George Stern Quotes

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76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
Mad-Eye Moody?” said George thoughtfully, spreading marmalade on his toast. “Isn’t he that nutter —” “Your father thinks very highly of Mad-Eye Moody,” said Mrs. Weasley sternly. “Yeah, well, Dad collects plugs, doesn’t he?” said Fred quietly as Mrs. Weasley left the room. “Birds of a feather …” “Moody was a great wizard in his time,” said Bill. “He’s an old friend of Dumbledore’s, isn’t he?” said Charlie. “Dumbledore’s not what you’d call normal, though, is he?” said Fred. “I mean, I know he’s a genius and everything...
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
As George J. Stigler said of some of his fellow Nobel Laureates, they “issue stern ultimata to the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis.
Thomas Sowell (Intellectuals and Society)
What were you doing to that cat, boy?” Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her brother she said, “He’s a ragged boy, isn’t he? Look at him.” She giggled. “A ragged dirty smelly boy,” Tommen agreed. They don’t know me, Arya realized. They don’t even know I’m a girl. Small wonder; she was barefoot and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through the castle, clad in a jerkin ripped by cat claws and brown roughspun pants hacked off above her scabby knees. You don’t wear skirts and silks when you’re catching cats. Quickly she lowered her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame.
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
Lady Selyse was as tall as her husband, thin of body and thin of face, with prominent ears, a sharp nose, and the faintest hint of a mustache on her upper lip. She plucked it daily and cursed it regularly, yet it never failed to return. Her eyes were pale, her mouth stern, her voice a whip. She cracked it now.
George R.R. Martin
No,” Threepio responded, “I don’t think he likes you at all.” A second beep failed to alter the stern tone in the taller robot’s voice. “No, I don’t like you, either.
George Lucas (Star Wars: Trilogy - Episodes IV, V & VI)
One day on a ranging we brought down a fine big elk. We were skinning it when the smell of blood drew a shadowcat out of its lair. I drove it off, but not before it shredded my cloak to ribbons. Do you see? Here, here, and here?” He chuckled. “It shredded my arm and back as well, and I bled worse than the elk. My brothers feared I might die before they got me back to Maester Mullin at the Shadow Tower, so they carried me to a wildling village where we knew an old wisewoman did some healing. She was dead, as it happened, but her daughter saw to me. Cleaned my wounds, sewed me up, and fed me porridge and potions until I was strong enough to ride again. And she sewed up the rents in my cloak as well, with some scarlet silk from Asshai that her grandmother had pulled from the wreck of a cog washed up on the Frozen Shore. It was the greatest treasure she had, and her gift to me.” He swept the cloak back over his shoulders. “But at the Shadow Tower, I was given a new wool cloak from stores, black and black, and trimmed with black, to go with my black breeches and black boots, my black doublet and black mail. The new cloak had no frays nor rips nor tears … and most of all, no red. The men of the Night’s Watch dressed in black, Ser Denys Mallister reminded me sternly, as if I had forgotten. My old cloak was fit for burning now, he said. “I left the next morning … for a place where a kiss was not a crime, and a man could wear any cloak he chose.
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
Some mate," Karl Framm said with contempt. "Hell, that little stern-wheeler we're chasin' don't draw nothin'. After a good rain, she could steam halfway across the city of N'Orleans without ever noticin' that she'd left the river.
George R.R. Martin (Fevre Dream)
And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?’ ‘To make them confess.’ ‘No, that is not the reason. Try again.’ ‘To punish them.’ ‘No!’ exclaimed O’Brien. His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. ‘No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them. Do you understand what I mean by that?
George Orwell (1984)
I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Then know," he returned, and his voice was stern, "that thou who callest thyself alive, hast brought into this chamber the odours of death, and its air will not be wholesome for the sleepers until thou art gone from it!
George MacDonald (Lilith, a romance)
We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river.  If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing.  You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all.  You must not even look round at it.  Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don’t need any tea, and are not going to have any.  You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, “I don’t want any tea; do you, George?” to which George shouts back, “Oh, no, I don’t like tea; we’ll have lemonade instead—tea’s so indigestible.”  Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out.
Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog))
I'll fix things up with George soon as she gets here," Anthony mumbled. "You may depend upon it." "Oh,I know you will, but you'll have to hie yourself back to London to do so, since she ain't coming here. Didn't want to inflict her dour mood on the festivities, so decided it ould be best to absent herself." Anthony looked appalled now and complained, "You didn't say she was that mad." "Didn't I? Think you're wearing that black eye just because she's a mite annoyed?" "That will do," Jason said sternly. "This entire situation is intolerable.And frankly, I find it beyond amazing that you have both utterly lost your finesse in dealing ith women since you married." That,of course, hit quite below the belt where these two ex[rakes were concerned. "Ouch," James muttered, then in his own defense, "American women are an exception to any known rule, and bloody stubbron besides." "So are Scots,for that matter," Anthony added. "They just don't behave like normal Enlgishwomen,Jason,indeed they don't." "Regardless.You know my feelings on the entire family gathering here for Christmas.This is not the time for anyone in the family to be harboring any ill will of any sort.You both should have patched this up before the holidays began. See that you do so immediately, if you both have to return to London to do so." Having said his peace, Jason headed for the door to leave his brothers to mull over their conduct,or rather, misconduct, but added before he left, "You both look like bloody panda bears.D'you have any idea what kind of example that sets for the children?" "Panda bears indeed," Anthony snorted as soon as the door closed. James looked up to reply drolly, "Least the roof is still intact.
Johanna Lindsey (The Holiday Present)
But Henry was not prepared to submit. In a speech supporting his resolutions, he supposedly exclaimed, "Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." Before he could finish the phrase, red-robed Speaker of the House John Robinson cried, "Treason! Treason," as other burgesses took up the cry. But Henry stared the Speaker in the eye and finished his sentence: "...may profit by their example! If this be treason, make the most of it!
Willard Sterne Randall (Thomas Jefferson: A Life)
Wouldn’t do what?” George asked sullenly. “What you were thinking of doing.” “How do you know what I was thinking?” “Oh, we make it our business to know a lot of things,” the stranger said easily. George wondered what the man’s business was. He was a most unremarkable little person, the sort you would pass in a crowd and never notice. Unless you saw his bright blue eyes, that is. You couldn’t forget them, for they were the kindest, sharpest eyes you ever saw. Nothing else about him was noteworthy.
Philip van Doren Stern (The Greatest Gift: A Christmas Tale)
Ireland has in it a quality which caused it (in the most ascetic age of Christianity) to be called the “Land of Saints”; and which still might give it a claim to be called the Land of Virgins. An Irish Catholic priest once said to me, “There is in our people a fear of the passions which is older even than Christianity.” Everyone who has read Shaw’s play upon Ireland will remember the thing in the horror of the Irish girl at being kissed in the public streets. But anyone who knows Shaw’s work will recognize it in Shaw himself. There exists by accident an early and beardless portrait of him which really suggests in the severity and purity of its lines some of the early ascetic pictures of the beardless Christ. However he may shout profanities or seek to shatter the shrines, there is always something about him which suggests that in a sweeter and more solid civilisation he would have been a great saint. He would have been a saint of a sternly ascetic, perhaps of a sternly negative type. But he has this strange note of the saint in him: that he is literally unworldly.
