaking around just to steal a kiss, being chaperoned every minute while my sisters and Gran plan the wedding of the century. Or we can marry today and share a bed at the inn tonight like a respectable husband and wife. I’m not keep on waiting, but then, I never am when it comes to you. So what is your opinion in the matter?” She couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “I think you just want to punish your grandmother for her sly tactics by depriving her of the weddings.” He smiled. “Perhaps a little. And God knows my friends are never going to let me live this down. I’m not looking forward to hours of their torment at a wedding breakfast.” He stopped in a little copse where they would be hidden from the street. “But if you want a big wedding, I can endure it.” His expression was solemn as he took her hands in his. “I can endure anything, as long as you marry me. And keep loving me for the rest of your life.” Staring into his earnest face, she felt something flip over in her chest. She stretched up to brush his mouth with hers, and he pulled her in for a long, ardent kiss. “Well?” he said huskily when he was done. “If I had any sense of decency, I would give you a chance to consult with a lawyer about settlements and such, especially since you’ll be coming into some money. But-“ “-you have no sense of decency, I know,” she teased. She tapped her finger against her chin. “Or was that morals you claimed not to have? I can’t remember.” “Watch it, minx,” he warned with a lift of his brow. “If you intend to taunt me for every foolish statement I’ve made in my life, you’ll force me to play Rockton and lock you up in my dark, forbidding manor while I have my wicked way with you.” “That sounds perfectly awful,” she said, gazing at the man she loved. “How soon can we start?

And the observance of his five commandments will bring peace upon the earth. They all have but one object,—the establishment of peace among men. If men will only believe in the doctrine of Jesus and practise it, the reign of peace will come upon earth,—not that peace which is the work of man, partial, precarious, and at the mercy of chance; but the peace that is all-pervading, inviolable, and eternal. The first commandment tells us to be at peace with every one and to consider none as foolish or unworthy. If peace is violated, we are to seek to re-establish it. The true religion is in the extinction of enmity among men. We are to be reconciled without delay, that we may not lose that inner peace which is the true life (Matt. v. 22-24). Everything is comprised in this commandment; but Jesus knew the worldly temptations that prevent peace among men. The first temptation perilous to peace is that of the sexual relation. We are not to consider the body as an instrument of lust; each man is to have one wife, and each woman one husband, and one is never to forsake the other under any pretext (Matt. v. 28-32). The second temptation is that of the oath, which draws men into sin; this is wrong, and we are not to be bound by any such promise (Matt. v. 34-37). The third temptation is that of vengeance, which we call human justice; this we are not to resort to under any pretext; we are to endure offences and never to return evil for evil (Matt. v. 38-42). The fourth temptation is that arising from difference in nationalities, from hostility between peoples and States; but we are to remember that all men are brothers, and children of the same Father, and thus take care that difference in nationality leads not to the destruction of peace (Matt. v. 43-48).

Once upon a time, there was a ghoul who fell in love with a daughter of the port of Innsmouth. To say the least, her parents would hardly have looked upon this as an acceptable state of affairs. She, destined one day to descend through abyssal depths to the splendor of many spired Y’ha-nthlei in the depths well beyond the shallows of Jeffreys Ledge. She might have the fortune to marry well, perhaps, even, taking for herself a husband from among the amphibious Deep Ones who inhabit the city, or, at the very least, a fine and only once-human devotee of the Esoteric Order. She would be adorned in nothing more than the fantastic, partly golden alloy diadems and bracelets and anklets, the lavalieres of uncut rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds. What caring parent would not be alarmed that their only daughter might foolishly forsake so precious an inheritance, and all for an infatuation with so lowborn and vile creature as a ghoul?

Yes, many a function calls for fulfilment. For instance, why should it be thought foolish or low to superintend the kitchen? Why should care not be taken that the storeroom never lacks supplies? Why should a housekeeper be allowed to thieve? Why should slovenly and drunken servants exist? Why should a domestic staff be suffered in indulge in bouts of unconscionable debauchery during its leisure time? Yet none of these things were thought worthy of consideration by Manilov’s wife, for she had been gently brought up, and gentle nurture, as we all know, is to be acquired only in boarding schools, and boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other “surprises.

Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh—but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards-which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puff'd up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage—and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and till'd, with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

But how am I to get over the ten or twelve days that must yet elapse before they go? Yet why so long for their departure? When they are gone how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man—my greatest enemy—for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage; and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation—crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery—as far as man can do it—it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband—I hate him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him—I hate him!—But God have mercy on his miserable soul!—and make him see and feel his guilt—I ask no other vengeance! if he could but fully know and truly feel my wrongs, I should be well avenged; and I could freely pardon all; but he is so lost, so hardened in his heartless depravity that, in this life, I believe he never will.

