Gaffney Quotes

I hate jealousy. At least it's its own punishment; it makes me feel like hell.

laughter is cathartic and cleansing, that it's good for the body and the soul, and when it's real it's better than sex.

You were the best thing in my life … I did love you. I do. As much as I’ve ever loved anyone, as much as I can. It feels like a lot – it takes up my whole heart.

I love the slow, warming sensation of my body going numb when I drink.

Little things. The thought of losing them makes them unbearably dear ... I only think of the sweetness. Simple things. The quarter moon, the taste of an orange. The smell of the pages of a new book.

All my life I've wanted to tell people I love them. Fear usually held me back, that they wouldn't care, or they wouldn't hear, or they would take too much from me once they knew.

Never throw love away, never neglect it. Never assume you'll find better love somewhere else. Take it wherever you're lucky enough to find it, and always try to return it in kind. Don't take so much for granted.

Bad news doesn't hurt as much, if you hear it in good company. It's like, if somebody pushes you out of a 5th floor window and you bounce off an awning, a car roof, and a pile of plastic garbage bags before you smash onto the pavement, you've got a pretty good chance of surviving.

I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me.

Imagine me maintaining anybody's equilibrium.

I was thinking in a Scottish brogue, because I'd just heard this guy interviewed on NPR, Lonnie McSomething.

History is the story of people’s lives. History reflects the consequences of their choice and actions – both good and bad. History is what has given you the world you live in today – both good and bad.

Misery alternates with euphoria.

Fear kills. Protecting yourself backfires eventually. And living in fear of pain isn't really living at all.

Topics... are what people talk about when they don't know each other well. Topics... are what men talk about.

And Honey, I just want you to know, even though I didn't see it coming, it makes absolutely no difference to your father or to me that you are a thespian.

I just tried to put myself in her place and figure out what would be the scariest thing. If I thought I might be dying. And it was being alone' ... 'To me,' she said, 'the scariest thing is oblivion. Being, and then not being.

The only cure for loneliness be givin’. When you be givin’ you ain’t got time to think ‘bout what you don’t got. But you got to give with your heart. You got to give from your heart. That’s the only sure way to beat back that old demon o’ loneliness.

she needed the quiet solitude found when the rest of the world was still asleep.

Skepticism is luxury.

An informed customer is a satisfied one.

The essence of learning to be grateful is to learn to want what you have.

Seems that folks who try to hide it the most end up judging the most. Guess they figure if they judge other people’s garbage it makes their own not quite so dirty.

He even got an old moral lesson hammered home anew: the poor go to gaol for the same crimes with which the rich aren’t even charged.

He resorted to tyranny—the favored fallback of English aristocrats when democracy wasn’t going their way.

What was it about a woman—a certain kind of woman—standing at the mercy of men—righteous, civic-minded men, with the moral force of public outrage on their side—that could sometimes be secretly, shamefacedly titillating?

Isabel never despaired, even though I think she knew everything that was going to happen, right from the beginning. There was a Walt Whitman poem she liked, especially the part that went - 'All goes onward and outward,/Nothing collapses/And to die is different from/What anyone supposes/And Luckier.' She tried to believe that, and it gave her some comfort, I know. She was very brave. Always. She hid her anguish and sadness, although I know she felt them. Because she wasn't losing only one person she loved - as we have. She was losing all of them.

What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning." "It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly. "Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple." "You do not. And I think it looks rather nice." He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy." "That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling. "The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie.

Mather Grouses can’t have no friends. Can’t fight, can’t talk, can’t fuck. Not really.” No, Randall thought, but not because we don’t want to. It’s because our minds keep drifting from the fighting and the fucking, always back to the me—what about me, is this a me I can live with, that I can suffer people to see, that I can suffer myself to see. His grandfather had felt all of this, surely. All Mather Grouses felt it; the same perverse self-consciousness that had driven Randall into the old hospital that day. Concern for Wild Bill Gaffney had come later, after everyone had told him why he had done it and he had believed them. He had been fearless, selfless, they said, never suspecting that what had pushed him forward through the falling debris was in fact fear. Fear that someone would witness him standing there and know he had done nothing.