George Bernard Shaw (George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Essays, lectures, and letters on drama, politics, religion, society by a Nobel laureate)
Here is a little boy,” said Bingo, indicating me to the strange lady, “who wets his bed every night. Do you know what I am going to do if you wet your bed again?” she added, turning to me. “I am going to get the Sixth Form to beat you.” The strange lady put on an air of being inexpressibly shocked, and exclaimed “I-should-think-so!” And here occurred one of those wild, almost lunatic misunderstandings which are part of the daily experience of childhood. The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having “character” and were empowered to beat smaller boys. I had not yet learned of their existence, and I mis-heard the phrase “the Sixth Form” as “Mrs. Form.” I took it as referring to the strange lady—I thought, that is, that her name was Mrs. Form. It was an improbable name, but a child has 110 judgement in such matters. I imagined, therefore, that it was she who was to be deputed to beat me. It did Dot strike me as strange that this job should be turned over to a casual visitor in no way connected with the school. I merely assumed that “Mrs. Form” was a stern disciplinarian who enjoyed beating people (somehow her appearance seemed to bear this out) and I had an immediate terrifying vision of her arriving for the occasion in full riding kit and armed with a hunting whip. To this day I can feel myself almost swooning with shame as I stood, a very small, round-faced boy in short corduroy knickers, before the two women. I could not speak. I felt that I should die if “Mrs. Form” were to beat me. But my dominant feeling was not fear or even resentment: it was simply shame because one more person, and that a woman, had been told of my disgusting offence.
George Orwell (A Collection Of Essays: (Authorized Orwell Edition): A Mariner Books Classic (Harvest Book))
As they formed into ranks, each man dropping silently into his place, Sir Nigel ran a questioning eye over them, and a smile of pleasure played over his face. Tall and sinewy, and brown, clear-eyed, hard-featured, with the stern and prompt bearing of experienced soldiers, it would be hard indeed for a leader to seek for a choicer following. Here and there in the ranks were old soldiers of the French wars, grizzled and lean, with fierce, puckered features and shaggy, bristling brows. The most, however, were young and dandy archers, with fresh English faces, their beards combed out, their hair curling from under their close steel hufkens, with gold or jewelled earrings gleaming in their ears, while their gold-spangled baldrics, their silken belts, and the chains which many of them wore round their thick brown necks, all spoke of the brave times which they had had as free companions. Each had a yew or hazel stave slung over his shoulder, plain and serviceable with the older men, but gaudily painted and carved at either end with the others. Steel caps, mail brigandines, white surcoats with the red lion of St. George, and sword or battle-axe swinging from their belts, completed this equipment, while in some cases the murderous maule or five-foot mallet was hung across the bowstave, being fastened to their leathern shoulder-belt by a hook in the centre of the handle. Sir Nigel's heart beat high as he looked upon their free bearing and fearless faces.
Arthur Conan Doyle (The White Company)
Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason—the need to protect the nation from terrorism—met with widespread skepticism. After all, at least three of the Saturday jihadists had entered with Soetoro’s blessing, over the objections of many politicians and the outraged cries of all those little people out there in the heartland, all those potential victims no one really gave a damn about. His suspension of the writ of habeas corpus went over the heads of most of the millions of people in his audience, since they didn’t know what the writ was or signified. He didn’t stop there. He adjourned Congress until he called it back into session, and announced an indefinite stay on all cases before the courts in which the government was a defendant. His announcement of press and media censorship “until the crisis is past” met with outrage, especially among the talking heads on television, who went ballistic. Within thirty minutes, the listening audience found out what the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus meant: FBI agents arrested select television personalities, including some who were literally on camera, and took them away. Fox News went off the air. Most of the other networks contented themselves with running the tape of Soetoro behind the podium making his announcement, over and over, without comment. During the day FBI agents arrested dozens of prominent conservative commentators and administration critics across the nation, including Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Michelle Malkin, George Will, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Ralph Peters, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Matt Drudge, Thomas Sowell, Howard Stern, and Charles Krauthammer, among others. They weren’t given a chance to remain silent in the future, but were arrested and taken away to be held in an unknown location until Soetoro decided to release them.