I can’t help thinking,” she confided when he finished answering her questions about women in India who covered their faces and hair in public, “that it is grossly unfair that I was born a female and so must never know such adventures, or see but a few of those places. Even if I were to journey there, I’d only be allowed to go where everything was as civilized as-as London!” “There does seem to be a case of extreme disparity between the privileges accorded the sexes,” Ian agreed. “Still, we each have our duty to perform,” she informed him with sham solemnity. “And there’s said to be great satisfaction in that.” “How do you view your-er-duty?” he countered, responding to her teasing tone with a lazy white smile. “That’s easy. It is a female’s duty to be a wife who is an asset to her husband in every way. It is a male’s duty to do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, so long as he is prepared to defend his country should the occasion demand it in his lifetime-which it very likely won’t. Men,” she informed him, “gain honor by sacrificing themselves on the field of battle while we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of matrimony.” He laughed aloud then, and Elizabeth smiled back at him, enjoying herself hugely. “Which, when one considers it, only proves that our sacrifice is by far the greater and more noble.” “How is that?” he asked, still chuckling. “It’s perfectly obvious-battles last mere days or weeks, months at the very most. While matrimony lasts a lifetime! Which brings to mind something else I’ve often wondered about,” she continued gaily, giving full rein to her innermost thoughts. “And that is?” he prompted, grinning, watching her as if he never wanted to stop. “Why do you suppose, after all that, they call us the weaker sex?” Their laughing gazes held, and then Elizabeth realized how outrageous he must be finding some of her remarks. “I don’t usually go off on such tangents,” she said ruefully. “You must think I’m dreadfully ill-bred.” “I think,” he softly said, “that you are magnificent.” The husky sincerity in his deep voice snatched her breath away. She opened her mouth, thinking frantically for some light reply that could restore the easy camaraderie of a minute before, but instead of speaking she could only draw a long, shaky breath. “And,” he continued quietly, “I think you know it.” This was not, not the sort of foolish, flirtatious repartee she was accustomed to from her London beaux, and it terrified her as much as the sensual look in those golden eyes. Pressing imperceptibly back against the arm of the sofa, she told herself she was only overacting to what was nothing more than empty flattery. “I think,” she managed with a light laugh that stuck in her throat, “that you must find whatever female you’re with ‘magnificent.’” “Why would you say a thing like that?” Elizabeth shrugged. “Last night at supper, for one thing.” When he frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language, she prodded, “You remember Lady Charise Dumont, our hostess, the same lovely brunette on whose every word you were hanging at supper last night?” His frown became a grin. “Jealous?” Elizabeth lifted her elegant little chin and shook her head. “No more than you were of Lord Howard.” She felt a small bit of satisfaction as his amusement vanished. “The fellow who couldn’t seem to talk to you without touching your arm?” he inquired in a silky-soft voice. “That Lord Howard? As a matter of fact, my love, I spent most of my meal trying to decide whether I wanted to shove his nose under his right ear or his left.” Startled, musical laughter erupted from her before she could stop it. “You did nothing of the sort,” she chuckled. “Besides, if you wouldn’t duel with Lord Everly when he called you a cheat, you certainly wouldn’t harm poor Lord Howard merely for touching my arm.” “Wouldn’t I?” he asked softly. “Those are two very different issues.

public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations. LADY

THE OLD WOMAN remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!—it is too beautiful to eat. Then the woman and the swan sailed across an ocean many thousands of li wide, stretching their necks toward America. On her journey she cooed to the swan: “In America I will have a daughter just like me. But over there nobody will say her worth is measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch. Over there nobody will look down on her, because I will make her speak only perfect American English. And over there she will always be too full to swallow any sorrow! She will know my meaning, because I will give her this swan—a creature that became more than what was hoped for.” But when she arrived in the new country, the immigration officials pulled her swan away from her, leaving the woman fluttering her arms and with only one swan feather for a memory. And then she had to fill out so many forms she forgot why she had come and what she had left behind. Now the woman was old. And she had a daughter who grew up speaking only English and swallowing more Coca-Cola than sorrow. For a long time now the woman had wanted to give her daughter the single swan feather and tell her, “This feather may look worthless, but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions.

Tell me, M. Antoine,’ said Harriet, as their taxi rolled along the Esplanade. ‘You who are a person of great experience, is love, in your opinion, a matter of the first importance?’ ‘It is, alas! of a great importance, mademoiselle, but of the first importance, no!’ ‘What is of the first importance?’ ‘Mademoiselle, I tell you frankly that to have a healthy mind in a healthy body is the greatest gift of le bon Dieu, and when I see so many people who have clean blood and strong bodies spoiling themselves and distorting their brains with drugs and drink and foolishness, it makes me angry. They should leave that to the people who cannot help themselves because to them life is without hope.’ Harriet hardly knew what to reply; the words were spoken with such personal and tragic significance. Rather fortunately, Antoine did not wait. ‘L’amour! These ladies come and dance and excite themselves and want love and think it is happiness. And they tell me about their sorrows—me—and they have no sorrows at all, only that they are silly and selfish and lazy. Their husbands are unfaithful and their lovers run away and what do they say? Do they say, I have two hands, two feet, all my faculties, I will make a life for myself? No. They say, Give me cocaine, give me the cocktail, give me the thrill, give me my gigolo, give me l’amo-o-ur! Like a mouton bleating in a field. If they knew! Harriet laughed. ‘You’re right, M. Antoine. I don’t believe l’amour matters so terribly, after all.

