“
Four will Become Two, Lion and Tiger will Meet in Battle, and Blood will Rule the Forest.
”
”
Erin Hunter (A Dangerous Path (Warriors, #5))
“
There are videos where I would go approaching strangers and sing the songs from 'The Lion King. I would have been about four years, and I came running up to people on the beach, strangers that I chose at random and began to sing, and my family never knew where I was, they were always looking for me, trying to imagine who I was harassing this time .
”
”
Taylor Swift (Taylor Swift Songbook: Guitar Recorded Versions)
“
I hadn’t realised until that moment how much I’ve missed that feeling, of someone inside your four walls watching out for you. The feeling that home isn’t just a place, but also people. I’ve forgotten it could be.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3)
“
four men who do not know each other will hesitate to confront a lion. But once they know each other and feel they can trust each other they will do so without fear.
”
”
Martin van Creveld (A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind)
“
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament.
”
”
Sebastian Faulks (Jeeves and the Wedding Bells)
“
United we stand, divided we fall.
”
”
Aesop (Lessons from the Lion, the Ox and their little friends (illustrated) (Four fables from Aesop Book 2))
“
And I hadn’t realised until that moment how much I’ve missed that feeling, of someone inside your four walls watching out for you. The feeling that home isn’t just a place, but also people. I’ve forgotten it could be.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3)
“
Then she was there in the doorway of the ambulance at his feet. She jumped up like a lion, then stood up on two feet like a human. Her hair was thick and full. She had a mouthful of giant teeth. He could see four pronounced canines in the front and strong claws where her fingernails had been. Her strong body was shriveled and emaciated with her ribs and hip bones sticking out prominently like a concentration camp victim. Her stench was overpowering, like a deer carcass left to rot on the side of the road.
”
”
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
“
And if I say to you that I am glad of everything we have done together, and sorry that we will not be here together in forty years, laughing at a faded photo of you impersonating a lion, it having withered well, you less so, as we stand fabulously old, in a city that understands what spirit it takes to be old, to be beautiful, to be much looked at, to be itself, to be never quite caught, to have a past, to be content, to have seen much, to have remained, to have continued…
”
”
Jeanette Winterson
“
Goodnight.” And I hadn’t realised until that moment how much I’ve missed that feeling, of someone inside your four walls watching out for you. The feeling that home isn’t just a place, but also people. I’ve forgotten it could be.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 3)
“
Black vomit came gushing out Samantha’s mouth, adding to the puddle already on the floor. Samantha was covered in a sheen of sweat, crouched on all fours on the wooden hallway floor, like an animal. Her thick yellow fingernails made deep scratches in the wood as her body convulsed with each new expulsion of the black vomit. Her hair was long and thick and full; thicker and fuller than he had ever seen it. It reminded him of a lion’s mane. Her skin was a sickly pale grey with disturbing red boils the size of grapefruit and weeping puss-filled black blotches where others had burst. Spider webs of blue veins were visible under the skin all over her body.
”
”
Joseph M. Chiron (Tagged: The Apocalypse)
“
Lions walk on four legs," observed Mma Makutsi. "Was this man walking on four legs? That can be a big giveaway, Mma.
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #15))
“
Don’t readjust your contacts. No, that is not the slow hyena from The Lion King. That is my four-pound best friend.
”
”
Mamrie Hart (You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery)
“
The circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again.
Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both.
”
”
Gregory Maguire (A Lion Among Men (The Wicked Years, #3))
“
Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to explore them. But he only once consulted him, on a technical matter of high finance, and though he visited Philips four times, these concerned purely personal mattes of family money. The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engel's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.
”
”
Paul Johnson
“
In a fascinating study, Barrett (1999) demonstrated that children as young as three
years of age have a sophisticated cognitive understanding of predator-prey encounters. Children from both an industrialized culture and a traditional hunter-horticulturalist culture were
able to spontaneously describe the flow of events in a predator-prey encounter in an ecologically accurate way. Moreover, they understood that after a lion kills a prey, the prey is no longer alive, can no longer eat, and can no longer run and that the dead state is permanent.
This sophisticated understanding of death from encounters with predators appears to be developed by age three to four.
”
”
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
“
And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats.
”
”
Roberto Bolaño (The Savage Detectives)
“
Yards out past the cliffs, the sea thrashes the jagged and steep rocks with all its might, then retreats, only to try again. These broken walls and half crumbled towers had been seen by a young boy named Jack, who turned it into a magical place where goodness and love conquered winter, and a lion rose from the dead, and four children unexpectedly sat on royal thrones.
”
”
Patti Callahan Henry (Once Upon a Wardrobe)
“
LOOK, I’M ONLY IN THIS FOR THE PIZZA. The publisher was like, “Oh, you did such a great job writing about the Greek gods last year! We want you to write another book about the Ancient Greek heroes! It’ll be so cool!” And I was like, “Guys, I’m dyslexic. It’s hard enough for me to read books.” Then they promised me a year’s supply of free pepperoni pizza, plus all the blue jelly beans I could eat. I sold out. I guess it’s cool. If you’re looking to fight monsters yourself, these stories might help you avoid some common mistakes—like staring Medusa in the face, or buying a used mattress from any dude named Crusty. But the best reason to read about the old Greek heroes is to make yourself feel better. No matter how much you think your life sucks, these guys and gals had it worse. They totally got the short end of the Celestial stick. By the way, if you don’t know me, my name is Percy Jackson. I’m a modern-day demigod—the son of Poseidon. I’ve had some bad experiences in my time, but the heroes I’m going to tell you about were the original old-school hard-luck cases. They boldly screwed up where no one had screwed up before. Let’s pick twelve of them. That should be plenty. By the time you finish reading about how miserable their lives were—what with the poisonings, the betrayals, the mutilations, the murders, the psychopathic family members, and the flesh-eating barnyard animals—if that doesn’t make you feel better about your own existence, then I don’t know what will. So get your flaming spear. Put on your lion-skin cape. Polish your shield, and make sure you’ve got arrows in your quiver. We’re going back about four thousand years to decapitate monsters, save some kingdoms, shoot a few gods in the butt, raid the Underworld, and steal loot from evil people. Then, for dessert, we’ll die painful tragic deaths. Ready? Sweet. Let’s do this.
”
”
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson's Greek Heroes)
“
The staying and doing it, in spite of everything. In spite of the bears and the rattlesnakes and the scat of the mountain lions I never saw; the blisters and scabs and scrapes and lacerations. The exhaustion and the deprivation; the cold and the heat; the monotony and the pain; the thirst and the hunger; the glory and the ghosts that haunted me as I hiked eleven hundred miles from the Mojave Desert to the state of Washington by myself. And finally, once I’d actually gone and done it, walked all those miles for all those days, there was the realization that what I’d thought was the beginning had not really been the beginning at all. That in truth my hike on the Pacific Crest Trail hadn’t begun when I made the snap decision to do it. It had begun before I even imagined it, precisely four years, seven months, and three days before, when I’d stood in a little room at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and learned that my mother was going to die.
”
”
Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
“
I’ve done peyote in Real de Catorce, Mexico, in a cage with a mountain lion. I’ve had seventy-eight stitches sewn into my forehead, by a veterinarian. I’ve had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon. I’ve bongoed naked until the cops arrested me.