Stephen Coonts (Liberty's Last Stand (Tommy Carmellini #7))
The master of ceremonies was "Cactus" Pryor, "the George Jessel of Texas"; he apologized to the chancellor "because they had been unable to find a way to barbecue sauerkraut." There was a Mexican mariachi band, square dances by the Billyettes, a precision dance team (not all that precise) from Fredericksburg High School and then the German carols sung by cowgirls - the St. Mary's High School choir in full cowgirl regalia: Stetsons, blue skirts, white blouses and red neckerchiefs - under the direction of a nun in head-to-tie black habit. They closed with "Deep in the Heart of Texas" - and that was in German, too. "Die Sterne bei Nacht sind gross und klar / Tief in das Herz von Texas..." After each couplet, the traditional four Texas claps. At the conclusion, a cowboy yell, echoed by the audience. Only after that did the explanation for the grand piano appear: tull, curly-haired Van Cliburn of Fort Worth, whom newspapers had been calling "the pride of Texas" ever since his victory in 1958 in the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The thunderous chords of the young virtuoso's selections from Beethoven, Brahms and other German composers filled the rickety little building.
Robert A. Caro (The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4))
But how can you stop people remembering things?’ cried Winston again momentarily forgetting the dial. ‘It is invol- untary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!’ O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘YOU have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of san- ity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self- evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not ex- ternal. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self- destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.
George Orwell
At the very stern of the Titanic, Quartermaster George Thomas Rowe still paced his lonely watch. He had seen no one, heard nothing since the iceberg glided by nearly an hour ago. Suddenly he was amazed to see a lifeboat floating near the starboard side. He phoned the bridge—did they know there was a boat afloat? An incredulous voice asked who he was. Rowe explained, and the bridge then realized he had been overlooked. They told him to come to the bridge right away and bring some rockets with him. Rowe dropped down to a locker one deck below, picked up a tin box with 12 rockets inside, and clambered forward—the last man to learn what was going on.
Walter Lord (The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On (The Titanic Chronicles))
They look stern at first, do a lot of scowling, but behind their eyes, once you get them talking, there's a hurt, docile quality, possibly related to past wrongs done them, a quality I associate with the thunked-as-kids: Long ago the world turned on them in some unexpected and unpleasant way, and they are, not unreasonably, expecting that it could happen again at any moment.
George Saunders (The Braindead Megaphone)
Jimmy Allen wasn’t. And yet, he was on that map. One of the four dead men Nan had drawn JFK Jr.’s attention to. Three of those four had been scheduled to appear in front of Congress in regard to the assassination: Johnny Roselli, George de Mohrenschildt (Lee Harvey Oswald’s friend), and Carlos Prio Socarrás, one-time president of Cuba. All of them had died violently before they could testify: Roselli murdered, de Mohrenschildt and Prio by suicide. And then there was Jimmy Allen. What made him so special? What was his connection to the assassination? Why had Nan drawn JFK Jr.’s attention to him?
Rusty McClure;Dave Stern
His achievements were not come by easily. It was costly in life and in loss of personal freedoms. It was achieved with the full enforcement of the now famous "Dale laws." He moved quickly to punish deserters and law breakers. George Percy related the results in graphic terms. Some "in a moste severe manner [he] cawsed to be executed. Some he appointed to be hanged, some burned, some to be broken upon wheles, others to be staked and some to be shott to deathe; all theis extreme and crewell tortures he used and inflicted upon them to terrefy the reste for attemptinge the like...." These were stern measures that produced results and few of his contemporary associates took issue including John Rolfe, Ralph Hamor, Reverend Alexander Whitaker and even Sir Edwin Sandys. To them, motivated by the spirit of the time, hard conditions required stern handling.