Strauss finally had Oppenheimer exactly where he wanted him. Yet Oppie seems to have reacted calmly to the news, politely asking all the right questions, trying to explore his options. Thirty-five minutes after entering Strauss’ office, Oppenheimer rose to leave, telling Strauss that he was going to consult with Herb Marks. Strauss offered him the use of his chauffeur-driven Cadillac and Oppenheimer—distraught (outward appearances to the contrary)—foolishly accepted. But instead of going to Marks’ office, he directed the driver to the law offices of Joe Volpe, the former counsel to the AEC who together with Marks had given him legal advice during the Weinberg trial. Soon afterwards, Marks joined them and the three men spent an hour weighing Robert’s options. A hidden microphone recorded their deliberations. Anticipating that Oppenheimer would consult with Volpe, and unconcerned about violating the legal sanctity of client-lawyer privilege, Strauss had arranged in advance for Volpe’s office to be bugged.20 The hidden microphones in Volpe’s office allowed Strauss, through the transcripts provided to him, to monitor the discussion as to whether Oppenheimer ought to terminate his consulting contract or fight the charges in a formal hearing. Oppie was clearly undecided and anguished. Late that afternoon, Anne Wilson Marks came by and drove her husband and Robert back to their Georgetown home. On the way, Oppenheimer said, “I can’t believe what is happening to me.” That evening, Robert took the train back to Princeton to consult with Kitty.

Cages of women. Women and girls of all ages. Lining downtown streets behind The Great Barrier Walls. Passersby prodding at them with canes, sticks, and whatever they could find. Spitting on them through the bars, as law and culture required. “Cages of women who had disobeyed their husbands, or sons, their preachers, or some other males in their lives. One or two of them had been foolish and self-destructive enough to have reported a rapist. “A couple of them had befriended someone higher or lower than their stations, or maybe entertained a foreigner from outside the community, or allowed someone of a lesser race into their homes. A few may have done absolutely nothing wrong but for being reported by a neighbor with a grudge. “For the most part they had disobeyed or disrespected males. “Watching from behind tinted and bullet-proof windows at the rear of his immaculate stretch limo, the Lord High Chancellor of PolitiChurch, grinned the sadistic grin of unholy conquest. A dark satisfaction only a deeply tarred soul could enjoy.” … … “Caged women and young girls at major street corners in even the worst weather. Every one of them his to do with, or dispose of, as he would. “In this world – in His world – He was God.” - From “The Soul Hides in Shadows” “It is the year 2037. What is now referred to as ‘The Great Electoral Madness of ’16’ had freed the darkest ignorance, isolationism, misogyny, and racial hatreds in the weakest among us, setting loose the cultural, economic, and moral destruction of America. In the once powerful United States, paranoia, distrust, and hatred now rage at epidemic levels.

But if her idiot suitors were staying at Halstead Hall with her, then by thunder, he'd be here, too. They wouldn't take advantage of her on his watch. "We're agreed that you won't do any of that foolish nonsense you mentioned, like spying on them, right?" "Of course not. That's what I have you for." Her private lackey to jump at her commands. He was already regretting this. "Surely the gentlemen will accept the invitation," she went on, blithely ignoring his disgruntlement. "It's hunting season, and the estate has some excellent coveys." "I wouldn't know." She cast him an easy smile. "Because you generally hunt men, not grouse. And apparently you do it very well." A compliment? From her "No need to flatter me, my lady," he said dryly. "I've already agreed to your scheme." Her smile vanished. "Really, Mr. Pinter, sometimes you can be so..." "Honest?" he prodded. "Irritating." She tipped up her chin. "It will be easier to work together if you're not always so prickly." He felt more than prickly, and for the most foolish reasons imaginable. Because he didn't like her trawling for suitors. Or using him to do it. And because he hated her "lady of the manor" role. It reminded him too forcibly of the difference in their stations. "I am who I am, madam," he bit out, as much a reminder for himself as for her. "You knew what you were purchasing when you set out to do this." She frowned. "Must you make it sound so sordid?" He stepped as close as he dared. "You want me to gather information you can use in playing a false role to catch s husband. I am not the one making it sordid." "Tell me, sir, will I have to endure your moralizing at every turn?" she said in a voice dripping with sugar. "Because I'd happily pay extra to have you keep your opinions to yourself." "There isn't enough money in all the world for that." Her eyes blazed up at him. Good. He much preferred her in a temper. At least then she was herself, not putting on some show. She seemed to catch herself, pasting an utterly false smile to her lips. "I see. Well then, can you manage to be civil for the house party? It does me no good to bring suitors here if you'll be skulking about, making them uncomfortable." He tamped down the urge to provoke her further. If he did she'd strike off on her own, and that would be disastrous. "I shall try to keep my 'skulking' to a minimum." "Thank you." She thrust out her hand. "Shall we shake on it?" The minute his fingers closed about hers, he wished he'd refused. Because having her soft hand in his roused everything he'd been trying to suppress during this interview. He couldn't seem to let go. For such a small-boned female, she had a surprisingly firm grip. Her hand was like her-fragility and strength all wrapped in beauty. He had a mad impulse to lift it to his lips and press a kiss to her creamy skin. But he was no Lancelot to her Guinevere. Only in legend did lowly knights dare to court queens. Releasing her hand before he could do something stupid, he sketched a bow. "Good day, my lady. I'll begin my investigation at once and report to you as soon as I learn something." He left her standing there, a goddess surrounded by the aging glories of an aristocrat's mansion. God save him-this had to be the worst mission he'd ever undertaken, one he was sure to regret.