”
”
Matthew McConaughey (Greenlights)
“
The air was rank, and on my left, in a broad green meadow, arranged neatly in pairs, were dead lions and dead walruses and dead gazelles. It was like some horrible parade leading towards a cruel parody of Noah's ark, a ship for everything that was gone and never coming back, everything that would not be saved.
”
”
Joe Hill (Strange Weather: Four Short Novels)
“
It bore the head of a lion, antlers like a deer’s, and the body of a four-legged creature; a tiger, perhaps, but its feet ended in hooves.
”
”
R.F. Kuang (The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1))
“
read three or four books at a time to avoid tedium”—and
”
”
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932)
“
Once there were four children
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1))
“
This was a total lightbulb moment in the initial twenty-four hours after she went to heaven. “She is with him, and he is in me.” Hope has a rope.
”
”
Levi Lusko (Through the Eyes of a Lion: Facing Impossible Pain, Finding Incredible Power)
“
The brave are patient.
They are the priests of sunrise,
lions on the ramparts, the promontory.
[from 'From the Japanese']
”
”
Louise Glück (The First Four Books of Poems)
“
Something terrible is coming, Firestar. Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest.
”
”
Erin Hunter (The Darkest Hour)
“
Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest.
”
”
Erin Hunter (The Darkest Hour)
“
Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night, who named him Ericepaius and Protogenus Phaëton, lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in a triad: Night, Order, and Justice. Before this cave sat the inescapable mother Rhea playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man’s attention to the oracles of the goddess. Phanes created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her sceptre passed to Uranus.
”
”
Robert Graves (The Greek Myths 1)
“
Similarly, hippos, as four ton vegetarians, would be great barnyard animals if they weren’t so dangerous. They kill more people each year than do any other African mammals, including even lions.
”
”
Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies)
“
How does a hardworking sixty-four-year-old-woman end up without a house or a permanent place to stay, relying on unpredictable low-wage work to survive? Living in a mile-high alpine wilderness, with intermittent snow and maybe mountain lions in a tiny trailer, scrubbing toilets at the mercy of employers who, on a whim, could cut her hours or even fire her? What does the future look like for someone like that?
”
”
Jessica Bruder (Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century)
“
His face almost looked the way it did when he was a teenager, when there was the subtle expression of both confidence and mischief in his darkly handsome eyes. When I think of him now, though, I don’t picture his face the way it is. What I see is from a memory, from a moment when he must have been eleven or twelve years old and we were both in our backyard and it was summertime and I was drawing in a coloring book and he was there in the green grass and he didn’t know I was watching him. He was crawling around on all fours; he was practicing being a lion or a tiger or more probably a leopard and he was growling to himself, stalking the shadow of a bird, and he didn’t see me staring at him and I think my mother was there, looking at us from an upstairs window, watching us both and gently smiling, and what I remember most is that all of us were happy then with who we were at that moment; at that moment, all of us were quietly happy.
”
”
Joe Meno (Demons in the Spring)
“
Four adventurers step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1))
“
Six days later, the president named a postmaster for New Salem, Illinois, a twenty-four-year-old lawyer who had lost a race for the state legislature. He was a Clay man, but the post was hardly major, and Abraham Lincoln was happy to accept the appointment.
”
”
Jon Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House)
“
Bluestar told me, ‘Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest,’” Firestar finished. “And then blood oozed out of the hill of bones and started to fill the hollow. Blood everywhere . . . Cinderpelt, what does it all mean?
”
”
Erin Hunter (The Darkest Hour)
“
When a great figure passed through a city of Burgundy or Champagne, the corporation of the city turned out to deliver an address and present him with four silver goblets in which there were four wines. On the first goblet he read the inscription “monkey wine,” on the second “lion wine,” on the third “sheep wine,” on the fourth “swine wine.” These four inscriptions expressed the four descending degrees of drunkenness: the first, which enlivens; the second, which irritates; the third, which stupefies; finally the last, which brutalizes.
”
”
Victor Hugo
“
So these Kings and Queens entered the thicket, and before they had gone a score of paces, they all remembered that the thing they had seen was called a lamppost, and before they had gone twenty more, they noticed that they were making their way not through branches but through coats. And next moment they all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in their old clothes. It was the same day and the same hour of the day on which they had all gone into the wardrobe to hide. Mrs. Macready and the visitors were still talking I the passage; but luckily they never came into the empty room and so the children weren’t caught.
And that would have been the very end of the story if it hadn’t been that they felt they really must explain to the Professor why four of the coats out of his wardrobe were missing. And the Professor, who was a very remarkable man, didn’t tell them not to be silly or not to tell lies, but believed the whole story. “No,” he said, “I don’t think it will be any good trying to go back through the wardrobe door to get the coats. You won’t get into Narnia again by that route. Nor would the coats be much use by now if you did! Eh? What’s that? Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again someday. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it. And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves. And don’t mention it to anyone else unless you find that they’ve had adventures of the same sort themselves. What’s that? How will you know? Oh, you’ll know all right. Odd things they say--even their looks--will let the secret out. Keep your eyes open. Bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?”
And that is the very end of the adventures of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right, it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe)
“
And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city’s uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and ducks’ bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing, some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars, donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their maws, all chewed up except for their helpless paddling feet; limestone or leaden, metaled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving from buttresses, walls and roofs. That night, the king permitting,
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
“
I can't believe you pulled that off," Ashe shook his head at Kevis. He'd misted in beside the healer and watched as Kevis placed Breanne in a healing sleep. Both worried she'd get no rest with the bite scheduled in the morning after breakfast.
"I don't believe you'll manage that a second time," Kooper changed to humanoid long enough to blink at Ashe and Kevis. "So savor it while you can." He changed back to lion snake and blinked again at both before lowering his head to rest on Breanne's shoulder.
"Dad always says not to argue with those guys," Kevis stated sagely.
Four lion snakes sniffed in unison.
”
”
Connie Suttle (Blood Revolution (God Wars, #3))
“
Tonight, we light the symbolic flashlight of under-the-covers reading to celebrate those page-turners we can never put down, even on a school night. I am assured that our Olympic torch will never reach a temperature of Fahrenheit four fifty-one, something the Lorax, the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe were all quite happy to hear.
”
”
Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics (Mr. Lemoncello's Library, #2))
“
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah is an emblem of the Messiah, representative of Matthew. The ox was the classic symbol of a servant, as presented in Mark. Luke emphasized the Son of Man; and John, the Eagle. The same four faces that were the ensigns for the camps of Israel and appear on the cherubim seem to also characterize the four Gospels.
”
”
Chuck Missler (Learn the Bible in 24 Hours: An Overview of the Whole Bible)
“
For years, the people of Congo spoke of giant chimpanzees that ate lions, fished, and howled at the moon. In fact, the animal was called “lion killer” by the native people. Of course, traditional scientists attributed the rumors to a highly imaginative indigenous group whose bedtime stories had gotten a little out of hand. Besides, the descriptions seemed to more closely match a gorilla than a chimp. It was said that it lived in nests on the ground, rather than in the trees; that it was not aggressive toward humans; that it walked on two feet for longer distances than is typical for a chimp; and that it grew to as large as six and half feet tall. All in all, it was too incredible to be real, at least for the Western world. Still, in 1996, when word of the giant chimps got out, researchers descended on Congo. Although scat, hair, and other evidence was found, it wasn’t until 2005 that the chimps were actually seen by a Westerner. Primatologist Shelly Williams was in the Congo, searching for the creatures, when a group of four of them emerged from the trees, charging at her. They were at least five feet tall, with wide flat faces, a pronounced brow, and gray fur. Yet when they noticed Williams’s face, they stopped their charge and walked away. This lack of aggression toward humans was repeated in other encounters, including those of Cleve Hicks of the University of Amsterdam, who spent eighteen months observing the creatures following the Williamses’ encounter. He, too, found that they had no fear of humans, but rather seemed to recognize humans as a cousin of sorts.
”
”
R.D. Brady (Hominid (The Ancestral Code Book 1))
“
For example, why was Sarah chastised for laughing at the angel who told her she would bear a child. At ninety! I would have fallen about in absolute stitches, promise or no promise, mind you! The angel would have had to repeat himself three, possibly four, times. I know there is the business of faith in God’s promises, and believing angels is wise to do, but I feel there was some justifiable amusement to be had.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 8)
“
Curran lunged through the window
He was huge, neither a man, nor a lion. Curran’s usual warrior form stood upright. This creature moved on all fours. Enormous, bulging with muscle under a gray pelt striped with whip marks of darker gray, six hundred pounds at least. His head was lion, his eyes were human, and his fangs were monster.
So that’s what the Beast Lord with no brakes looked like.
He landed on the floor of my living room. Muscles twisted and crawled, stretching and snapping. The gray fur melted, fading into human skin, and Curran stood on my carpet, nude and pissed off, his eyes glowing gold.
His voice was a deep snarl. “I know he’s here. I can smell him.”
I felt an irresistible urge to brain him with something heavy. “Did you lose your sense of smell? Saiman’s scent is two hours old.”
Golden eyes burned me. “Where is he?”
“Under my bed.”
The bed went airborne. It flew across the living room and slammed into the wall with a thud.
That was just about enough of that. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving you from whatever mess you got yourself into this time.”
Why me? “There is no mess! It’s a professional arrangement.”
“He’s paying you?” Curran snarled.
“No. I’m paying him.”
He roared. His mouth was human, but the blast of sound that shot out of it was like thunder.
“Ran out of words, Your Majesty?”
“Why him?” he growled. “Of all the men you could have, why would you hire him for that?”
“Because he has the best equipment in the city and he knows how to use it!”
As soon as I said it, I realized how he would take it.
The beginnings of another thundering roar died in Curran’s throat. He stared at me, mute.
Oh, this was too good. I threw my hands up. “The lab! I’m talking about his lab, not his dick, you idiot.
”
”
Ilona Andrews (Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, #4))
“
The Predators The African lion makes a kill only twice out of every ten hunts. Leopards do better, catching their prey twenty-five percent of the time, and cheetahs do best of all the big cats, with a kill ratio of nearly fifty percent. The deadliest four-legged African predator is not a big cat. It cannot be outrun or outdistanced, its pursuit is relentless, and it captures its prey nine out of every ten hunts. The most dangerous predator in Africa is the wild dog.
”
”
Robert Crais (The Promise (Elvis Cole, #16; Joe Pike, #5; Scott James & Maggie, #2))
“
There appears no assurance that in the times of our own grandchildren the world will contain viable populations of wild African Lions, Tigers, Polar Bears, Emperor Penguins, gorillas, or coral reefs. These are the animals expectant parents pain on nursery room walls. Their implied wish: to welcome precious new life in to a world endowed with the magnificence and delight and fright of companions we have traveled with since the beginning. Some people debate the “rights of the unborn” as though a human life begins at conception but we don’t need to concern ourselves with its prospects after birth. Raging over the divine sanctity of anyone else’s pregnancy is a little overwrought and a little too easy when nature itself terminates one out of four by the sixth week. There are much bigger, more compassionate pro-life fish to fry. Passing along a world that can allow real children to flourish and the cavalcade of generations to unfold, and the least to live in modest dignity would be the biggest pro-life enterprise we could undertake.
”
”
Carl Safina (The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World)
“
The next day, the locals who’d been terrorized by this al-Qaeda cell for four years realized that all their oppressors were dead. We could see their reaction because we had aircraft circling overhead, watching in case any more bad guys showed up to bury the dead. No more bad guys, just a big celebration. The party got so big, with all these jubilant people drinking juice and dancing in the street, that a newspaper in Baghdad sent a reporter up there. He asked, “Who did this? Who came last night?” The women responded: “Ninjas, and they came with lions.” That was the headline the next day in Baghdad.
”
”
Robert O'Neill (The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior)
“
Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all because we are progressing.
You brag of your Opera houses; ten Opera houses the size of yours could dance a saraband in a Roman amphitheatre. Even Mr. Martin, with his lame tiger and his poor gouty lion, as drowsy as a subscriber to the Gazette, cuts a pretty small figure by the side of a gladiator from antiquity. What are your benefit performances, lasting till two in the morning, compared with those games which lasted a hundred days, with those performances in which real ships fought real battles on a real sea; when thousands of men earnestly carved each other -- turn pale, O heroic Franconi! -- when, the sea having withdrawn, the desert appeared, with its raging tigers and lions, fearful supernumeraries that played but once; when the leading part was played by some robust Dacian or Pannonian athlete, whom it would often have been might difficult to recall at the close of the performance, whose leading lady was some splendid and hungry lioness of Numidia starved for three days? Do you not consider the clown elephant superior to Mlle. Georges? Do you believe Taglioni dances better than did Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? Admirable as is Bocage, I am convinced Roscius could have given him points. Galeria Coppiola played young girls' parts, when over one hundred years old; it is true that the oldest of our leading ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mlle. Mars has not even progressed in that direction. The ancients had three or four thousand gods in whom they believed, and we have but one, in whom we scarcely believe. That is a strange sort of progress. Is not Jupiter worth a good deal more than Don Juan, and is he not a much greater seducer? By my faith, I know not what we have invented, or even wherein we have improved.
”
”
Théophile Gautier (Mademoiselle de Maupin)
“
Black America faced two options. We could seize on the great freedom we had just won in the civil rights victories and advance through education, skill development, and entrepreneurialism combined with an unbending assault on any continuing discrimination; or we could go after these things indirectly by pressuring the society that had wronged us into taking the lion’s share of responsibility in resurrecting us. The new black militancy that exploded everywhere in the late sixties—and that came to define the strategy for black advancement for the next four decades—grew out of black America’s complete embrace of the latter option.
”
”
Shelby Steele (White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era)
“
The King who owned this island,” said Caspian slowly, and his face flushed as he spoke, “would soon be the richest of all Kings of the world. I claim this land forever as a Narnian possession. It shall be called Goldwater Island. And I bind all of you to secrecy. No one must know of this. Not even Drinian--on pain of death, do you hear?”
“Who are you talking to?” said Edmund. “I’m no subject of yours. If anything it’s the other way round. I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother.”
“So it has come to that, King Edmund, has it?” said Caspian, laying his hand on his sword-hilt.
“Oh, stop it, both of you,” said Lucy. “That’s the worst of doing anything with boys. You’re all such swaggering, bullying idiots--oooh!--” Her voice died away into a gasp. And everyone else saw what she had seen.
Across the gray hillside above them--gray, for the heather was not yet in bloom--without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest lion that human eyes have ever seen. In describing the scene Lucy said afterward, “He was the size of an elephant,” though at another time she only said, “The size of a cart-horse.” But it was not the size that mattered. Nobody dared to ask what it was. They knew it was Aslan.
And nobody ever saw how or where he went. They looked at one another like people waking from sleep.
“What were we talking about?” said Caspian. “Have I been making rather an ass of myself?”
“Sire,” said Reepicheep, “this is a place with a curse on it. Let us get back on board at once. And if I might have the honor of naming this island, I should call it Deathwater.”
“That strikes me as a very good name, Reep,” said Caspian, “though now that I come to think of it, I don’t know why. But the weather seems to be settling and I dare say Drinian would like to be off. What a lot we shall have to tell him.”
But in fact they had not much to tell for the memory of the last hour had all become confused.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #4))
“
The most 'authoritative' accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, 'like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John.
”
”
Frank Butcher (Atheist Responses to Religious Arguments)
“
Lexi Leffer, the lion king of the group, went first. Little Beckett Hayes, whom Toby had known since she was four, named two TV stars. Lexi chose the obvious one, the star of a teen sitcom with the swoop of hair that fell over his eyes. Toby was disappointed but not surprised. He could have told you that Lexi Leffer’s soul was made of plastic. It was Hannah’s turn next. He knew he should walk away and give her privacy, but he couldn’t move. Lexi had to ask her. It was between two boys whose names weren’t familiar to Toby. When Lexi said them, Beckett said, “Ooooooh!” and Hannah screeched, “That’s impossible!” “You have to answer, upon penalty of…” “Of what?” Hannah asked. “On penalty of…” She thought. “…having to call each boy and ask him how his day was.
”
”
Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Fleishman Is in Trouble)
“
The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens’ arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion).
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
That evening after tea the four children all managed to get down to the beach again and get their shoes and stockings off and feel the sand between their toes. But the next day was more solemn. For then, in the Great Hall of Cair Paravel--that wonderful hall with the ivory roof and the west door all hung with peacock’s feathers and the eastern door which opens right onto the sea, in the presence of all their friends and to the sound of trumpets, Aslan solemnly crowned them and led them onto the four thrones amid deafening shouts of, “Long Live King Peter! Long Live Queen Susan! Long Live King Edmund! Long Live Queen Lucy!”
“Once a King or Queen in Narnia, always a King or Queen. Bear it well, Sons of Adam! Bear it well, Daughters of Eve!” said Aslan.
And through the eastern door, which was wide open, came the voices of the mermen and the mermaids swimming close to the castle steps and singing in honor of their new Kings and Queens.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe)
“
Firestar, what’s wrong?” Firestar shook his head to clear it of apprehension. It was a relief to go right back to the beginning, and tell Cinderpelt about the dream that had come to him as he lay beside the Moonstone. Cinderpelt sat beside him and listened in silence, her steady gaze never leaving his face. “Bluestar told me, ‘Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest,’” Firestar finished. “And then blood oozed out of the hill of bones and started to fill the hollow. Blood everywhere . . . Cinderpelt, what does it all mean?” “I don’t know,” Cinderpelt confessed. “StarClan has not shown me any of this. Just as they have the power to show me what will happen, so they can choose not to share with me. I’m sorry, Firestar—but I’ll keep thinking about it, and maybe something will happen to make it clearer soon.” She pushed her nose against Firestar’s fur to comfort him, but though Firestar was grateful for her
”
”
Erin Hunter (The Darkest Hour)
“
T'here are no gods left to watch, I’m afraid. And there are no gods left to help you now, Aelin Galathynius.'
Aelin smiled, and Goldryn burned brighter. 'I am a god.'”
“You do not yield.”
“Live, Manon. Live.”
“And far away, across the snow-covered mountains, on a barren plain before the ruins of a once-great city, a flower began to bloom”
“Aelin looked at Chaol and Dorian and sobbed. Opened her arms to them, and wept as they held each other. 'I love you both,' she whispered. 'And no matter what may happen, no matter how far we may be, that will never change.'”
“Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son.”
“'We came,' Manon said, loud enough that all on the city walls could hear, 'to honor a promise made to Aelin Galathynius. To fight for what she promised us.' Darrow said quietly, 'And what was that?'
Manon smiled then. 'A better world.'”
“Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.b'It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.'”
“'Rise,' Darrow said, 'Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen.'”
“One blink for yes. Two for no. Three for Are you all right? Four for I am here, I am with you. Five for This is real, you are awake.”
And she said to Abraxos, touching his spin, 'I love you.' It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.”
“Lord Lorcan Lochan?”
Chaol and Yrene began bickering, laughing as they did, but Dorian strode to the edge of the aerie. Watched that white-haired rider and the wyvern with silver wings become distant as they sailed toward the horizon. Dorian smiled. And found himself, for the first time in a while, looking forward to tomorrow.”
“'I took his name,' Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue under Damaris's power. 'I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered it once. Only once. The first time He behelded you.' Tears slid down Dorian's face at the unbearable truth.”
“Gavriel smiled at him. 'Close the gate, Aedion,' was all his father said. And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
“
Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie
When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup
If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"
And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin' around a pinball machine
And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
...
”
”
Bob Dylan
“
And as he watched, the first powerful four-legged lion stepped into the clearing. The male animal shook the snow from its dark, flowing mane, tilted its head and roared into the night.
Another call followed, and yet another. And as Dane watched, Lawe and Rule moved warily from their positions, edging back to the limo as he threw the doors open and allowed the two Breeds to slide inside the warmth of the car.
Rye didn't bother to get out and enter the back through a door. He slid over the seat positioned behind the driver's area and stared back at Dane in surprise.
"There's a lot of fucking lions out there," he commented uncomfortably.
They were screaming into the night now, spurred by the animal Dane could swear he could feel heading this way.
Another animal stepped in. A lioness, her scream echoing through the night as the lions surrounded the cabin.
A dozen fully grown, enraged creatures, following one simple command. To protect Mercury's mate.
Dane let a smile tip his lips as he opened the small bar set in the center of the seat and pulled free the whiskey and glasses.
"Looks like the night just got interesting, my friends," he drawled, pouring the alcohol. "I say we enjoy the show while we can."
Ria's mate was coming for her.
”
”
Lora Leigh
“
A few mornings later Peter and Edmund were looking at the suit of armor and wondering if they could take it to bits, when the two girls rushed into the room and said, “Look out! Here comes the Macready and a whole gang with her.”
“Sharp’s the word,” said Peter, and all four made off through the door at the far end of the room. But when they had got out into the Green Room and beyond it, into the library, they suddenly heard voices ahead of them, and realized that Mrs. Macready must be bringing her party of sightseers up the back stairs--instead of up the front stairs as they had expected. And after that--whether it was that they lost their heads, or that Mrs. Macready was trying to catch them, or that some magic in the house had come to life and was chasing them into Narnia--they seemed to find themselves being followed everywhere, until at last Susan said, “Oh, bother those trippers! Here--let’s get into the Wardrobe Room till they’ve passed. No one will follow us in there.” But the moment they were inside they heard voices in the passage--and then someone fumbling at the door--and then they saw the handle turning.
“Quick!” said Peter. “There’s nowhere else,” and flung open the wardrobe. All four of them bundled inside it and sat there, panting, in the dark. Peter held the door closed but did not shut it; for, of course, he remembered, as every sensible person does, that you should never never shut yourself up in a wardrobe.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe)
“
The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens? Guilty
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
When I was a child, my father forbade me to read science fiction or fantasy. Trash of the highest order, he said. He didn't want me muddying up my young, impressionable mind with crap. If it wasn't worthy of being reviewed in the Times, it did not make it onto our bookshelves.
So while my classmates gleefully dove into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, A Wrinkle in Time, and The Borrowers, I was stuck reading Old Yeller.
My saving grace- I was the most popular girl in my class. That's not saying much; it was easy to be popular at that age. All you had to do was wear your hair in French braids, tell your friends your parents let you drink grape soda every night at dinner, and take any dare. I stood in a bucket of hot water for five minutes without having to pee. I ate four New York System wieners (with onions) in one sitting. I cut my own bangs and- bam!- I was queen of the class.
As a result I was invited on sleepovers practically every weekend, and it was there that I cheated. I skipped the séances and the Ouija board. I crept into my sleeping bag with a flashlight, zipped it up tight, and pored through those contraband books. I fell into Narnia. I tessered with Meg and Charles Wallace; I lived under the floorboards with Arrietty and Pod.
I think it was precisely because those books were forbidden that they lived on in me long past the time that they should have. For whatever reason, I didn't outgrow them. I was constantly on the lookout for the secret portal, the unmarked door that would lead me to another world.
I never thought I would actually find it.
”
”
Melanie Gideon (Valley of the Moon)
“
If I say the bad news, I can win applause over the planet: Man is the scourge of the planet, and he was born a scourge, just a few thousand years ago.
But the news I am bringing is much different:
Man was NOT born a few thousand years ago and he was NOT born a scourge.
For this news I am condemned.
Man was born MILLIONS of years ago, and he was not more a scourge than lions and hawks or squids. He lived AT PEACE with the world…for MILLIONS of years.
That doesn’t mean he was a saint. That doesn’t mean he walked the earth like a buddha. It means he lived as harmlessly as a hyena or a shark or a rattlesnake.
It is not MAN who is the scourge of the world. It’s a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. OUR culture.
We don’t have to change HUMANKIND in order to survive. We only have to change a single culture.
It is not an easy task, but it is not an impossible one.
Here is my good news: WE ARE NOT HUMANITY. Can you feel the liberation in these words? I’m sure they seem bizarre, whisper them to yourself. I want you to understand what these four words are. They are a summary of all that was forgotten during the Great Forgetting. I mean that quite literally. At the end of the Great Forgetting, when the people of our culture began to build civilization in earnest, those four words were unthinkable. We forgot that we are a single culture and came to think of ourselves as humanity itself. All the intellectual and spiritual foundations of our culture were laid by people who believed absolutely that we are humanity itself. Socrates believed it. Plato believed it. Buddha believed it. Confucius believed it. Moses, Hesus, Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Hume, Marx, Kant, they all believed it.
Why would it be such a bad thing if we were humanity? If we were humanity itself, then all the terrible things we say about humanity would be true- and that would be very bad news. If we were humanity itself, then all our destructiveness would belong not to one misguided culture but to humanity itself. But we are not humanity. We are just one culture, out of hundreds of thousand that lived their vision on this planet and had a song. It is not humanity that needs changing, it is just us.
”
”
Daniel Quinn (The Story of B (Ishmael, #2))
“
# [Justin@TV] İstanbul Başakşehir Fenerbahçe Maçi canlı İzle 6.12.2025 by Vaqavy tv
İstanbul Başakşehir vs Fenerbahçe Live Stream Free: How to Watch Turkish Super Lig Game Online From anywhere
Arsenal faces a real test of its title credentials on Saturday as it travels to the West Midlands to take on the English Premier League's most in-form team, Aston Villa.
The Gunners come into this match-up after a professional 2-0 dispatch of Brentford in Wednesday's London derby, thanks to an early Mikel Merino header and a second-half stoppage-time strike from Bukayo Sako.
After a ponderous start to the season, Aston Villa is now flying, with a thrilling 4-3 comeback win over Brighton in midweek. That extended its winning streak to six victories across all competitions, with Unai Emery's men emerging as an outside threat to their visitors' title hopes.
Arsenal has started to distance itself from the pack, and the club that has come close to finishing at the top of the mountain in recent years is doing its best to stay in first place.
While it is just December, the Gunners are riding high in what has been an excellent start to their 2025-26 season. Though they managed to only grab a draw at Stamford Bridge on Sunday against Chelsea, Arsenal had a multi-game lead over Manchester City coming out of the weekend, having gone unbeaten in 11 straight EPL contests. The team has lost just once so far, that coming in late August against the defending champions, Liverpool. Arsenal is coming off a solid 2-0 win over Brentford on Wednesday.
Arsenal enters Wednesday five points ahead of second-place Manchester City.
Aston Villa has quietly maneuvered its way back into the top four. After a rather bumpy start to their season, the Lions have won four straight matches, including wild 4-3 win over Brighton last Wednesday, moving up to third in the table.
Aston Villa performed brilliantly in midweek, fighting back from 2-0 down to eventually win 4-3 against Brighton at the Amex Stadium.
Ollie Watkins was back amongst the goals with a brace, whilst Amadou Onana and Donyell Malen also grabbed a goal apiece.
Arsenal saw off Brentford to remain top of the Premier League table, extending their unbeaten run to 18 games in the process.
Goals from Mikel Merino and Bukayo Saka made sure of the victory, with Mikel Arteta's side going well so far.
Arsenal goes into a busy Saturday in the Premier League with a five-point lead atop the league standings with a 10-3-1 record, 33 points and a league-best plus-20 goal differential. And while the club has taken a couple disappointing draws this season, Arsenal also hasn’t lost a match of any kind in over three months. That includes a perfect run in Champions League play, too, with a 5-0-0 mark in that competition to pace the field in points (15) and goal differential, netting 14 goals while allowing just one in five matches.
The last time Arsenal lost was on Aug. 31 to reigning Premier League champion Liverpool, and the same can be said for Aston Villa on its current six-match win streak. Between UEFA Europa play and the Premier League, Villa is 6-0-0 over that stretch with a 15-5 scoring margin. That run of play stands in stark contrast to the club’s sluggish start, which included zero wins in six matches covering Premier League and Carabao Cup play.
Speaking on Friday, the Spaniard said he was unsure whether Declan Rice, Cristhian Mosquera, William Saliba, or Leandro Trossard would be fit to feature.
The door is ajar, then, for Unai Emery’s men to nick a win while the Gunners are not quite at full strength.
Things are not so rosy for the hosts, though. Emi Martinez could stand to miss the match after he pulled out of the lineup to face Brighton with a back problem.
Villa overcame his absence to eke out a narrow 4-3 victory at the AmEx Community Stadium, with Ollie Watkins’ brace ultimately making the difference.
Last edited by vaqavy at Today 8:55 AM
”
”
Fenerbahçe
“
It felt like we were on fire. Everything got so hot, it was almost too much to stand. Kissing him, having his body close. I thought of how you feel when you're eating a meal and don't realize how hungry you are till you're three bites in. You start eating faster, savoring every bite. Now I couldn't stop, so I took another kiss, then another. I let his tongue slip into my mouth, and I shivered again. He smiled at my reaction and went in for more. The way his hands started to move over my body gave me the impression he had been there before. I could have stopped, I knew I should have stopped, but all the drama and emotional pain I'd experienced over the last few days made me recklessly ignore that thought. I tore his shirt off.
He gasped, which made me giggle. I covered my mouth, and he grabbed my hand and put it around his neck. He scooped me up and I tightened my thighs around his waist. He sat me down on the bar and peeled off my blouse. Any last ounce of Southern lady I had left in me exited the building. I unhooked my bra and threw it across the room. Screw it. If I was going to go ahead and make a mistake, I might as well take the fast lane. We watched it slingshot and land on a booth.
"Is the door locked?" he asked, gasping for air.
"Think so," I said, taking big gulping breaths. I was drowning and was totally fine with it.
"Good," he said.
He pulled me to the end of the bar and pulled my shoes off. I hopped off and helped him along by unbuttoning my jeans and wiggling out of them as sexily as I could. He did the same.
"Man, you look good enough to eat," he said.
"So do you. Take a bite," I said.
We were standing about four feet apart and our clothes were all over the floor. I stood there almost naked and drank in the sight of him. He took a few slow steps toward me, like a lion about to jump on his prey, and dug in.
”
”
Victoria Benton Frank (My Magnolia Summer)
“
A lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen used to dwell. Many a time he tried to attack them; but whenever he came near they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone in a separate corner of the field. Then the Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four. —Aesop, sixth century B.C.
”
”
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last Deluxe: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
“
At last the revenants became so troublesome the peasants abandoned the village and it fell solely into the possession of subtle and vindictive inhabitants who manifest their presences by shadows that fall almost imperceptibly awry, too many shadows, even at midday, shadows that have no source in anything visible; by the sound, sometimes, of sobbing in a derelict bedroom where a cracked mirror suspended from a wall does not reflect a presence; by a sense of unease that will afflict the traveller unwise enough to pause to drink from the fountain in the square that still gushes spring water from a faucet stuck in a stone lion's mouth. A cat prowls in a weedy garden; he grins and spits, arches his back, bounces away from an intangible on four fear-stiffened legs. Now all shun the village below the château in which the beautiful somnambulist helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes.
”
”
Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories)
“
I wander through the feria and greet my colleagues who are wandering as dreamily as I am. Dreamily× dreamily = a prison in literary heaven. Wandering. Wandering. The honor of poets: the chant we hear as a pallid judgment. I see young faces looking at the books on display and feeling for coins in the depths of pockets as dark as hope. 7 × 1 = 8, I say to myself as I glance out of the corner of my eye at the young readers and a formless image is superimposed on their remote little smiling faces as slowly as an iceberg. We all pass under the balcony where the letters A and E hang and their blood gushes down on us and stains us forever. But the balcony is pallid like us, and pallor never attacks pallor. At the same time, and I say this in my defense, the balcony wanders with us too. Elsewhere this is called mafia. I see an office, I see a computer running, I see a lonely hallway. Pallor× iceberg = a lonely hallway slowly peopled by our own fear, peopled with those who wander the feria of the hallway, looking not for any book but for some certainty to shore up the void of our certainties. Thus we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation. Herds. Hangmen. The scalpel slices the bodies. A and E × Feria del Libro = other bodies; light as air, incandescent, as if last night my publisher had fucked me up the ass. Dying can seem satisfactory as a response, Blanchot would say. 31 × 31 = 961 good reasons. Yesterday we sacrificed a young South American writer on the town altar. As his blood dripped over the bas-relief of our ambitions I thought about my books and oblivion, and that, at last, made sense. A writer, we've established, shouldn't look like a writer. He should look like a banker, a rich kid who grows up without a care in the world, a mathematics professor, a prison official. Dendriform. Thus, paradoxically, we wander. Our arborescence × the balcony's pallor = the hallway of our triumph. How can young people, readers by antonomasia, not realize that we're liars? All one has to do is look at us! Our imposture is blazoned on our faces! And yet they don't realize, and we can recite with total impunity: 8, 5, 9, 8, 4, 15, 7. And we can wander and greet each other (I, at least, greet everyone, the juries and the hangmen, the benefactors and the students), and we can praise the faggot for his unbridled heterosexuality and the impotent man for his virility and the cuckold for his spotless honor. And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a cryptographic exercise.
”
”
Roberto Bolaño (The Savage Detectives)
“
Black people are told that the racists will soon die off and we will be left with a society blissfully free of racial prejudice. This is magical thinking. Generations of people have died waiting on the racists to die out. Black people are told that the racial progress America has made and continues to make is undeniable, and we should take heart in that fact. It has been four hundred years since “20 and odd” enslaved Africans stolen from what would now be Angola disembarked the privateer White Lion at Point-Comfort, Virginia, in 1619.10 The vast majority of that time has seen the active, vicious oppression of Black people in this country: 250 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow, and now 50-plus years of mass incarceration.
”
”
Charles M. Blow (The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto)
“
When we are creating a shared history, what we remember is just as revelatory as what we forget. If the Mayflower was the advent of American freedom, then the White Lion was the advent of American slavery. And so while arriving just a year apart, one ship and its people have been immortalized the other is completely erased.
”
”
Nikole Hannah-Jones (Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019)
“
This “cargo,” this group of twenty to thirty Angolans, sold from the deck of the White Lion by criminal English marauders in exchange for food and supplies, was also foundational to the American story. But while every American child learns about the Mayflower, virtually no American child learns about the White Lion.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019)
“
They arrived on the Mayflower, a vessel that has been called “one of the most important ships in American history.” Every fall, regaled by stories of the courageous Pilgrims, elementary school children whose skin is peach, tan, and chestnut fashion black captain hats from paper to dress up like the passengers on the Mayflower. Our country has wrapped a national holiday around the Pilgrims’ story, ensuring the Mayflower’s mythical place in the American narrative. But a year before the Mayflower, in 1619, another ship dropped anchor on the eastern shore of North America. Its name was the White Lion, and it, too, would become one of the most important ships in American history. And yet there is no ship manifest inscribed with the names of its passengers and no descendants’ society. These people’s arrival was deemed so insignificant, their humanity so inconsequential, that we do not know even how many of those packed into the White Lion’s hull came ashore, just that some “20 and odd Negroes” disembarked and joined the British colonists in Virginia.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019)
“
Cleopatra the Alchemist, who is believed to have lived in Alexandria around the third or fourth centuries CE, is one of four female alchemists who were thought to have been able to produce the rare and much-sought-after philosopher’s stone. She is a foundational figure in alchemy, and made great use of original imagery which reflects conception and birth — representing the renewal and transformation of life. She also experimented with practical alchemy (the forerunner of modern chemistry) and is credited by some with having invented the alembic, an apparatus used for distillation. Her mentor was Maria the Jewess, who lived in Alexandria sometime between the first and third centuries CE; she is similarly credited with the invention of several kinds of chemical apparatuses and is considered to be the first true alchemist of the Western world. In 1964, the great surrealist artist Leonora Carrington painted Maria, depicting her as a woman-lion chimera with breasts exposed and hair wildly flailing around her, as she weaves magical gold-summoning spells. Actually, female alchemists in Greco-Roman Egypt weren’t uncommon, though they were mostly preoccupied with concocting fragrances and cosmetics. In fact, it was a collective of female alchemists in ancient Egypt who invented beer, setting up an unsurprisingly booming business by the Nile. This is all a far cry from the popular image of an alchemist: that of a lavishly dressed and usually bearded man in a medieval laboratory, bending over a fire and surrounded by all manner of arcane contraptions, trying to turn lead into gold.
”
”
Sharon Blackie (Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life)
“
Señor Lam says those Los Angeles riots
were one of the largest mass lynchings
in United States history.
Only ten men were arrested, only four
were convicted,
and even they will soon be released.
No one in that nation ever pays for any crime
against people
who look different.