Charles E. Hatch (The First Seventeen Years: Virginia, 1607-1624)
On June 12, 1775 the Rhode Island Assembly commissioned armed ships to fight the British Navy. That Fall on October 13, 1775 the Second Continual Congress established the United States Navy marking this date as the Navy’s official birthday. The first United States naval vessel was the USS Ganges, built in Philadelphia as a merchant vessel. She was bought by the US Navy, fitted out with 24 guns for a crew of 220 men, and commissioned on 24 May 1798. Following this, John Paul Jones was appointed Commander of the French ship Duc de Duras, which had been in service as a merchant ship between France and the Orient. Her design was such that she could easily be converted to a man of war, which she was, when fitted out with 50 guns and an extra six 6-pounder and renamed the Bonhomme Richard. On September 23, 1779 the Bonhomme Richard fought in the Battle of Flamborough Head, off the coast of Yorkshire,England where, although winning the battle, caught fire from the bombardment and sank 36 hours later. John Paul Jones commandeered a British ship named the HMS Serapis and sailed the captured ship to Holland for repairs. The Serapis was transferred her to the French as a prize of war, who then converted her into a privateer. In 1781, she sank off Madagascar to an accidental fire that reached the powder locker, blowing her stern off. Following the Revolutionary War the Continental Navy was disbanded, however George Washington responded to threats to American shipping by Barbary pirates in the Mediterranean with the Naval Act of 1794, which created a permanent U.S. Navy. As a part of this Act, the first ships that were commissioned were six frigates, which included the USS Constitution and the USS Constellation.
Hank Bracker (Suppressed I Rise)
How did you live? asked the being on the right. Tell it truthfully, the other said, as, from either side, they gently touched their heads to his. They recoiled, then withdrew to two gray stone pots set down on either side of that grand hall, into which they vomited twin streams of brightly colored fluid. The small versions of themselves rushed to bring towels, upon which they wiped their mouths. May we confirm? said the one on the right. Wait, what did you see, he said. Is there some— But it was too late. The being on the right sang a single ominous note and out came the several smaller versions of himself, but crippled and grimacing, bearing between them a feces-encrusted mirror. The being on the left sang his (somber, jarring) note, and several smaller versions of himself tumbled out, rolling forth via a series of spastic clumsy gymnastic movements that were somehow accusatory, bearing the scale. Quick check, the Christ-prince said sternly. I’m not sure I completely understood the instructions, the funeral-suited man said. If I might be allowed to— The being on the right held the mirror up before the funeral-suited man, and the being on the left reached into the funeral-suited man’s chest with a deft and aggressive movement, extracted the man’s heart, and placed it on the scale. Oh dear, said the Christ-emissary. A sound of horrific opprobrium and mourning echoed all across that kingdom.
George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo)
By Lawrence Van Alstyne December 24, 1863 As tomorrow is Christmas we went out and made such purchases of good things as our purses would allow, and these we turned over to George and Henry for safe keeping and for cooking on the morrow. After that we went across the street to see what was in a tent that had lately been put up there. We found it a sort of show. There was a big snake in a showcase filled with cheap looking jewelry, each piece having a number attached to it. Also, a dice cup and dice. For $1.00 one could throw once, and any number of spots that came up would entitle the thrower to the piece of jewelry with a corresponding number on it. Just as it had all been explained to us, a greenhorn-looking chap came in and, after the thing had been explained to him, said he was always unlucky with dice, but if one of us would throw for him he would risk a dollar just to see how the game worked. Gorton is such an accommodating fellow I expected he would offer to make the throw for him, but as he said nothing, I took the cup and threw seventeen. The proprietor said it was a very lucky number, and he would give the winner $12 in cash or the fine pin that had the seventeen on it. The fellow took the cash, like a sensible man. I thought there was a chance to make my fortune and was going right in to break the bank, when Gorton, who was wiser than I, took me to one side and told me not to be a fool; that the greenhorn was one of the gang, and that the money I won for him was already his own. Others had come by this time and I soon saw he was right, and I kept out. We watched the game a while, and then went back to Camp Dudley and to bed. Christmas, and I forgot to hang up my stocking. After getting something to eat, we took stock of our eatables and of our pocket books, and found we could afford a few things we lacked. Gorton said he would invite his horse jockey friend, James Buchanan, not the ex-President, but a little bit of a man who rode the races for a living. So taking Tony with me I went up to a nearby market and bought some oysters and some steak. This with what we had on hand made us a feast such as we had often wished for in vain. Buchanan came, with his saddle in his coat pocket, for he was due at the track in the afternoon. George and Henry outdid themselves in cooking, and we certainly had a feast. There was not much style about it, but it was satisfying. We had overestimated our capacity, and had enough left for the cooks and drummer boys. Buchanan went to the races, Gorton and I went to sleep, and so passed my second Christmas in Dixie. At night the regiment came back, hungry as wolves. The officers mostly went out for a supper, but Gorton and I had little use for supper. We had just begun to feel comfortable. The regiment had no adventures and saw no enemy. They stopped at Baton Rouge and gave the 128th a surprise. Found them well and hearty, and had a real good visit. I was dreadfully sorry I had missed that treat. I would rather have missed my Christmas dinner. They report that Colonel Smith and Adjutant Wilkinson have resigned to go into the cotton and sugar speculation. The 128th is having a free and easy time, and according to what I am told, discipline is rather slack. But the stuff is in them, and if called on every man will be found ready for duty. The loose discipline comes of having nothing to do. I don’t blame them for having their fun while they can, for there is no telling when they will have the other thing. From Diary of an Enlisted Man by Lawrence Van Alstyne. New Haven, Conn., 1910.