Do you remember the time we tied a lasso to a tree limb and decided to swing across the creek like Tarzan?" Wyatt tipped up his frosty bottle and took a long pull. "Yeah." Zane was already laughing. "As usual,you two decided that I'd be the one to try it out first.That way,if it broke,I'd be the one tossed into the creek." "It stands to reason." Jesse chuckled. "You were the youngest. That's just the price you had to pay to hang out with us." "And," Wyatt added, "you were always willing to go along with whatever we decided." Zane shook his head. "Not when I used it to fly across the creek." "And not when I followed him," Wyatt said with a laugh. "But Jesse, assured that it was safe,grabbed hold and was flying through the air when the branch snapped." Amy looked over at her husband. "You landed in the creek?" "Yeah? On the day after one of our biggest storms,with the water spilling over its banks and rushing so fast it carried me downstream half a mile or more." She put a hand to her mouth to cover her shock and saw Cora do the same. Wyatt laughed. "He was lucky Zane and I had our horses tethered nearby.We chased along the banks of the creek until we could get far enough ahead to toss him a tree branch to catch. By the time we hauled him out,he looked like a drowned rat and was spitting mad." "I had a right to be.I swallowed half the creek." Zane laughed. "But think how lucky we were that it happened to you instead of me. At least you could swim." Marilee's eyes rounded. "They had you test the rope when they knew you couldn't swim?" Wyatt was laughing even harder. "We figured it was one way for him to learn." "How old were you?" They thought a minute before Wyatt answered. "I was eight,so that would make Jesse ten and Zane seven." "You could have all drowned." "Yeah.Looking back,we were lucky to have surrived so many foolish adventures. But," Wyatt added, "I wouldn't have missed a single one of them." of them

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield. Let me refine that. He didn’t want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn’t imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor. That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn’t reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed. I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women’s Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn’t that selfish? What if that wasn’t God’s will? I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn’t exactly what I prayed for. Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris? Had my prayers even been heard? If it was God’s plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can’t say that I was. Right after he made his decision, I took a walk with a friend whose faith ran very deep. She knew the Bible much better than I did, and was far more active in the church. I cried to her. “I have to believe this is the best thing for our family,” I told her. “But I don’t know how it can be. I’m really struggling to accept it.” “It’s okay to be angry with God,” she told me. That caught me short. “I--I don’t think we’re supposed to be.” “Why not?” “Well…Jesus was never mad at God, and--“ “That’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t you remember in the temple with the money changers? Or in the garden before he was crucified, his doubts? Or on the cross? It’s okay to have those feelings.” We talked some more. “I do believe that if Chris dies,” I said finally, “God must be saying it’s still okay for our family, even if I don’t know how.” She teared up. “I’m in awe,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I could say that.

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking of the "superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could be compared in similar things. Each has what the other has not: each completes the other, and is completed by the other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving from the other what the other only can give. 68. Now their separate characters are briefly these: The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle,—and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. Her great function is Praise: she enters into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial: to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offense. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is not home: so far as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a part of that outer world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love,—so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light,—shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea,—so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her.

The deep darkness of good-natured humans, which causes the noble things of humanity to spoil—the affection for a worn-out, grimy lifestyle, the quarrels between husbands and wives, the cronyish, bureaucratic formalism. What foolish things we humans have consumed ourselves with! Overlaying these most trivial of things with our joy and anger and sorrow and pleasure! This is … this is simply pitiable.

to scare them away. Wisely her thoughts around Ryder she kept to herself. When she’d finished speaking, Davy said, ‘Well, firstly I have no doubt, from what you’ve told me, that someone did follow you home.’ Lily sighed with relief that her husband believed her and didn’t consider her to be foolish. ‘Also, I wouldn’t put it past Aunt Maud to do something like that. However, without being certain it was her, there’s not much we can do. Even if we were to up and move, Lily, Maud wouldn’t be able to move into the house, as it would be up for sale and she couldn’t afford to buy it.’ Lily saw the sense of his words and nodded. ‘Having said all that, I’m taking no chances. Tomorrow morning I will hire a cabbie to take you to Webb’s and bring you home in the evenings.’ ‘Thank you,’ Lily said as she smiled. Feeling relieved, she went to the kitchen to prepare their dinner. As she set the kettle to boil, Lily’s mind transported her back. She’d

We seem, however, to be drawing up our forces on both sides. — One struggle for my dying liberty, my dear! — The success of one pitched battle will determine which is to be the general, which the subaltern, for the rest of the campaign. To dare to be sullen already! — As I hope to live, my dear, I was in high good humour within myself; and when he was foolish, only intended a little play with him; and he takes it in earnest. He worships you: So I shall railly him before you: But I charge you, as the man by his sullenness has taken upon him to fight his own battle, either to be on my side, or be silent. I shall take it very ill of my Harriet, if she strengthen his hands. Well, but enough of this husband — HUSBAND! What a word!