So quiet. So safe. I peer out into the distance, past the garden where the twins were playing, past the Gaffneys’ farmland and estate, past the sprawling wilderness, to the mountains beyond—mountains that loom in the distance and cast dark shadows over everything as the sun sets behind them. And the forest—the wild forest. I squint into the distance and make out the curious shapes of several large white birds flying in from the wilds. They’re different from any birds I’ve ever seen before, with huge, fanning wings, so light they seem iridescent. As I watch them, I’m overcome by a strange sense of foreboding, as if the earth is shifting beneath my feet. I forget, for a moment, about the basket of pig slop I’m balancing on my hip, and some large vegetable remnants fall to the ground with a dull thud. I glance down and stoop to gather them back into the basket. When I straighten again and look for the strange white birds, they’re gone.

Ultimately, in the very grand scheme of things, it’s irrelevant whether my life lasts fifty more years, or five. Or two. The point is to live it, not wait through it. And I’m alive now—I can pick flowers, pet the dog, eat cinnamon toast. How foolish I would be to let my mortality, which has been there all along, since the second of my birth, spoil my love of these things. So I won’t. I’ll have to remind myself constantly, but starting now, I intend to live until I die.

People don’t like to be pushed into a corner. When they are, they lose sight of what they are fighting about. They simply fight to get out of the corner.

fighting one fear after another.

Life will always flow on, it had whispered gently. You might try to stop it, but no one can alter the flow of life. You can only learn how to move with it gracefully, tumbling through the rough times, restoring yourself during the smooth times, and knowing that wherever it takes you, a mightier hand than yours is guiding you, always directing your path. Moses

He had never met anyone like Carrie. He loved her animation and the fire of passion that lit her eyes when she felt intensely about something. Not only was she beautiful, she was intelligent and not embarrassed to show her feelings.

You can’t spend all your days lookin’ backward, and you can’t spend all your days lookin’ forward. It’s today that counts, Rose.

It was many hours later before Moses was able to take Rose

what we should think, and

The federal government will have become their enemy...” Thomas echoed in a disbelieving voice. “I fear there is no turning back from the

I’m realizing human nature is a very difficult thing to escape. We can be self-righteous, or realize much of what we hate in others is what we have inside ourselves.

Every life that has been lived until today is a part of the woven braid of life. It takes every person’s story to create history. Your life will help determine the course of history. You may think you don’t have much of an impact. You do. Every action you take will reflect in someone else’s life. Someone else’s decisions. Someone else’s future. Both good and bad.

You gots to live as hard as you can where you be. You gots to look deep inside and find out all the thin’s you got to give the world. Then you got to give it. You can’t spend all your days lookin’ backward, and you can’t spend all your days lookin’ forward. It’s today that counts, Rose. Yous got to bloom where you be planted. God’s got you planted here for now.

Dark

Read the Bible yourself and then ask God to show you the truth.

My mama didn’t believe anyone was a failure. She figured those folks need to find out what they’re supposed to be doing. Once they find that out, they’ll have all the abilities and gifts they need to perform it.” She paused again. “Teresa, you’re a very special person. If you decide not to come back, don’t feel badly. It only means there is something else you’re supposed to be doing.

If you can find a way to make a living doing what you love, welcome to the elite group of the most blessed people in the world.

Within our uniqueness, we are all made in the image of God. There's a popular saying many Christians claim: "In the essentials unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things love." It's not intended as an excuse to avoid critical self-examination or lively conversation. It does remind us that thoughtful Christians are free to have opinions that are radically different than ours. Our challenge is to loves through those differences, honoring each other in those differences as we each seek to follow a common God.

We have always found a rationale to fight. From the Declaration of Independence to the attack on the Twin Towers, we believe we are right and our foe should be vanquished. Over that time we have gone from claims of war as a last resort to war as a first response, and we even consider preemptive strikes. Our growth as a nation has been tied to our willingness to go into the frontier, confront and conquer the savages, and spread civilization as we know it. We have gone from a group of colonies fighting oppression to a superpower attempting to police the world.

One noticeable effect of studying data is the loss of a sense of humanity. Each statistic involves many people--people who die from gun violence...We are so much more than numbers. We all are individuals with names, faces, and personalities. We love and are beloved. We have families and friends. Each and every violent gun death is a trauma that numbers do not begin to touch.