Philip van Doren Stern (The Civil War Christmas Album)
Uh…excuse me, sir,” he said loudly. “But would you like a Band-Aid?” He waved it in the air in front of the soldier. “Band-Aid, Band-Aid,” he said. He waited to see the soldier’s response and, when the Hessian beckoned him forward, Hooter stood up. He went up to the soldier and opened the Band-Aid and carefully placed it over the bloodiest part of the wound. The leg was pretty badly scratched, but the Band-Aid was able to stop the severest bleeding. The soldier stared at the Band-Aid for a long time and pulled at the edges, feeling the sticky underside. Then he looked at Hooter. “Ban…Bandad. Ho…Hoot!” He smiled at Hooter and then tapped himself on the chest. “Ich bin Gustav.” “Gustav, that’s great!” Hooter grinned. “Hi, Gustav, nice to meet you.” “Ya, ya, Hoot!” The soldier grinned back. Then he stood up and had them form into a line again. “Hooter, we aren’t at a tea party,” Matt said sternly as they began to make their way through the woods. “We’re not supposed to be making friends with them. That’s the enemy.
Elvira Woodruff (George Washington's Socks (Time Travel Adventure))
Die Dothraki glaubten, die Sterne seien Pferde aus Feuer, eine große Herde, die bei Nacht über den Himmel galoppierte.
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
The Future of Humanity Institute conducted a poll of academic experts on global risks. They gave an estimate of 19 percent probability that the human species will go extinct before the end of this century. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change factored a 9.5 percent risk of extinction within the next century into its calculations.
George Marshall (Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change)
And isn't Susan a man? Of course he is! A made-up young villain, who bamboozled the old Vicar, and nearly canoodled with George, the groom
Simon Stern (The Valancourt Book of ​Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Volume Three)
But how can you stop people remembering things?" cried Winston, again momentarily forgetting the dial. "It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!" O'Brien's manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial. "On the contrary," he said, "you have not controlled it. That is what brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party hold to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party...
George Orwell (1984)
But how can you stop people remembering things?” cried Winston, again momentarily forgetting the dial. “It is involuntary. It is outside oneself. How can you control memory? You have not controlled mine!” O’Brien’s manner grew stern again. He laid his hand on the dial. “On the contrary,” he said, “you have not controlled it. That is what has brought you here. You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.