My daughter-in-law,” Lan said. “She has betrayed her duties. She left my oldest son, her husband, for another man. A Cambodian man no less. Claims that she’s in love. Foolish girl.” Lan uttered tut-tuts of heavy disapproval.

You are responsible for any underachieving person in your Care Their failure? That's on you. Their success? That's on you. Their day to day life is on you...except if you don't WANT that! Then, It's okay to LET THEM BE. If you choose to do the work however, you are not ALLOWED to blink let alone STOP. You are practically in a RELATIONSHIP with an underachieving child, husband, wife or friend that entails you GETTING USED. And yes you may need some USING yourself. That's where it hurts. Underachieving Persons are everywhere and all over because it takes SUSTAINABLE work to get to them. Your work isn't to do everything and anything for them. Far from it. They are doing poorer than expected ONLY because they CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY choose to. So they would BLEED you dry and tire you out until you can get them to CHOOSE to FLY instead of SINK in their real or imagined PAIN. Your efforts should be to EVOKE emotions that make them make the BEAUTIFUL CHOICE to negate the OLD CHOICE. FOR THIS, all you need is an AGREEMENT. Get them to AGREE in the presence of a witness. Consider the SKILLS they need to LEARN. Provided REQUIRED resources. GIVE them enough time to COME THROUGH. The AGREEMENT is the MOST IMPORTANT. A solid AGREEMENT. If you have the capacity to get them to AGREE you have made more progress than you ever will forcing a change in their attitudes by using CONTROL tactics. It's why sitting them down works. It's why providing guidance works. It's why punishment doesn't...especially if it doesn't elicit a SOLID AGREEMENT. Without an AGREEMENT all your effort may come to waste or still their achievement will be lower than expected. Well, a miracle could happen. Say they make the choice on their own. Or as a result of a divine encounter. And Yes, they aren't foolish. Just people who have sworn to be mediocre...unconsciously or unconsciously!

The Reverend Brook-Edward Bridges is the sort of man I cannot help but despise,” she rejoined sharply. “He believes the world exists to sustain his follies, and ask nothing of him in return. My brother was spoilt as a youth, and age has merely made him indolent. He sponges on my mother and my husband for the relief of his debts, and is foolish enough to believe that he might prevail upon an excellent woman to make his fortune in marriage. Yes, Jane, I am severe upon him—for he has disappointed me these fifteen years at least.

She has certain friends whom she met through her former work with the railways. Two of them removed Mrs Naylor from the ward. No attempt was made to have her properly discharged. It was a ridiculous act perpetrated by a pair of foolish girls with no knowledge or understanding of the married state. Could it be that her so-called friends prevailed upon Mrs Naylor to press charges against her husband?

If you were to tell Lizzy’s story, or Jane’s, I suppose you would begin with when they met their husbands. I don’t say that to slight them! I’ve often wished that my own life had turned out like theirs. They seem very happy with their rich husbands, and though neither man is to my taste, who am I to judge? I am a foolish wretch and usually racked with misery of my own making. Ask anyone. Ah well! At least I’ve known such fun as they will never come within a hundred yards of.

His chest heaved. “I’m tired of trying to be the perfect, considerate husband to you, Emmeline, so you’re just going to get the one you’ve got. Faulty, far from perfect, and frequently wrong.

Even more remarkable is the gnostic poem called the Thunder, Perfect Mind. This text contains a revelation spoken by a feminine power: I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore, and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin. I am (the mother) and the daughter.… I am she whose wedding is great, and I have not taken a husband.… I am knowledge, and ignorance.… I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am strength, and I am fear.… I am foolish, and I am wise.… I am godless, and I am one whose God is great.

The boy.” Nye paused. “Your boy. The way you are with him. If I ever compared our lives in the past, I soon realized I got the better bargain. You’re ten times the father to your son than the old lord was to you.” Jeremy swallowed. “Thanks,” he said hoarsely. “But I’m a much better husband,” Nye said cheerfully.

Madlon’s voice broke into his musings. “It’s kind of funny, but I just happened to notice that all the trail horses are males—” Her husband’s laughter cut off the rest of the question, but Ward had gotten the gist of it. “Shame on you, Pug, for checking out other guys’ equipment!” Madlon blushed at her husband’s teasing. “I noticed, that’s all. It stuck out.” Her husband whooped again. Ward fought a grin. “You’re right, our trail horses are geldings. We’ve found the rides go better with single sex horses, especially as we often have novice riders. Mares are great. They’re actually harder workers—” “Of course they are. That applies to females of all species,” Madlon said. “True. But when a mare goes into heat she sometimes gets a little tetchy and even gelded horses get distracted—” And just like that, an image of Tess and her huge dark eyes, saucy ponytail, and exquisite curves popped into his mind. He had no doubt she would do her best to clock—or geld—him if he were foolish enough to ask if she was in heat.

Lutian?” she called, knowing he, too, must be dead. But without his body being there, she thought mayhap he’d escaped somehow. Her fool could be most wily at times. But Lutian didn’t answer her. Consumed by guilt and anger over the senselessness of his death, Adara picked up a pitchfork and launched it at the knight, who tried to dodge it while he fought her husband. It caught him in the shin. He yelped as Christian parried his sword stroke. She seized the pitchfork and went for the knight again, only to have Christian kill him before she could. Still she lunged for the fallen knight. “My lady, he’s already dead.” “Not dead enough!” she sobbed. “He killed my men. And…and…poor, helpless Lutian.” “Hello?” Adara couldn’t breathe at the sound of the wonderfully familiar voice. To her immediate relief, Lutian stuck his head up from a pile of hay. Pieces of straw were stuck and tangled in the brown locks of his hair, even in his beard. It was the most precious sight she’d ever beheld. “Oh, thank the Lord and His saints for their mercy!” she cried as she ran to him and embraced him without decorum. “You’re alive!” “Only a fool would be fighting them, my queen, and though I am a fool, I’m not that foolish.” -Adara, Christian, & Lutian

Whoever marries an adulterer is foolish; whoever marries a contentious spouse will never rest. A righteous wife will make your home a heaven; an immoral husband will make your home a hell.

And she knew that this was the thing that would harm Dionne in the end, not her foolishness but the foolhardy way in which she clung to her own terrible ideas. She knew that this was Avril's undoing, not that she'd made the wrong choices, but that she'd been so unwilling to let anyone in to see the lie of her marriage, this masking was worse than the original mistake. Sixty-three years on this earth has taught Hyacinth that it wasn't so much the mistakes that people made but how flexible they were in the aftermath that made all the difference in how their lives turned out. It was the women who held too tightly to the dream of their husband's fidelity who unraveled, the parents who clasped their children too close who lost them, the me who grieved too deeply the lives they'd wanted and would never have who saw their sadness consume them. Hyacinth worried about Dionne because of her hard way of being in the world, the way she could only see the world through the lens of her own flawed feelings.

Once he returned to Ackergill, he could begin to forget her. He’d forget about her brave green eyes, her silvery blond hair that must feel like silk in a man’s hands, her lush curves that had so unexpectedly and trustingly molded to his hard planes as he’d carried her, the delicate way her fingers cupped her precious womb, the bonny vision she made in his mother’s dress. Aye. He’d forget about Malina, all right. When the oceans swallowed Scotia and sent her, hills, vales, lochs, and all to the bottom of the sea. “Best be off,” Edmund said. He took her hand and placed it in Darcy’s as the woman’s da would have done were he here. Regret sliced his heart. He didn’t want to let this woman go. In his bones he felt she belonged to him, now and for all time. But the feel of her hand, like a chip of smooth ivory that might shatter if a man gripped it too tightly, reminded him just how foolish he was for contemplating keeping her. He could never be a proper husband to any woman, especially one so small.

Their love was foolish, childish, sugar-sweet, the kind of love that, if you are lucky to lose it, flares up like a thatched roof but burns as long as you live. While our love … I am her husband, she is my wife. But

How can you know that he has changed? He’s the Dark Lord, for Heaven’s Sake; do you simply think he will forget all that he ever was to become a good and true husband to you? If you sincerely believe that, then I think you are foolish.

Seeing you like this tonight makes me think of how much I want to marry you. Me in a tux, and you in a gorgeous dress with the hair and makeup and sparkles and heels. A beautiful reception where we share our first dance as husband and wife. And afterward, the seal between us will become permanent under God. Our wedding night will be the best night of my existence. It was foolish of me to assign it so quickly, but you make me do foolish things.

Here, I'll take her," her husband said. He scooped the baby from Juliet's arms and cradled her to his chest. Immediately the whimpering stopped. Charlotte stared at him in wide-eyed fascination. Juliet watched a passing carriage, too ashamed of herself, and her conflicting feelings, to meet Gareth's blue, blue eyes. "She's wet," she warned. "Ah, well, we've got more important things to worry about than that, don't we, Charlotte?" he said lightly, adjusting the baby's frilly bonnet around her tiny face. Juliet caught the double meaning and the tension in his words, knowing well what he meant. She threw him a quick, guilty glance, but Gareth didn't see it. He was too busy ignoring her, playing with the baby, swinging her high over his head and laughing as she broke out in a smile as bright as the sunshine blazing down from above. Juliet looked on a little wistfully. What she wouldn't give to be so happy, so carefree; what she wouldn't give to be able to take back that terrible moment in the church when he'd discovered Charles's ring still on her finger. Why hadn't she removed it once and for all this morning? She had hurt him — deeply. And she felt sick about it. "Like that, do you?" Charlotte chortled in glee. "Here, let's do it again," he said cheerfully, and out of the corner of her eye, Juliet saw that Perry was watching him with those cool gray eyes of his that didn't miss a trick. Perry knew that all was not right here, and Juliet suspected he knew Lord Gareth's sudden silliness with the baby was just a cover for the pain he had to be feeling. And now her husband was swinging Charlotte up and over his head once more, making foolish faces and even more foolish noises at her until he had her shrieking in delight. "Watch this — wheeeeeee!" Perry, observing, just shook his head. "If anyone knows how to act like a juvenile, it's you, Gareth." "Yes, and the day one forgets how to be young is the day one gets old. Let's do it again, Charlie-girl. Ready, now? Here ... we ... go!" Again he swung the infant — high, high, higher. Once more, Charlotte shrieked with glee, and even Juliet felt a reluctant smile creep over her face. Forced or not, her husband's good humor was infectious. The Den members were also grinning, elbowing each other and eyeing him as though he had lost his mind along with his bachelorhood. "I don't believe I'm seeing this," murmured Chilcot. "Yes, what would they say down at White's, Gareth?" Perry was shaking his head. "Well, all I can say is that I'm exceedingly grateful I don't know anyone on this side of town," he drawled. "I daresay you are making a complete arse of yourself, Gareth." "Yes, and enjoying it immensely. I tell you, dear fellow, someday you, too, shall make an arse of yourself over a little one, if not a woman, and then we shall all have the last laugh!" A

Serves you right," Lucien growled. He took the cloth from Juliet and hurled it at his brother's bare chest. "Put this against your head, and it won't hurt so bad." But Gareth, looking dazedly up at Juliet, wasn't paying him any attention. Instead, he was staring at his wife as though she was the dearest thing he had ever beheld, as though he had never expected to see her again. Which, Lucien reflected dryly, was not so unlikely a supposition. He had arrived at the dower house just after six to find his brother already gone to the fight — and his new sister-in-law packing her trunk and sobbing her eyes out. Crying females did not amuse him. Soppy tales of prideful husbands did not faze him. And her angry protests did not deter him when, his patience exhausted, he plucked Charlotte from her arms and thrust her into the stunned Sir Hugh's, bodily threw Juliet over his shoulder and, striding back outside to where Armageddon waited, personally brought her to the fight himself — where her bristling defiance had turned to heartbroken misery as she'd seen Gareth taking a beating from the Butcher and realized just what her husband was doing for her. Not for himself — but for her and Charlotte. Now, as Lucien stood there watching their nauseating display of love and forgiveness, he felt compelled to vent his spleen. "All right, that's enough of this damned sickly-sweet foolishness," he growled, stalking to the bed and glaring down at his brother. "You listen to me, and you listen well, Gareth. Your fighting days are over. And if I ever hear of you taking on a champion pugilist again —" Gareth waved him off. "Give me some credit, would you? After all, I did beat the fellow." Lucien tightened his jaw. So he had. He'd also won himself a lucrative estate, exposed Snelling for the murdering swindler he was, and won the hearts of the people of Abingdon with his courage against the Butcher. Earlier,

The Queen’s Highland castle retreat, set in 40,000 acres of heather and grouse moor, is effectively the Windsors’ family seat. Ever since Queen Victoria bought the estate in 1848 it has had a special place in the affections of the royal family. However the very quirks and obscure family traditions which have accrued over the years can intimidate newcomers. “Don’t sit there” they chorus at an unfortunate guest foolish enough to try and sit in a chair in the drawing-room which was last used by Queen Victoria. Those who successfully navigate this social minefield, popularly known as “the Balmoral test,” are accepted by the royal family. The ones who fail vanish from royal favour as quickly as the Highland mists come and go. So the prospect of her stay at Balmoral loomed large in Diana’s mind. She was “terrified” and desperately wanted to behave in the appropriate manner. Fortunately rather than staying in the main house, she was able to stay with her sister Jane and husband Robert who, as he was a member of the royal Household, enjoyed a grace and favour cottage on the estate. Prince Charles rang her every day, suggesting she join him for a walk or a barbecue. It was a “wonderful” few days until the glint of a pair of binoculars across the river Dee spoilt their idyll. They were carried by royal journalist James Whitaker who had spotted Prince Charles fishing by the banks of the river Dee. The hunters had become the hunted. Diana immediately told Charles that she would make herself scarce so while he continued fishing she hid behind a tree for half an hour hoping vainly that the journalists would go away. Cleverly she used the mirror from her powder compact to watch the unholy trinity of James Whitaker and rival photographers Ken Lennox and Arthur Edwards as they tried to capture her on film. She foiled their efforts by calmly walking straight up through the pine trees, her head muffled with a headscarf and flat cap, leaving Fleet Street’s finest clueless as to her identity.

When He Needs Freedom from Destructive Behavior Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. EPHESIANS 6:10-11 IT’S DIFFICULT FOR A WIFE to see her husband exhibit any kind of destructive behavior. In watching him doing something repeatedly that hurts his health or jeopardizes their family, she sees her future going over a cliff. There can be such terrible consequences for his behavior that it could ruin them financially, as well as destroy him physically or mentally. Whether it is drinking alcohol, taking drugs, gambling, smoking, reckless eating habits, or whatever else she observes her husband doing that could destroy him or endanger her or their children, it can be so heartbreaking to her that she cannot live with it. Every woman has to decide what she can and cannot tolerate. Life is hard enough without your husband finding ways to make it worse. And she must decide how much she can allow her children to witness before it seriously affects them too. You may not see behavior as seriously destructive as that in your husband, but perhaps he is taking unnecessary chances with his safety, such as driving too fast, or riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or being careless with dangerous machinery or equipment, or refusing to see a doctor when he should, or not following the doctor’s orders and thereby jeopardizing his health. There is only so much you can say or do to try to motivate your husband to stop destructive behavior if he is intent on doing it. But God can do miracles when you fervently pray to Him about it. He hears your prayers, and He wants your husband to be free as much as you do. Your prayers can help your husband open his eyes to see the truth. Your prayers can help him to understand how to put on the whole armor of God so he can stand against these plans of the enemy for his destruction. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would set my husband free from any destructive behavior he has acquired. Wake him up to the folly of his ways and show him when he is being foolish. Break the chains that bind him and open his blind eyes. Strengthen him where his weakness controls him. Enable him to see when the enemy has erected a stronghold in his life. Help him to understand how his behavior affects me and our children, as well as other family members, coworkers, and friends. Tell me what I can do to help make this situation better. I know I cannot change him, and I am unable to make anything happen. Only You can open his eyes, deliver him, and set him free from destructive behavior. I know foolish actions are not Your will for his life, and there is a big price to pay for everything that is not Your will. I pray that neither I nor my children will have to pay any price for his careless behavior. Whatever the reason he appears to have little regard for me, our children, or himself by continuing any reckless behavior, I pray You would deliver him from it completely. You are greater and more powerful than whatever draws him away from Your best. I trust You to set him free to be all You made him to be. In Jesus’ name I pray.

When We Should Not Rush into Anything It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge, and he sins who hastens with his feet. PROVERBS 19:2 FAR TOO OFTEN a hasty decision made without enough knowledge, thought, or prayer has gotten a husband and wife into trouble. And when one spouse is guilty of making that hasty decision over the objections of the other, it can cause serious friction between them. How many times have we, or someone else we know, done something that “seemed like a good idea,” but it only seemed like a good idea because God was never consulted? The book of Proverbs says, “He who troubles his own house will inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11:29). Doing foolish and impulsive things troubles a spouse, which definitely troubles the house. If you or your husband has ever rushed into anything without proper consideration, without praying enough about it until you had the leading of the Lord, without talking it out between you, or without gathering all the knowledge and information you needed on the subject, this may have become a prelude to trouble in your house. In fact, it can break down trust in a marriage to the point that it becomes irreparable in the eyes of the spouse who is the sensible one. No one will continually pay the price for a spouse who does impulsive or irresponsible things that can jeopardize their future. At some point it becomes too much to bear. Pray this doesn’t happen to you. Ask God to give you and your husband wisdom in all things. Pray that neither of you ever hastily rushes into something that may be out of God’s will for your life. My Prayer to God LORD, I pray You would give my husband and me wisdom, knowledge, and understanding so that we don’t make hasty decisions without first seeking You for direction. If either of us is ever about to do something like that at any time, I pray You would give us such clear revelation that it stops us in our tracks before we make a serious mistake. Help both of us to never trouble our house by being impulsive and quick to cater to what we think is right instead of waiting to hear from You so that we do what we know is right. Don’t let us get off the path You have for us by taking even one step in the wrong direction that will lead to problems for us later on. Pull us back from our own way and help us live according to Yours. Keep us from pursuing our own desires over Your will. Wake us up to the truth whenever we have willfully stepped into the path of deception. Keep us from buying something we cannot afford, or committing to something we are not supposed to do, or investing time and money in something You will not bless. Keep our eagerness to have something from controlling our decisions. Give us wisdom, and let our good judgment lead us in the right way. Enable us to have a calm, sensible, Spirit-led approach to every decision we make. In Jesus’ name I pray.

She and her late husband, Leander Cross, a prominent surgeon of the darker nation, were, in my childhood, perhaps the leading host of the Gold Coast party circuit, a circuit my parents traveled often, because it was, in those days, what one did: glittering dinner at one house on the Friday, champagne brunch at another on the Sunday, caterers, cooks, even temporary butlers at the ready as the best of black Washington charged about in mad imitation of white people's foolishness.

...there’s a part of my heart or mind, or some spot where the two meet, a spot that isn’t mine because I’m a wife. This part isn’t really me at all, but a promise I made on a snowy day. A promise to stay and to be with (him) and to be good to him, and when there’s no other way, I have to go to that promise to find my feeling for my husband. We walk the finest of foolish, foolish lines.... How can anybody love anybody else for more than five minutes?