”
”
Margarita Engle (Lion Island: Cuba's Warrior of Words)
“
Circles of this sort, called mandalas, are widely used for meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Often they are cornered by four demons who evidently, like the Occidental lion, bull, angel and eagle, represent the extremes to be avoided.
”
”
Robert Anton Wilson (Prometheus Rising)
“
I require that you bring me four specific items,” he said. “The hide of the Nemean lion, Circe’s staff, Aphrodite’s girdle, and the egg of a phoenix.
”
”
Michelle Madow (The Faerie Pawn (Dark World: The Faerie Games, #2))
“
untrained dogs and they will urinate over them. Purchase a crate or cage that is big enough for your pup to lie down, turn around, and stand up in. Create a food and potty schedule. It should include: Meal Potty Time Play Time Training Time Sleep in Crate Repeat from A Every Four Hours No matter what, don’t leave your poor pup in the crate all the time. At the same time, though, the crate should give it time to relax and nap between potty and play sessions. Walk the dog about 15-30 minutes after every meal. Always praise the dog for going outside. Never ever use hitting or yelling if the dog has an accident in the house. Now, as far as behavior training, you will need to follow a schedule to make sure neither you nor the pup gets too tired or frustrated. That’s what we are going to talk about next.
”
”
Cynthia Lynden (The Little Lion Dog - Your Guide to Owning and Caring for a Shih Tzu)
“
(Or perhaps Siri’s programmers included parents who anticipated their children’s unauthorized use of their mobile devices—trust me, a four year old can use an iPhone better than most adults):
”
”
George Takei (Lions and Tigers and Bears - The Internet Strikes Back (Life, the Internet and Everything Book 2))
“
the balance of the fleet—other than the little ketch that was lost after separating from Sea Venture in the early hours of the storm—had survived the tempest, if barely. On August 10, four of those ships passed between Cape Henry and Cape Charles, named for the sons of King James I, and sailed slowly up the Chesapeake Bay on the rising tide. The ships—the Blessing, the Falcon, the Lion, and the Unity—were battered, their masts broken or missing, sails in tatters, decks scoured by roaring seas. Over the next two days, the ships moved north and east to the mouth of the James River and then crept up the James River, described by George Percy, one of the original Jamestown settlers, as “one of the famousest Rivers that ever was found by any Christian … where ships of great burthen may harbor in safety.
”
”
Kieran Doherty (Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of Jamestown)
“
Half a world away, on the same Friday, the Chamber of Deputies in France opened debate on paying the United States a debt of 25 million francs (about $5 million) as an indemnity for French damage to American shipping during the Napoleonic wars. France had agreed to pay the money under an 1831 treaty, but after four days of consideration, by a margin of eight, France declined to honor its obligations.
”
”
Jon Meacham (American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House)
“
Occasionally, young men, too, were thus violated. They fought like cornered lions. It always took three or four crewmen to subdue one of our boys.
”
”
Daniel Black (The Coming)
“
I had not yet gotten around to the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson’s Consilience. When I did read it, I discovered on page 286 that people follow religion because it is “easier” than empiricism. That struck a nerve, and provoked a response I shall be candid enough to report. Mr. Wilson: When you have endured an eight-day O-sesshin in a Zen monastery, sitting cross-legged and motionless for twelve hours a day and allowed only three and one-half hours of sleep each night until sleep and dream deprivation bring on a temporary psychosis (my own nondescript self); When you have attended four “rains retreats” at the Insight Buddhist Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts, for a total of one complete year of no reading, no writing, no speaking, and eyes always downcast (my wife); When you have almost died from the austerities you underwent before you attained enlightenment under a bo tree in India; When you have been crucified on Golgatha; When you have been thrown to lions in the Roman coliseum; When you have been in a concentration camp and held on to some measure of dignity through your faith; When you have given your life to providing a dignified death for homeless, destitute women gathered from the streets of Calcutta (Mother Teresa), or played out her counterpart with the poor in New York City (Dorothy Day); When, Mr. Wilson, you have undergone any one of these trials, it will then be time to talk about the ease of religion as compared with the ardors of empiricism.
”
”
Huston Smith (Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief)
“
In the nineteenth century,” he observed, “Jules Verne wrote Round the World in Eighty Days. It seemed a prodigy. Now you can get around it in four, but you do not see much of it on the way.
”
”
William Manchester (The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932)
“
Instead of canals, a magical four-story central courtyard faces the interior walls. A greenhouse of sorts. The roof is glass and the floor is a sensuous garden filled with freestanding columns, whimsical twelfth-century lion stylobates, and all manner of statuary. A Roman mosaic sits at the center, surrounded by an ever-changing installation of flowers and shrubs. A pair of towering palm trees reach up to the sunlight, climbing beyond the third floor.
”
”
Barbara A. Shapiro (The Art Forger)
“
Four are the highest in creation: the lion among the beasts, the ox among cattle, the eagle among the fowls, and man above these; but God is the highest of all.
”
”
G.H. Pember (Earth's Earliest Ages and Their Connection with Modern Spiritualism and Theosophy)
“
Consumers look for geographically convenient rooftops. In urban areas, there typically are three or four supermarkets for every three or four square miles just because there is a demand for that many. You try to put yourself in a “first right of refusal” position to as many conveniently located households as possible. The first right of refusal’s very important in our business, and that means that you drive by us either coming from work, going to work, or coming from home to anywhere you go. You have to drive by us to get to somebody else. We feel like if we have first right of refusal to, say, 60 percent of the geographically convenient trade, then if we get our fair share of that—and our fair share is the lion’s share—then that store has a chance to be successful
”
”
Herb Sorensen (Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing)
“
In a storage room, Harris shows off the milk teeth of a Smilodon kitten. They are almost four inches long. “How did they nurse?” I ask. “Very carefully,” he answers.
”
”
Abigail Tucker (The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World (A Gift for Cat Lovers))
“
The roof the muscular youth traveled came to an end, and he peered down into the blackness hiding the paving stones of the street, four stories below. His eyes were frozen sapphires, and his face, a square-cut lion’s mane of black held back from it by a leather cord, showed several ordinary lifetimes’ experience despite its youth.
”
”
Robert Jordan (Conan Chronicles 2)
“
The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens?
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
“
Oh, yes," Father Mancuso nodded. "As Father Ryan mentioned, I've seen and heard many who've come to me as a psychotherapist and as a parish priest." Chancellor Ryan picked up the thread. "Then there are the so-called extraordinary activities of the devil in the world. Usually these are material things around a person that are affected; that might be what you're up against. We call it infestation. It breaks down into different categories which we'll explain in a minute." "Obsession," Father Nuncio put in, "is the next step, in which the person is affected either internally or externally. And finally there is possession, by which the person temporarily loses control of his faculties and the devil acts in and through him." When Father Mancuso had come to the Chancellors' office to keep his appointment, he had been somewhat embarrassed as to how to approach his problem. But he relaxed as the two priests had shown keen interest. Now with their spelling out the guidelines he must take in this kind of situation, Father Mancuso raised his hopes for deliverance from this evil. "In investigating cases of possible diabolical interference," Chancellor Ryan went on, "we must consider the following: One, fraud and deception. Two, natural scientific causes. Three, parapsychological causes. Four, diabolical influences. And five, miracles. In this case, fraud and trickery don't seem plausible. George and Kathleen Lutz seem to be normal, balanced individuals. We think you are too. The possibilities therefore are reduced to psychological, parapsychological, or diabolical influences." "We'll exclude the miraculous," Father Nuncio broke in, "because the Divine would not involve itself in the trivial and foolish." "True," said Father Ryan. "Therefore the explanation would seem to include hallucination and autosuggestion - you know, like the invisible touches Kathy experienced - and when George thought he heard that marching band. But let's take the parapsychological line. Parapsychologists like Dr. Rhine, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, define four main operations in the science. The first three come under the general heading of ESP-extrasensory perception. They are mental telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which could explain George's visions and 'picking up' information that seems to coincide with known facts about the DeFeos. The fourth parapsychological area is psychokinesis, where objects move by themselves. That would be the case with the Lutzes' ceramic lion - if it did move," he added. Father Nuncio got up to refill his cup. "All of what we've said, Frank, is part of the suggestion we have for the Lutzes. Have them contact some investigative organization like Dr. Rhine's to come in and look at the house. They'll do extensive testing and I'm sure they can come to some conclusion short of diabolical influence.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Could be a wolf. Maybe a lion.” “With four feet, you think? Or two?
”
”
Anonymous
“
It was Durga Pujo, the city’s most anticipated days. The stores, the sidewalks, were overflowing. At the ends of certain alleys, or in gaps among buildings, she saw the pandals. Durga armed with her weapons, flanked by her four children, depicted and worshiped in so many versions. Made of plaster, made of clay. She was resplendent, formidable. A lion helped to conquer the demon at her feet. She was a daughter visiting her family, visiting the city, transforming it for a time.
”
”
Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland)
“
This consciousness is never still, not even for a moment. It will not be photographed or even named. In its wanting to become aware, it rearranges itself in one pattern after another. Feel it now in the blinking of your eyes. The moisture on your tongue. The gentle filling and emptying of your lungs. It rises unnamed through us, the incessant motion of the four creatures bearing the chariot in Ezekiel s vision: human, lion, ox, and eagle, running and returning. Creation is in us. The plan the Creator used reappears everywhere:
”
”
Lawrence Kushner (The River of Light: Jewish Mystical Awareness)
“
while anecdotal evidence suggests that lions might still be present in small numbers, a survey undertaken over four months in 2008/09 for the African Journal of Ecology obtained ‘no unequivocal evidence’ of their continued presence.
”
”
Philip Briggs (Ghana (Bradt Travel Guides))
“
Evolved to Run Walking long distances is fundamental to being a hunter-gatherer, but people sometimes have to run. One powerful motivation is to sprint to a tree or some other refuge when being chased by a predator. Although you only have to run faster than the next fellow when a lion chases you, bipedal humans are comparatively slow. The world’s fastest humans can run at 37 kilometers (23 miles) per hour for about ten to twenty seconds, whereas an average lion can run at least twice as fast for approximately four minutes. Like us, early Homo must have been pathetic sprinters whose terrified dashes were too often ineffective. However, there is plentiful evidence that by the time of H. erectus our ancestors had evolved exceptional abilities to run long distances at moderate speeds in hot conditions. The adaptations underlying these abilities helped transform the human body in crucial ways and explain why humans, even amateur athletes, are among the best long-distance runners in the mammalian world. Today, humans run long distances to stay fit, commute, or just have fun, but the struggle to get meat underlies the origins of endurance running. To appreciate this inference, try to imagine what it was like for the first humans to hunt or scavenge 2 million years ago. Most carnivores kill using a combination of speed and strength. Large predators, such as lions and leopards, either chase or pounce on their prey and then dispatch it with lethal force. These dangerous carnivores can run as fast as 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour, and they have terrifying natural weapons: daggerlike fangs, razor-sharp claws, and heavy paws to help them maim and kill. Hunters
”
”
Daniel E. Lieberman (The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health and Disease)
“
If he was hoping we would all heave a sigh of relief at the petite size of the black bear, he was disappointed; a four-hundred-pound bear seemed plenty big enough to play jai alai with my head, and judging by the wide eyes of the boys all around me, I was not the only one who thought so. “Just remember, they may be small, but they can be very cranky if they have a cub? They run very fast, and they can climb trees. Oh! So can panthers—which are very rare, an endangered species. So we probably won’t see one, but if we do—remember this, guys: They are basically like lions, and … you know. We talk about how cool they are, and how we need to help protect panthers and their habitat—but they are still very dangerous animals. I mean, most of the animals out here. Let’s remember they are wild. So give them room; respect their habitat, because you are in their space, and it’s— Even raccoons, okay? I mean, they get into everything, and they look awful cute. They might even come right up to you. But they can have rabies, which you can get from them just from a little scratch, so stay away.” Once
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Double Dexter (Dexter #6))
“
Uriel sobered up. “They have skin that shines like burnished bronze. They have four sets of wings, and four faces. Usually one face is of a human, one of a lion, one of an eagle, and one of the cherub itself. They are accompanied by the Flames of the Whirling Sword, divine beings that can smite anything that approaches their custody. The sound of a cherub’s wings alone strikes terror into the hearts of its enemies.” It was all so matter-of-fact for Uriel. He lived in the presence of these beings, not to mention the more terrifying presence of Elohim.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Noah Primeval (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 1))
“
The Throne of Yahweh Elohim gleamed in the holy temple in the heavens above the waters, unapproachable, a chariot enthroned above the Cherubim and beneath the Seraphim. The Seraphim were a different breed, created exclusively for God’s own guard. The Cherubim were sphinx-like, but these had four faces and four wings, and they sparkled like burnished bronze. Their faces were those of human, lion, ox, and eagle. Beside each one was an object that appeared to be a wheel within a wheel of gleaming beryl, that moved with the living creature as they moved.
”
”
Brian Godawa (Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim #2))
“
Another aspect of our multidimensional selves and communication is with the Earth and Earth energies. We each have a unique relationship with the Earth Mother whose planet we live on. We each communicate multidimensionally with nature. We communicate subtly and sometimes not so subtly with nature spirits, the Devas or Angels of plants, with tree spirits and the elementals. The elementals I speak of here are the Gnomes, Sylphs, Salamanders, and Undines. We also have the ability to communicate directly with the four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. This is how high level initiates and Masters have been able to control the weather. Every aspect of nature, in truth, contains a spiritual essence or being that embodies that particular form. We also have the ability to multidimensionally communicate with crystals and gemstones, and the elemental beings that create the form and physical substance itself. We also each can communicate multidimensionally with animals. There are many on this plane that can talk to animals and they will telepathically talk back in words and images. Many of us have multidimensional communication with pets that have passed over to the other side and are functioning as spirit guides and helpers. There are also spirit animals such as the eagle, jaguar, owl, bear, lion, and tiger, which come as guides and helpers as well on a physical and/or etheric level.
”
”
Joshua D. Stone (The Golden Book of Melchizedek: How to Become an Integrated Christ/Buddha in This Lifetime Volume 2)
“
The moment you announce that bedtime is drawing near, your kids will collectively lose their minds. Successfully getting four little sets of teeth brushed, bodies bathed, pajamas on, and rpm down is about as manageable as simultaneously riding four bucking broncos. Anyone who tells you different is a liar. Progress you make on one front is immediately challenged by at least one child revolting and undoing all your work. At some point someone will inevitably be running down the hall with underwear on her head, wearing a pair of her mom’s high heels. Who just wrote on the wall with that marker, and where did you get that cookie?
”
”
Levi Lusko (Through the Eyes of a Lion: Facing Impossible Pain, Finding Incredible Power)