You can’t do people’s thinkin’ and feelin’ for dem, Rose. Some folks you ain’t neber gonna figure out—you just got to accept them where they be. Dere ain’t no way to get inside a person’s head and figure out what makes them be the way they be. You just got to accept them.

Every life that has been lived until today is a part of the woven braid of life.   It takes every person’s story to create history. Your life will help determine the course of history.   You may think you don’t have much of an impact.   You do. Every action you take will reflect in someone else’s life.   Someone else’s decisions. Someone else’s future. Both good and bad.

Our gracious Father, we need you to help make sense of the world we are living in. Thank you for your continual blessing and your supplying of our needs. May we find ourselves

folks can blame bad decisions on the times being hard, or they can admit they made a stupid mistake and fix it. She said that’s the real sign of growing up—when you don’t blame your mistakes on other people or circumstances.

It ain’t nothin’ you done. It be a gift from God. But you better not let that gift go to waste. You got to stretch it. You got to work it.

She used to tell me that some people stagger under the burden of failure because they were never supposed to be doing what they were doing anyway. She said some people try to do things God never gifted them for in the first place. Then they feel like miserable failures because they don’t succeed.” Rose gazed deeply into Teresa’s eyes. “My mama didn’t believe anyone was a failure. She figured those folks need to find out what they’re supposed to be doing. Once they find that out, they’ll have all the abilities and gifts they need to perform it.

Kanawha Canal was a marvel to her. It had first extended seven miles to afford safe passage around the Richmond Falls. Packet boats now ran daily trips

I fear there are many editors and newspapermen who will bear a heavy responsibility for what happens in our country.

Askin’ questions keeps you comin’ to God, Rose girl. You can rest sure he done got all the answers. You can also rest sure he ain’t gonna tell you till you need to know. He don’t mind the askin’ though. As long as we’re askin’ that means there be somethin’ in us that still believes he gonna tell us one day. And he will, Rose girl. When the time be right, he gonna answer all dem questions…If we done knew all the answers, there wouldn’t be no need to trust God. Wouldn’t be no need to get to know him. And that, Rose girl would be the tragedy. Knowin’ all the answers without knowing God... Why, knowin’ ‘em that way wouldn’t mean nothin’!

Economists Mason Gaffney and Fred Harrison claim in their work The Corruption of Economics that industrialists toward the end of the 19th century may have intentionally created and promoted a new brand of economics (neoclassical) to divert public attention from the monopolization of nature. Neoclassical economics treats nature as capital - a resource to be exploited.

Every life that has been lived until today is a part of the woven braid of life. It takes every person’s story to create history. Your life will help determine the course of history. You may think you don’t have much of an impact. You do. Every action you take will reflect in someone else’s life. Someone else’s decisions. Someone else’s future. Both good and bad.   My

I have come to believe that most people, seeing life from their own perspective, think they are doing the very best thing they can. Others, including myself, may think they have the ability to see things more clearly, and maybe we can, but a person can only act from their own perceptions. I find myself more able to find understanding and acceptance

personally acquainted with them,

Ain’t got no reason to be complainin’, and I done got me a heap of reasons to be thankful. I reckon that makes me be doin’ just fine,

Many women have become teachers who never should have, because it’s more appealing than working in the mills or in the fields. Yet, their students suffer.” “Because

Then you’ll cry and go on livin’. But girl, you be borrowing trouble ‘fore there be trouble to borrow. You done be lettin’ that fear take over your heart again. What happened to your trust, chile? What happened to your trust?” Rose

exclaimed, reaching down to rub Granite’s neck. “You did a good job,” Robert praised. “You have what it takes to make a fine horseman.” “Really?” Clint asked. “I would let you work with my horses any day,” Robert said. The spark in Clint’s eyes was replaced by a dark

out some of her confidence. Moses sighed. “There is a stack of candles inside the door. Make sure you take plenty with you.” “I will,” Carrie promised. She looked up at him intently. “When you get back north, tell Rose I love her and miss her. Aunt Abby, too. Tell them I believe we will be together when this horrible war is over.” She paused. “I would like to think I can come back to the plantation, but my heart is saying my job here is done for now. I have a feeling I

Strident voices everywhere were fighting to be heard, and just as it so often happened in the past, the voices that shouted the loudest were the ones heard best. The voices that fed on fear and prejudices drowned out all else.

But my mama says that the only way to live is to fight those fears and do what comes to you. She says if you’re not fighting those fears, you’re not living.

She was tired of the flaming thoughts of discontent that kept her awake at night.

God might never have wanted blacks to be hauled to this country as slaves, but now that we’re here, I know for certain he wants the hatin’ to stop. It’s our job to make sure it happens, at least in our own hearts. I reckon those are the only ones we can really answer for.

men being led into the clearing. The towering oaks formed a mighty tunnel for the procession. The trees, like the air embracing them, were still and somber, reflecting b

She thought about all she had learned in the past year and accepted the reality that, from the very first moment slavery had been permitted in a country founded on freedom,

V: You were everything to me, Stanley. Everything. S: You still love me? V: It's like a big stone in the road. S: And all those others? V: You know the way a bat bounces sounds off objects to find out where it is?

There are some people who want to feel power over other people. I guess it makes them feel better about themselves if they have someone to look down upon.

Employees can now easily leak company data through the use of insecure public Wi-Fi . If employees do not use VPNs to encrypt their data, they run the risk of exposing their traffic to cybercriminals. This means that passwords and usernames can be seen and intercepted by others on the network….. Although public WiFi hotspots are an invaluable services, there is a strong need for businesses to stay on top of the potential threats and security risks.

Carrie

strengthen her frail body. “All right, Mama,” she assented joyfully.

North. He believes they saw him as

Why, that be one man who ain’t got nothin’ but hate poisonin’ his blood. But there ain’t been no one born that be that way from the start. No, somethin’ done put that poison in him. We prob’ly won’t never know what put it there, but it been put there sho ‘nuff. You gots to pity a man like that. Now, I be hatin’ the things he be doin’ as much as anybody else, but it won’t be doin’ my heart no good to be hatin’ him. That won’t do nothin’ but put poison in my own blood. No, I reckon I’ll keep on pitying that poor empty shell of a man.

over

When you can find no reason to celebrate, you find one anyway. Every soul needs laughter and fun, no matter how awful the reality of the present.

Never again will I allow myself to be so caught up in the events of my world and my activities that I lose contact with my own heart and mind. All my achievements mean nothing if I lose myself in the process.

medical

A people afraid were a people trapped in bondage. Break that fear and people would spring forward into freedom and liberty.

It takes great courage to be honest when the honesty is pointed at yourself.

Anyone who goes against the conventions of their time will experience heartache. People fear change, Carrie, and they fight the things they are afraid of.

We only truly fight to make changes when we believe in those changes with all our heart. You have to want your dream badly enough to hold on through the rough times.

When people fight something with hate and anger, they close the doors to actual change because they close the doors of the person’s heart they are trying to change.

ability to read her heart—to see beyond the surface to what was boiling just underneath.

It is impossible to go backward and undo the past. All you can do is live with the present and try to make the best of the future.

herself. Moses laughed along with them. “You would be amazed the things men will say when they’re standing around on the street corner. Since my trash route runs through the heart of the business district, I hear a great many

thickets

whatever she was up to, the whole thing made him

Rather than promising genuine belonging through a collective cause or consciousness, totalitarian politics represents the most refined form of the peculiar loneliness of the current age, pressing individuals into an indistinguishable mass whose sole purpose is to accelerate the necessary movements of nature and history. Her analysis thus issues an urgent call, not to dismiss these movements as aberrations but to confront the breeding ground that loneliness creates for them to enter the mainstream.

Arendt’s analysis offers an important critical perspective on this heightened togetherness, clarifying that in order for totalitarianism to have such wide and undifferentiated appeal, the masses must have already been atomized and isolated to the point of loneliness. Rather than promising genuine belonging through a collective cause or consciousness, totalitarian politics represents the most refined form of the peculiar loneliness of the current age, pressing individuals into an indistinguishable mass whose sole purpose is to accelerate the necessary movements of nature and history. Her analysis thus issues an urgent call, not to dismiss these movements as aberrations but to confront the breeding ground that loneliness creates for them to enter the mainstream.

When people fight something with hate and anger, they close the doors to actual change because they close the doors of the person’s heart

People are easily deceived—their good and kindly hearts believe it all implicitly, without ever remembering the rule about hearing both sides before we form an opinion.

but

People believe what they want to believe. They also believe what people in leadership tell them.