George Orwell (1984)
line. That doesn’t mean she was not often arbitrary and temperamental and even ridiculous. There were plenty of times when her temper, always quick, flew away from her. Once she flung the music book at my head, and ordered me out of her sight. ‘And don’t come back. I will teach you no more.’ I took her at her word. Next day Georges, her old valet, came round to the hotel with a note. She demanded to know why I had not presented myself that morning for my lesson as usual. But she could be loving and even tender, too. ‘You know how much I love you, my dear Frances,’ she wrote me after I was singing in Brussels and was officially at least, no longer under her direction. ‘I have proved it to you, and I love you like my own child. But there are times when it is necessary to tell the truth to those whom one loves . . .’ and she went on to give me stern and sound advice about my voice and my care of it. ‘Toujours
Frances Alda (FRANCES ALDA: Men, Women and Tenors)
Baron Steuben, well schooled in the iron régime of Frederick the Great, came over from Prussia, joined Washington at Valley Forge, and day after day drilled and manœuvered the men, laughing and cursing as he turned raw countrymen into regular soldiers. From France came young Lafayette and the stern De Kalb, from Poland came Pulaski and Kosciusko;—all acquainted with the arts of war as waged in Europe and fitted for leadership as well as teaching. Lafayette came early, in 1776, in a ship of his own, accompanied by several officers of wide experience, and remained loyally throughout the war sharing the hardships of American army life. Pulaski fell at the siege of Savannah and De Kalb at Camden. Kosciusko survived the American war to defend in vain the independence of his native land. To these distinguished foreigners, who freely threw in their lot with American revolutionary fortunes, was due much of that spirit and discipline which fitted raw recruits and temperamental militiamen to cope with a military power of the first rank. The Soldiers.—As far as the British soldiers were concerned their annals are short and simple. The regulars from the standing army who were sent over at the opening of the contest, the recruits drummed up by special efforts at home, and the thousands of Hessians bought outright by King George presented few problems of management to the British officers. These common soldiers were far away from home and enlisted for the war. Nearly all of them were well disciplined and many of them experienced in actual campaigns. The armies of King George fought bravely, as
Charles A. Beard (History of the United States)
The MS City of New York commanded by Captain George T. Sullivan, maintained a regular schedule between New York City and Cape Town, South Africa until the onset of World War II when on March 29, 1942 she was attacked off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina by the German submarine U-160 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Georg Lassen. The torpedo struck the MS City of New York at the waterline under the ship’s bridge instantly disabling her. Surfacing the U-boat circled the crippled ship making certain that all of the crew had a chance to abandon ship. In all four lifeboats were lowered holding 41 passengers, 70 crewmen and 13 officers. The armed guard stayed behind but considering the fate of those in the lifeboats did not fire on the submarine. At a distance of about 250 yards the submarine fired a round from her deck gun striking the hapless vessel on the starboard side at the waterline, by her number 4 hold. It took 20 minutes for the MS City of New York to sink stern first. The nine members of the armed guard waited until the water reached the ships after deck before jumping into the water. The following day, a U. S. Navy PBY Catalina aircraft was said to have searched the area without finding any survivors. Almost two days after the attack, a destroyer, the USS Roper rescued 70 survivors of which 69 survived. An additional 29 others were picked up by USS Acushnet, formally a seagoing tugboat and revenue cutter, now operated by the U.S. Coast Guard. All of the survivors were taken to the U.S. Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia. Almost two weeks later, on 11 April, a U.S. Army bomber on its way to Europe, located the forth boat at 38°40N/73°00W having been carried far off shore by the Gulf Stream. The lifeboat contained six passengers, four women, one man and a young girl plus 13 crew members. Two of the women died of exposure. The eleven survivors and two bodies (the mother of the child and the armed guard) were picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter CG-455 and were brought to Lewes, Delaware. The final count showed that seven passengers, one armed guard and 16 crewmen died.
Hank Bracker
Other Germans came not to settle but to fight beside the Americans, most notably the self-styled Baron von Steuben, a Prussian professional soldier who drilled the American troops at Valley Forge into a tightly disciplined, highly maneuverable army.
Willard Sterne Randall (George Washington, A Life)
By 1776, at least 225,000 Germans of at least 250 different Protestant sects migrated to America in the wake of European religious wars.
Willard Sterne Randall (George Washington, A Life)
As Walter Scott showed, one could preserve the most intense passion for Caledonia stern and wild, one's own, one's native land, while rejoicing in the triumphs of the British armed forces over Napoleon and expressing devout loyalty to the Hanovarian dynasty, which, despite the madness of George III and the profligacy of his son and heir, had come to represent for Britons not only the virtues of sturdy monarchy under the sublime Constitution, but, most improbably, family values.
Angus Calder (Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland)