“
Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
”
”
Elinor Glyn
“
Elegance is a glowing inner peace. Grace is an ability to give as well as to receive and be thankful. Mystery is a hidden laugh always ready to surface! Glamour only radiates if there is a sublime courage & bravery within: glamour is like the moon; it only shines because the sun is there.
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
It's not very easy to grow up into a woman. We are always taught, almost bombarded, with ideals of what we should be at every age in our lives: "This is what you should wear at age twenty", "That is what you must act like at age twenty-five", "This is what you should be doing when you are seventeen." But amidst all the many voices that bark all these orders and set all of these ideals for girls today, there lacks the voice of assurance. There is no comfort and assurance. I want to be able to say, that there are four things admirable for a woman to be, at any age! Whether you are four or forty-four or nineteen! It's always wonderful to be elegant, it's always fashionable to have grace, it's always glamorous to be brave, and it's always important to own a delectable perfume! Yes, wearing a beautiful fragrance is in style at any age!
”
”
C. JoyBell C.
“
I was getting depressed. My life wasn't going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Pulp)
“
Knowing who you really are and dressing the part -- with an air of amused recklessness -- is life affirming for you and life enhancing for other people.
”
”
Simon Doonan (Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You)
“
I understand that in our work - doesn't matter whether it's acting or writing - what's important isn't fame or glamour, none of the things I used to dream about, it's the ability to endure.
”
”
Anton Chekhov (The Seagull)
“
When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. . . And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgment concerning whom, amongst the total chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien)
“
I had meant my promise to George. I had said that I was, before anything else, a Boleyn and a Howard through and through; but now, sitting in th shadowy room, looking out over the gray slates of the city, and up at the dark clouds leaning on the roof of Westminster Palace, I suddenly realized that George was wrong, and that my family was wrong, and that I had been wrong-- for all my life. I was not a Howard before anything else. Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love, I didn't want the rewards for which Anne had surrendered her youth. I didn' want the arid glamour of George's life, I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels))
“
For all the glamour of living forever … immortality is really just a long curse. Finite life is precious; it’s fleeting and significant. But immortality… immortality isn’t living at all. It’s a permanent existence void of meaning.
”
”
Chelsea Fine (Awry (The Archers of Avalon, #2))
“
Those who don't believe in sensuality will never experience the glamour of life.
”
”
Lebo Grand (Sensual Lifestyle)
“
The Love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep, spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as the "Love that dare not speak its name," and on account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
We picture the world as thick with conquering and elate humanity, but here, with the bugles of the tempest peeling, it was hard to imagine a peopled earth. One viewed the existence of man then as a marvel, and conceded a glamour of wonder to these lice which were caused to cling to a whirling, fire-smitten, ice-locked, disease-stricken, space-lost bulb. The conceit of man was explained by this storm to be the very engine of life. One was a coxcomb not to die in it.
”
”
Stephen Crane (Blue Hotel)
“
It is simple as this: she has a complicated life and her clothes can't help but show it. It is all part of her unique disheveled glamour.
”
”
Megan Abbott (Die a Little)
“
Tarot is always whispering to you. Tarot weaves truth, stories, secrets, and tales. All you need to do is slow down and listen.
”
”
Sasha Graham (Tarot Diva: Ignite Your Intuition Glamourize Your Life Unleash Your Fabulousity!)
“
She could afford anything, she could give anything, but she could not share a moment of her life with anybody. She
was a beautiful and a glamorous diamond with an astronomical price tag, but to a crude reality — she was still a stone, a living stone. Nothing else but a stone in an aesthetic sense.
”
”
Ravindra Shukla (A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life)
“
Every city, every town, hides beneath a certain amount of glamour that- either intentionally or not- can misdirect the eye or hide something worth finding. Learning to see through those glamours is part of the process of calling any place home.
”
”
Kate Milford (Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader)
“
Sensuality is the hustle to always be at the leading edge of your glamour and enchantment.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
When you know you were designed to be sensual, your potential haunts you.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
Everyone, no matter her or his stage in life, has the right to feel beautiful.
”
”
Dita Von Teese (Your Beauty Mark: The Ultimate Guide to Eccentric Glamour)
“
But that (physical attractiveness), as the late great Irish poet and philosopher of beauty John O’Donohue helpfully distinguished, is glamour. I’ve taken his definition as my own, for naming beauty in all its nuance in the moment-to-moment reality of our days: beauty is that in the presence of which we feel more alive.
”
”
Krista Tippett (Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living)
“
A woman who has truly awakened to her sensuality recognizes that she requires a more sophisticated presence. She is not average, after all.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
Yes, life has a glitter now-of a sort. That’s what’s wrong with it. The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a beauty, a slow-paced glamour.
”
”
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
“
So, what happens in the world is that everybody is fighting somebody. One man is lesser than another man. There is no love, there is no consideration, there is no thought. Each man wants to become somebody. A member of parliament wants to become the leader of the parliament, to become the prime minister, and so on and on and on. There is perpetual fighting, and our society is one constant struggle of one man against another, and this struggle is called the ambition to be something. Old people encourage you to do that. You must be ambitious, you must be something, you must marry a rich man or a rich woman, you must have the right kind of friends. So, the older generation, those who are frightened, those who are ugly in their hearts, try to make you like them, and you also want to be like them because you see the glamour of it all. When the governor comes, everybody bows...
”
”
J. Krishnamurti (What are you Doing with your Life? (Books on Living for Teens))
“
You have always been dazzling - the life of every party, the glamour girl who dances until dawn."
"Well, I am. But I'm dancing on broken glass. I'm Miss Havisham's wedding cake, Kit. A frothy, expensive, mice-eaten confection. I'm the Sphinx's nose, the fallen Colossus. I'm a beautiful ruin, and it's time that has done the deed.
”
”
Deanna Raybourn (A Spear of Summer Grass)
“
You are the secret. Let tarot guide you. And remember, if you want to embody the World card, first you must ask for it.
”
”
Sasha Graham (Tarot Diva: Ignite Your Intuition Glamourize Your Life Unleash Your Fabulousity!)
“
When one good thing happened to you, other good things seemed to follow.
”
”
Candace Bushnell (Trading Up)
“
Art can do the opposite of glamourizing the unattainable; it can reawaken us to the genuine merit of life as we’re forced to lead it.
”
”
Alain de Botton (Art as Therapy)
“
The heart of magic hasn't to do with any result; rather, it propels the practitioner to the source of all experience. ~ Llewellyn's Magical Almanac
”
”
Sasha Graham (Tarot Diva: Ignite Your Intuition Glamourize Your Life Unleash Your Fabulousity!)
“
True love is the reward of true sensuality.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
Grace represents the sublime glamour of human souls, the ability of physically courageous and emotionally brave people to give part of them in order to protect other people regardless of adverse consequence that they might personally endure.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
...friendship stands as a small affront to the total control of all things by mass entertainment and mass media and mass education and mass politics. For wherever such friendships persist, there persists the possibility of imaginative leaps that threaten the comfort of the banal. For you look at the friend and you remember the past, and treasure it. You love the friend, and suddenly you understand that this life of ours cannot fully be described by the motion of particulate matter in empty space. You see instantly that politics fades into unimportance, with all its noisy glamour and empty promises. You feel that others before you have known what it is to have the true friend, the one before whom you can, as Cicero put it, think out loud. You feel that, and it is like an earnest of eternity, of being grounded in a a love and beauty and goodness that is at the heart of all ages, and that transcends them all. Pals we may have, in the flatlands of contemporary life. Political allies, sure. Coworkers, aplenty. But not friends.
”
”
Anthony Esolen (Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child)
“
Between the ages of ten and fifteen in St. Petersburg, I must have read more fiction and poetry—English, Russian and French—than in any other five-year period of my life. I relished especially the works of Wells, Poe, Browning, Keats, Flaubert, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Alexander Blok. On another level, my heroes were the Scarlet Pimpernel, Phileas Fogg, and Sherlock Holmes. In other words, I was a perfectly normal trilingual child in a family with a large library. At a later period, in Western Europe, between the ages of 20 and 40, my favorites were Housman, Rupert Brooke, Norman Douglas, Bergson, Joyce, Proust, and Pushkin. Of these top favorites, several—Poe, Jules Verne, Emmuska Orezy, Conan Doyle, and Rupert Brooke—have lost the glamour and thrill they held for me. The others remain intact and by now are probably beyond change as far as I am concerned.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Strong Opinions)
“
I can see no other reason for the existence of art and poetry and religion except as they tend to restore in us a freshness of vision and more emotional glamour and more vital sense of life.
”
”
Lin Yutang (Lin Yutang: The Importance Of Living)
“
Well, for one," said Frances, "that's an extremely shitty thing to say to me. Two, the glamour passed a long time ago, and toy know very well that it did. And third, three, yes, my life is riddled by cliches, but do you know what a cliche is? It's a story so fine and thrilling that it's grown old in its hopeful retelling.
”
”
Patrick deWitt (French Exit)
“
One of the greatest myths of addiction is that it’s interesting. There is a slight glamour in the beginning, a feeling of doing something wrong, of indulging in a weird world populated by ghosts who used to be struggling musicians but don’t make music anymore, or writers who never write. And then your whole life is getting high and being numb, and there’s absolutely no reason to leave your bed except to get more money. Your life becomes a triangle of elemental needs: get money, get drugs, get home.
”
”
Jade Sharma (Problems)
“
How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap.
To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…
”
”
Henry Miller (Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1))
“
The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.
”
”
James Frey (A Million Little Pieces)
“
I’ve seen thousands of mortal girls,” he said softly, “more
than you could ever count, from all corners of your world. To me, they’re all the same.They see only this outer shell, not who I really
am, beneath. You have. You’ve seen me without the glamour and the illusions, even the ones I
show my family, the farce I maintain just to survive. You’ve seen who I really am, and yet,
you’re still here. You’re here,
and the only dance I want is this one."
"For better or worse, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me now."
"I plan to keep you, from everyone, for as long as
I’m alive. That includes Puck, the false king, and anyone else who would take you
away. I guess I should’ve warned you that I have a slight possessive
streak."
“My name is Ashallyn’darkmyr Tallyn, third son of the Unseelie Court. Let it be known—from this day forth, I vow to protect Meghan Chase,
daughter of the Summer King, with my sword, my honor, and my life. Her desires are
mine. Her wishes are mine. Should even the world stand against her, my blade will be at
her side. And should it fail to protect her, let my own existence be forfeit. This I swear,
on my honor, my True Name, and my life. From this day on…I am yours.”
“My life…everything I am…belongs to you.”
“I will always be your knight, Meghan Chase. And I swear, if there is a way for us to be together, I will find it. No matter how long it takes. If I have to chase your soul to the ends of eternity, I won’t stop until I find you, I promise.
”
”
Julie Kagawa
“
She was drunk on the magic of the night, giddy with glamour, swept away by beauties she had dreamt of all her life and never dared hope to know.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
Beware what you consume, lest you appetite grow by what it feeds on.
”
”
Candace Bushnell (Trading Up)
“
Scratch beneath the thin veneer of glamour and much of the routine work of MI6 was a form of glorified train-spotting – with a little plane- and boat-spotting thrown in.
”
”
Gordon Corera (The Art of Betrayal: The Secret History of MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service)
“
Life doesn't get easier simply because it gets more glamorous
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
Even when I was a very young man,
I was looking for the purpose of life;
I was looking for happiness all over the world;
In fame and in glamour,
in wealth and in splendor,
not knowing how foolish it was.
Happiness is not out there.
Happiness is not in wealth or splendor.
Happiness is inside me,
in my mind,
in my thoughts,
It is in my perception of the world.
”
”
Debasish Mridha
“
There can wisely be no “solutions,” no self-help, of a kind that removes problems altogether. What we can aim for, at best, is consolation—a word tellingly lacking in glamour. To believe in consolation means giving up on cures; it means accepting that life is a hospice rather than a hospital, but one we’d like to render as comfortable, as interesting, and as kind as possible.
”
”
The School of Life (The School of Life: An Emotional Education)
“
Why the hell wouldn’t you want to be one of the fabulous people, the life enhancers, the people who look interesting and smell luscious and who dare to be gorgeously more fascinating than their neighbors?
”
”
Simon Doonan (Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You)
“
Ideally, the pursuit of truth is said to be at the heart of the intellectual's business, but this credits his business too much and not quite enough. As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas consummation often turns out to be elusive. Truth captured loses its glamour; truths long known and widely believed have a way of turning false with time; easy truths are bore and too many of them become half truths. Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties. Harold Rosenberg summed up this side of the life of the mind supremely well when he said that the intellectual is one who turns answers into questions.
”
”
Richard Hofstadter (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life)
“
Thus to enter a realm of immediate experience is most stimulating for those who have done their utmost in the personal and rational spheres of life and yet have found no meaning and no satisfaction there. In this way, too, the matter-of-fact and the commonplace come to wear an altered countenance, and can even acquire a new glamour. For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
”
”
C.G. Jung (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)
“
Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas?
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
From the geiko’s point of view, she needs a partner who is as interesting as the men she meets every night of the week. Most have no desire to leave their aerie of glamour and openness for the constriction of a middle-class existence.
”
”
Mineko Iwasaki (Geisha: A Life)
“
Humans are queer. A man, living and well, is ignored or criticized. Dying or dead, he is noticed and praised. Death sheds a temporary glamour over the poorest soul. It is as though in dying, he has accomplished something which life never gave him.
”
”
Bess Streeter Aldrich (A White Bird Flying)
“
That was where he met the nurse, Lucinda, who was to become his wife after a brief courtship. Perhaps she liked the glamour of a husband in the Paras, but she was mistaken. They set up housekeeping in a cottage near Chobham, convenient for her job at Leatherhead and his at Aldershot. But after three years, having actually seen him for four and a half months, Lucinda quite properly put to him a choice: you can have the Paras and your bloody desert, or you can have me. He thought it over and chose the desert.
”
”
Frederick Forsyth (The Fist of God)
“
I don't think you have enough "new" words - and speaking of languor I would speak of it as 'a touch of languor' which comes from the depths of well-rested people who enjoy their life..." November 15 1967 memo to Mrs. Loew Gross re "THE ROMANTIC POINT OF VIEW
”
”
Diana Vreeland (Glamour)
“
Holmes laughed. "Watson insists that I am the dramatist in real life," said he. "Some touch of the artist wells up within me, and calls insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder - what can one make of such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories - are these not the pride and the justification of our life's work? At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt. Where would be that thrill if I had been as definite as a timetable?
”
”
Arthur Conan Doyle (The Complete Sherlock Holmes: Volume II)
“
Well, for one," said Frances, "that's an extremely shitty thing to say to me. Two, the glamour passed a long time ago, and you know very well that it did. And third, three, yes, my life is riddled by cliches, but do you know what a cliche is? It's a story so fine and thrilling that it's grown old in its hopeful retelling.
”
”
Patrick deWitt (French Exit)
“
At this point, I’d been First Lady for just over two months. In different moments, I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious about our children, and uncertain of my purpose. There are pieces of public life, of giving up one’s privacy to become a walking, talking symbol of a nation, that can seem specifically designed to strip away part of your identity. But here, finally, speaking to those girls, I felt something completely different and pure—an alignment of my old self with this new role. Are you good enough? Yes, you are, all of you. I told the students of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson that they’d touched my heart. I told them that they were precious, because they truly were. And when my talk was over, I did what was instinctive. I hugged absolutely every single girl I could reach.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
No one thinks when they first meet a person that there is some cosmic clock counting down the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds until you stop knowing each other. It doesn't occur to most people when you meet the person with whom you wish to spend the rest of your life that, at some point, one of you will leave. Sure, everyone knows this on a practical level--everyone dies, no one lives forever--but no one looks their spouse in the eye on the night of their wedding and actually hears the ticking of that clock. Its sound is buried far beneath the flash and glamour of what we think our futures hold for us. But it's there; don't be fooled. It ticks for all of us.
”
”
Ronald Malfi (Come with Me)
“
Many people are so enamored by the Glamour of the Gift of Life that they forget to Open , Understand and Live it. Unwrap your Gift of Life and find the True Treasure.
”
”
R.V.M.
“
That was the wonderful thing about New York: Years of bad blood could be wiped out with a single gesture of friendliness.
”
”
Candace Bushnell (Trading Up)
“
Once we acknowledge the role we play in our future, we can add the fun part - our heart's desire.
”
”
Sasha Graham (Tarot Diva: Ignite Your Intuition Glamourize Your Life Unleash Your Fabulousity!)
“
Just remember, honey, you only have one heart.
”
”
Louise Bagshawe
“
But being around Malcolm and Viv, I started to understand the meaning of glamour; that how you present yourself to your fellow man is a way of communicating ideas.
”
”
Chrissie Hynde (Reckless: My Life as a Pretender)
“
No matter what we have come through, or how many perils we have safely passed, or how imperfect and jagged our life has been, we cannot in our heart of hearts imagine how it could have been different. As we look back on it, it slips in behind us in orderly disarray, and, with all its mistakes, acquires a sort of eternal fitness, and even, at times, a poetic glamour.
”
”
Randolph Bourne
“
If I had known how much I would miss these sensations I might have experienced them differently, recognized their shabby glamour, respected the ticking clock that defined this entire experience. I would have put aside my resentment, dropped my defenses. I might have a basic understanding of European history or economics. More abstractly, I might feel I had truly been somewhere, open and porous and hungry to learn. Because being a student was an enviable identity and one I can only reclaim by attending community college late in life for a bookmaking class or something.
”
”
Lena Dunham (Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned")
“
Il était une fois,” he will say, before sliding into stories of palaces and kings, of gold and glamour, of masquerade balls and cities full of splendor. Once upon a time. This is how the story starts.
”
”
Victoria Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made Americans a nation of fans, moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the “herd,” and make it more and more difficult for him to accept the banality of everyday existence.
”
”
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
“
So, who asked you to come?'
'Nobody.'
'[...] So you're telling me that you rang the bell on the off-chance that a regular glamour-puss like me might be at home?'
'That just about sums it up.'
'You're a lucky man
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Life for Sale)
“
Anything that just adds information you can't use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there's too much of everything of this kind, that's come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven't got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn't give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spent forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.
”
”
Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March)
“
The common room was messy, and this time it was not glamoured. His father had an overwhelming collection of things. There were piles of books, heaps of loose papers, waterlogged scrolls from another era set in haphazard stacks. Five pairs of fancy mainland boots with laces, hardly worn, and a jacket the color of fire, lined with plaid. Jars of golden pins, a jewelry box that held his mother’s abandoned pearls. A map of the realm pegged to the floor, because the walls were already crowded with drawings of musty tapestries and a chart of the northern constellations. All were possessions from Graeme’s former life, when he had been the ambassador to the mainland.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1))
“
Amadora was never far from her understanding of women, glamour, or the fine line between elegant and camp, vulgar and vibrant, life and dreams. ... Color, she believed, was feminine. She said that women were masters of color, evidenced in changing their hair color, using eye shadow, mascara, powder, rouge, lipstick. You could see it in their jewelry- silvers and golds, gems, stones, pearls of every hue. It was in their clothing, from what they slept in to what they danced in. Their shoes. Their purses. Ribbons, barrettes, clips, and tiaras. Veils. All this color to enhance their sex appeal, while men, she felt, were ill-equipped to handle color with the same ease.
”
”
Whitney Otto (Eight Girls Taking Pictures)
“
The Loneliness of the Military Historian
Confess: it's my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If I roll my eyes and mutter,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.
In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or,having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
There are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons,lovers and so forth.
All the killed children.
Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.
In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder,
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
The come back loaded with splendour.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air.
A swift cut to the horse's neck
and a hunk of armour crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake, I know better.
Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that could be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right -
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.
It's no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.
In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men's bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel Bible
for a souvenir.
I'm just as human as you.
But it's no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House: Poems)
“
What grubworms women are to crawl on their bellies through colorless marriages! Marriage was created not to be a background but to need one. Mine is going to be outstanding. It can't, shan't be the setting--it's going to be the performance, the live, lovely, glamourous performance, and the world shall be the scenery. I refuse to dedicate my life to posterity. Surely one owes as much to the current generation as to one's unwanted children. What a fate--to grow rotund and unseemly, to lose my self-love, to think in terms of milk, oatmeal, nurse, diapers…. Dear dream children, how much more beautiful you are, dazzling little creatures who flutter (all dream children must flutter) on golden, golden wings-- --
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
Mathilde was there in the dawn, this perfect girl as if made to his specifications. [A different life, had Lotto listened to the terror: no glory, no plays; peace, ease, and money. No glamour; children. Which life was better? Not for us to say.]
”
”
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
“
He had envisioned each contour and line of her face, the spellbinding individuality of personal detail. Here was a woman who had lived, and that life had been kind and good. And within that goodness lay true glamour, which was far more than the sum of ephemeral, physical parts. That was why, even attired in an unpretentious house dress, her forty-eight-year-old face scarcely made up, Molly was glamorous in a way that put in the shade women half her age and on the cover of fashion magazines.
”
”
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
“
When I see my wife’s eyes, I see beauty.
When I see my wife’s lips, I see charm.
When I see my wife’s nose, I see elegance.
When I see my wife’s face, I see dignity.
When I see my wife’s neck, I see grace.
When I see my wife’s hands, I see strength.
When I see my wife’s feet, I see glamour.
When I see my wife’s hips, I see majesty.
When I see my wife’s mind, I see reason.
When I see my wife’s heart, I see passion.
When I see my wife’s soul, I see devotion.
When I see my wife’s life, I see love.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Of course, everyone knew that Heaven was incomparably superior, but to Neil it had always seemed too remote to consider, like wealth or fame or glamour. For people like him, Hell was where you went when you died, and he saw no point in restructuring his life in hopes of avoiding that.
”
”
Ted Chiang
“
Stop glamorizing being busy. A hamster on a wheel is busy—where does it get him? I had grander ambitions. I resolved to stop doing whatever came up, whatever highly visible activity created a false aura of productivity and glamour, and instead to focus on being effective. That shift made all the difference.
”
”
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
“
That is when the commitment to change would be put to the test: when the cameras are gone and the reporters are gone and the glamour disappears and the tedium sets in—the crushing tedium. That is when you realize, in your solitary moments, how much of your life you will have to sacrifice to change the world.
”
”
Dave Eggers (The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012)
“
My last words about Jim shall be few. I affirm he had achieved greatness; but the thing would be dwarfed in the telling, or rather in the hearing. Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust but your minds. I could be eloquent were I not afraid you fellows had starved your imaginations to feed your bodies. I do not mean to be offensive; it is respectable to have no illusions — and safe — and profitable — and dull. Yet you, too, in your time must have known the intensity of life, that light of glamour created in the shock of trifles, as amazing as the glow of sparks struck from a cold stone — and as short-lived, alas!
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)
“
But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!... A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—good-bye!—Night—Good-bye...!”
He drank.
“Ah! The good old time—the good old time. Youth and the sea. Glamour and the sea! The good, strong sea, the salt, bitter sea, that could whisper to you and roar at you and knock your breath out of you.”
He drank again.
“By all that’s wonderful, it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?”
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Youth, a Narrative)
“
as Glamour editor Emma Rosenblum, who recently turned thirty, says: “We’re all on different time lines and need to realize that life isn’t a race. It’s more like one of those huge celebrity walkathons, where everyone’s ambling along at her own pace, wearing a really dorky hat and lots of sunblock.” By thirty, you should be moving at your own speed.
”
”
Pamela Redmond Satran (30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She's 30)
“
I thought if I knew more my problem would be simplified, and maybe I should complete my formal education. But since I’ve been working for Robey I have reached the conclusion that I couldn’t utilize even ten percent of what I already knew. I’ll give you an example. I read about King Arthur’s Round Table when I was a kid, but what am I ever going to do about it? My heart was touched by sacrifice and pure attempts, so what should I do? Or take the Gospels. How are you supposed to put them to use? Why, they’re not utilizable! And then you go and pile on top of that more advice and information. Anything that just adds information that you can’t use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there’s too much of everything of this kind, that’s come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven’t got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn’t give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spend forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all great experience would only take place within the walls of his being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It’s better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls.
”
”
Saul Bellow
“
Her siblings were out there seeing the world while Kit was still slinging crab cakes. She wanted some of the glory, too. Some of the glamour of Nina’s life, some of the thrill of Jay’s and Hud’s. She had spent so much of her childhood following them all into the water. But she suspected that even if none of them had ever picked up a surfboard, she still would have.
”
”
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising)
“
As children and into our tumultuous teen years, we feel our way through the world. We may be told our intuition is wrong by peers and family. We act on our intuition and are quieted, shushed, or made fun of. In abusive situations, children raise their voice in objection and are silenced by adults who supposedly know better. Our childhood intuition is stuffed down, ignored or suppressed. When you lie to a child, you send the message that their intuition is worthless and unreliable. This same child grows into adulthood questioning and doubting themselves. One of the most empowering things you can do is start to heal, trust and cultivate your intuition. You have the ability to reignite that candle inside yourself. You can reclaim your intuitive facilities. To do so is your birthright.
”
”
Sasha Graham (Tarot Diva: Ignite Your Intuition Glamourize Your Life Unleash Your Fabulousity!)
“
Without comfort or glamour, this life did not permit any disguise. There one was compelled to face one's own true self. In keeping with the surroundings, the friars tended to become sparing in words and gestures. Feelings, too, were assuaged and became more simple─not by dint of reading or inner search, but through a holy and harsh obedience to those things which poverty demands when it is accepted in all its right.
”
”
Eloi Leclerc (Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi, The)
“
lifeboat, and I nearly died of envy. I absolutely longed to get torpedoed.” “As long as you got away with some good shots of it?” “Which would then make the cover of LIFE, yes. That’s exactly how the fantasy went. Then maybe I’d marry Ernest Hemingway and live a life of action and glamour.” Jordan paused, as a connection drifted into place. The journalists and photographers she’d idolized, all dash and danger and war zones,
”
”
Kate Quinn (The Huntress)
“
She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her the in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover’s lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one’s imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them:
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray (Everyman S))
“
Perhaps men rely on war, like politics, to give them a sense of importance they lack without it; and the possibility of violence and destruction sheds a glamour on the household life which they otherwise hold in contempt. Women, I think, not needing the self-importance and not sharing the contempt, often fail to understand the virtue and necessity of warfare; but they may be caught in the glamour, and they love the beauty of courage.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin (Powers (Annals of the Western Shore, #3))
“
Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
“
Even yet I do not know why the ocean holds such a fascination for me. But then, perhaps none of us can solve those things—they exist in defiance of all explanation. There are men, and wise men, who do not like the sea and its lapping surf on yellow shores; and they think us strange who love the mystery of the ancient and unending deep. Yet for me there is a haunting and inscrutable glamour in all the ocean's moods. It is in the melancholy silver foam beneath the moon's waxen corpse; it hovers over the silent and eternal waves that beat on naked shores; it is there when all is lifeless save for unknown shapes that glide through sombre depths. And when I behold the awesome billows surging in endless strength, there comes upon me an ecstasy akin to fear; so that I must abase myself before this mightiness, that I may not hate the clotted waters and their overwhelming beauty. Vast and lonely is the ocean, and even as all things came from it, so shall they return thereto. In the shrouded depths of time none shall reign upon the earth, nor shall any motion be, save in the eternal waters. And these shall beat on dark shores in thunderous foam, though none shall remain in that dying world to watch the cold light of the enfeebled moon playing on the swirling tides and coarse-grained sand. On the deep's margin shall rest only a stagnant foam, gathering about the shells and bones of perished shapes that dwelt within the waters. Silent, flabby things will toss and roll along empty shores, their sluggish life extinct. Then all shall be dark, for at last even the white moon on the distant waves shall wink out. Nothing shall be left, neither above nor below the sombre waters. And until that last millennium, and beyond the perishing of all other things, the sea will thunder and toss throughout the dismal night.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection)
“
He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had been deliberating upon death — confound him! He had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels)
“
To be free to communicate without consequence—is that ever a possibility? I want to say, “I don’t want you to have feelings about my feelings.” I want to be heard without consequence because to be heard is such a novelty. If someone asks while looking me straight in the eye, I slither away. Even though we are looking at each other, I am still hiding. My dark eyes are good for that. The feelings on the tip of my tongue have no shape; they’re listless, always trying to sneak up in a moment of poignancy. Sometimes what I want to say is “I want you to be mine!” Sometimes it is “I feel trapped!” Sometimes it is “I resigned myself to a fate I thought I wanted, but now I don’t!”
But I have yearnings, that’s true. I make choices. I take action. That is simply how I navigate. But isn’t it who I am who goes out into the world? Do those few lonely moments when I return inward, away from noise and glamour, really count?
”
”
Marlowe Granados (Happy Hour)
“
Addie's father told her so many stories of Paris. Made it sound like a place of glamour and gold, rich with magic and dreams waiting to be uncovered. Now she wonders if he ever saw it, or if the city was nothing but a name, an easy backdrop for princes and knights, adventures and queens.
They have bled together in her mind, those stories, become less a picture than a palette, a tone. Perhaps the city was less splendid. Perhaps there were shadows mixed in with the light.
”
”
Victoria Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
In America, organized athletics teach militarism, authoritarianism
, racism, and sexism, thereby perpetuating the
"false consciousness" of the masses. Sports serve as an "opiate" of
the people, diverting the masses from their real problems with a
"dream world" of glamour and excitement. They promote sexual
-rivalry among males-with "vestal virgins" leading the cheers
from the sidelines-and thus prevent the proletariat from achieving
revolutionary solidarity in the face of its oppressors.
”
”
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
“
I was standing alone, at bank of a river
Singing a song of a dishearten seraph
Wind blows throw me, wild and cold
Freezing my eyes to capture the knock
I was staring at a glimpse straight to my sight
Ignoring the glamour and beauty of life
I saw someone in the blurred flight
Circling over me to focus the light
My mind become brighter and so am I
Oh! He was there for so long I find
I was never as solo as my night
I have a perfect one to be on my side
I was once weak and disappointed by my journey
I was angry and mad on my unfaithful company
I tried hard to be stronger and tougher than I mean
And now I am determined and full of virtuous deeds
I was bored of hectic normal life of mine
And couldn’t find anyone to guide on my line
I alone discovered what I meant to be
My talents, my path and my desired needs
I am ready to face the world that I've known
To uncover those skills I learned on my own
To make a place of acts, not of just words
A place of liberty and love to be heard
”
”
Iqra Iqbal
“
I stalked into the moonlit garden and lost myself in its labyrinth of hedges and flower beds.
I didn't care where I was going. After a while, I paused in the rose garden. The moonlight stained the red petals a deep purple and cast a silvery sheen on the white blooms.
'My father had this garden planted for my mother,' Tamlin said from behind me. I didn't bother to face him. I dug my nails into my palms as he stopped by my side. 'It was a mating present.'
I stared the flowers without seeing anything. The flowers I'd painted on the table at home were probably crumbling or gone by now. Nesta might have even scraped them off.
My nails pricked the skin of my palms. Tamlin providing for them or no, glamouring their memories or no, I'd been... erased from their lives. Forgotten. I'd let him erase me. He'd offered me paints and the space and time to practice; he'd shown me pools of starlight; he'd saved my life like some kind of feral knight in a legend, and I'd gulped it down like faerie wine.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
“
This essay is not a protest against selfishness, which, well done, can be a beautiful thing. There is nothing I envy, and appreciate, so much as a life led with genuinely unconscious, uncomplicated self-absorption. It’s a sort of karmic performance art. Isn’t that quality why some people so love observing cats? And I do not begrudge my fellow travelers’ enthusiasm for glamour; there’s nothing I like more. The right dress worn by the right starlet on Oscar night probably does as much to feed the soul as a perfect haiku.
”
”
Paul Rogat Loeb (The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear)
“
The economic boom that followed World War II had made them richer than their parents. Instead of a comfortable life with a husband they'd known since high school, they craved glamour and romance. "We all learned from the movie stars," says Loretta, who married three times and now lives in Lake Worth, Florida. "New York then was like long black gloves and little hats, and you met your sweetheart in New York for a drink, kind of thing. It was like Sinatra and stuff like that. The songs had words, and you closed your eyes.
”
”
Pamela Druckerman
“
My friend has alluded to the “romantic glamour” with which I have sought to invest this case. Gentlemen, I have done nothing of the kind. I have merely shown you the background of “life” — that palpitating life which, believe me — whatever my friend may say — always lies behind the commission of a crime. Now gentlemen, we live in a highly, civilized age, and the sight of brutal violence disturbs us in a very strange way, even when we have no personal interest in the matter. But when we see it inflicted on a woman whom we love — what then?
”
”
John Galsworthy (Collected Works of John Galsworthy with the Foryste Saga (Delphi Classics))
“
There is one circumstance in which the extremity of do-gooders looks normal, and that is war. In wartime — or in a crisis so devastating that it resembles war, such as an earthquake or a hurricane — duty expands far beyond its peacetime boundaries ... In war, what in ordinary times would be thought weirdly zealous becomes expected ... People respond to this new moral regime in different ways: some suffer under the tension of moral extremity and long for the forgiving looseness of ordinary life; others feel it was the time when they were most vividly alive, in comparison with which the rest of life seems dull and lacking in purpose... in wartime, duty takes on the glamour of freedom, because duty becomes more exciting than ordinary liberty.
This is the difference between do-gooders and ordinary people: for do-gooders, it is always wartime. They always feel themselves responsible for strangers — they always feel that strangers, like compatriots in war, are their own people. They know that there are always those as urgently in need as the victims of battle, and they consider themselves conscripted by duty.
”
”
Larissa MacFarquhar (Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help)
“
I feel more like I am in the Middle East than in any recognizable part of Europe. There really are wild dogs everywhere, and they cry all night long. There is a least a miserable, bohemian glamour to the life here. There are a ton of outdoor cafes with people smoking and drinking rakia. Gypsies leading dancing bears around on leashes, attractive people, glue-sniffing teenage gangs - contradictions everywhere. My email is hard-wired into a big, gaping hole in the apartment wall and ants and little spiders keep crawling out. I am trying to keep an open mind.
”
”
Annie Ward (The Making of June)
“
There is such magnificent vagueness in the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own and only reward. What we get — well, we won’t talk of that; but can one of us restrain a smile? In no other kind of life is the illusion more wide of reality — in no other is the beginning all illusion — the disenchantment more swift — the subjugation more complete. Hadn’t we all commenced with the same desire, ended with the same knowledge, carried the memory of the same cherished glamour through the sordid days of imprecation?
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Joseph Conrad: The Complete Novels)
“
It pleases him how Spell is how the word is made but also, in the hands of the magician, how the world is changed. One letter separates Word from World, and that letter is like the number one, or an 'I', or a shaft of light between almost closed curtains. There is an old letter called a thorn, which jags and tears at the throat as it's uttered. Later he learns that Grammar and Glamour share the same deeper root, which is further magic, and there can be neither magic without that root, nor plant. He's lost in it like Chid in Child, or God reversed into Dog. Somewhere inside him is a colon. A sentence can last for life.
”
”
Charles Lambert (With a Zero at its Heart)
“
seduced by the illusion that money and glamour would change her life, distracting her from the reality of what was happening in the world around her. As time went by, though, and the mood in the city around her changed, Claire felt a change happening within herself as well. Her heart had begun to mend – as hearts will do if they are given enough exposure to time and the kindness of good friends – and as it mended, it transformed into something new. The hard lesson that she’d learned had forced her to reflect on the person she really was, and on the person she wanted to be, and she discovered a new core of resolve within herself.
”
”
Fiona Valpy (The Dressmaker's Gift)
“
There was a kindliness about intoxication - there was that indescribable gloss and glamour it gave, like the memories of ephemeral and faded evenings. After a few high-balls there was magic in the tall glowing Arabian night of the Bush Terminal Building - its summit a peak of sheer grandeur, gold and dreaming against the inaccessible sky. And Wall Street, the crass, the banal - again it was a triumph of gold, a gorgeous sentient spectacle; it was where the great kings kept the moment for their wars...
...The fruit of youth, or the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
I have spoken of reinventing marriage, of marriages achieving their rebirth in the middle age of the partners. This phenomenon has been called the 'comedy of remarriage' by Stanley Cavell, whose Pursuits of Happiness, a film book, is perhaps the best marriage manual ever published. One must, however, translate his formulation from the language of Hollywood, in which he developed it, into the language of middle age: less glamour, less supple youth, less fantasyland. Cavell writes specifically of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s in which couples -- one partner is often the dazzling Cary Grant -- learn to value each other, to educate themselves in equality, to remarry. Cavell recognizes that the actresses in these movie -- often the dazzling Katherine Hepburn -- are what made them possible. If read not as an account of beautiful people in hilarious situations, but as a deeply philosophical discussion of marriage, his book contains what are almost aphorisms of marital achievement. For example: ....'[The romance of remarriage] poses a structure in which we are permanently in doubt who the hero is, that is, whether it is the male or female who is the active partner, which of them is in quest, who is following whom.'
Cary grant & Katherine Hepburn "Above all, despite the sexual attractiveness of the actors in the movies he discusses, Cavell knows that sexuality is not the ultimate secret in these marriage: 'in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. Here is the reason that these relationships strike us as having the quality of friendship, a further factor in their exhilaration for us.'
"He is wise enough, moreover, to emphasize 'the mystery of marriage by finding that neither law nor sexuality (nor, by implication, progeny) is sufficient to ensure true marriage and suggesting that what provides legitimacy is the mutual willingness for remarriage, for a sort of continuous affirmation. Remarriage, hence marriage, is, whatever else it is, an intellectual undertaking.
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Carolyn G. Heilbrun (Writing a Woman's Life)
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We are all children in the dark, finding our way together to the light. Many define the light before the light is reached and fix on their defining. There in the dark they clamor for others to embrace their defining, demanding its elevation, and giving it names they claim as sacred. But all are still in the dark, distracted by so many claims to the one way out, all unseen, and fix their take with fear and penalty if not likewise elevated as the one and only way. Whereas I leave it open to what the opening will reveal. Layered writing is my tool to enable the opening to widen, and it is our consciousness, not our physical form that has trouble squeezing through the passageway to the way out of the dark, while so many call out in the dark they know the way, rather than allowing the way to reveal itself. Watch the silent ones, calm in demeanor, who are experienced at leaving ways open, in order to find it. They listen and feel their way, in different ways and on different levels. These have no following to create the clamor, nor seek the glamour the clamor brings. They are simply wise because they leave it open to what the opening may become, rather than what they have been fed from birth, they birth in solitude what might be, allowing layers of ways to formulate and in that way follow in their minds and hearts a revealed and reveled light yet unseen.
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Tom Althouse
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Flying fighters is simply an assignment, but being a fighter pilot isn’t. Being a fighter pilot is a state-of-mind. It’s an attitude toward your job, toward the mission, toward the way you live your life. You don’t have to fly fighters to be a fighter pilot. You’ve simply got to have the attitude. There are fighter pilots driving B-52s and fighter pilots hauling trash. They may not have the flash and glamour, but they are the best they can possibly be at the job they’ve got to do. There are pilots who fly fighters and there are fighter pilots. You guys want to be fighter pilots, not pilots flying fighters. Look for the difference.” This is profound stuff for the Korat bar. It makes sense to me. I’ve thought a lot about
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Ed Rasimus (When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam)
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One year after I moved out of my house and my marriage, I wrote an essay for Glamour titled “I’m a Great Cook. Now That I’m Divorced, I’m Never Making Dinner for a Man Again.” The article outlined how for eleven years I’d cooked meals for my husband and then for our children. I had liked cooking. I loved it even. I thought of food as my offerings of love. But as our marriage dragged on, cooking became less of a joy and more of an obligation. When my marriage ended, I stopped cooking. “I stopped cooking because I wanted to feel as unencumbered as man walking through the door of his home with the expectation that something had been done for him,” I wrote. “I wanted to be free of cutting coupons and rolling dough and worrying about dinner times and feeding. I wanted to rest.
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Lyz Lenz (This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life)
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In a society in which the dream of success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have nothing against which to measure their achievements except the achievements of others. Self-approval depends on public recognition and acclaim, and the quality of this approval has undergone important changes in its own right. The good opinion of friends and neighbors, which formerly informed a man that he had lived a useful life, rested on appreciation of his accomplishments. Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions but their personal attributes. They wish to be not so much esteemed as admired. They crave not fame but the glamour and excitement of celebrity. They want to be envied rather than respected. Pride and acquisitiveness, the sins of an ascendant capitalism, have given way to vanity.
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Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
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He was fat. He was not very good looking. He didn’t play up to the press. But he tried. Boy did he try. I could still see him stretching from first to third on a single to center and belly-whopping into the bag, invariably safe. I related to Thurman. I had been a catcher in Little League, I was chunky, I played tough, and I too was pretty ugly. I always took Thurm’s side in arguments, and somehow I could feel what he was going through in that Yankee dugout, sensing his fear and dislike for Reggie (Jackson). I understood Thurman Munson’s terribly private ordeal, trying to simply play ball without wanting to be on the cover of a magazine, avoiding the fanfare in a town that breathes glamour and ignores dedication. His death signifies to me how difficult life really is, how hard it is to do what you want, to love and maintain your family and still do your job. The American dream drags onward….
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Stewart J. Zully (My Life in Yankee Stadium: 40 Years As a Vendor and Other Tales of Growing Up Somewhat Sane in The Bronx)
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I have known its fascination since: I have seen the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of brown nations, where a stealthy Nemesis lies in wait, pursues, overtakes so many of the conquering race, who are proud of their wisdom, of their knowledge, of their strength. But for me all the East is contained in that vision of my youth. It is all in that moment when I opened my young eyes on it. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea—and I was young—and I saw it looking at me. And this is all that is left of it! Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour—of youth!... A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and—good-bye!—Night—Good-bye...!”
He drank.
“Ah! The good old time—the good old time. Youth and the sea. Glamour and the sea! The good, strong sea, the salt, bitter sea, that could whisper to you and roar at you and knock your breath out of you.”
He drank again.
“By all that’s wonderful, it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself—or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here—you all had something out of life: money, love—whatever one gets on shore—and, tell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks—and sometimes a chance to feel your strength—that only—what you all regret?”
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.
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Joseph Conrad (Youth, a Narrative)
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The separation from youth has even taken away the golden glamour of Nature, and the future appears hopeless and empty. But what robs Nature of its glamour, and life of its joy, is the habit of looking back for something that used to be outside, instead of looking inside, into the depths of the depressive state. This looking back leads to regression and is the first step along that path. Regression is also an involuntary introversion in so far as the past is an object of memory and therefore a psychic content, an endopsychic factor. It is a relapse into the past caused by a depression in the present. Depression should therefore be regarded as an unconscious compensation whose content must be made conscious if it is to be fully effective. This can only be done by consciously regressing along with the depressive tendency and integrating the memories so activated into the conscious mind—which was what the depression was aiming at in the first place.
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C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 5: Symbols of Transformation (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
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the feeling that binds a man to a child. He was there before me, believing that age and wisdom can find a remedy against the pain of truth, giving me a glimpse of himself as a young fellow in a scrape that is the very devil of a scrape, the sort of scrape greybeards wag at solemnly while they hide a smile. And he had been deliberating upon death — confound him! He had found that to meditate about because he thought he had saved his life, while all its glamour had gone with the ship in the night. What more natural! It was tragic enough and funny enough in all conscience to call aloud for compassion, and in what was I better than the rest of us to refuse him my pity? And even as I looked at him the mists rolled into the rent, and his voice spoke — ‘“I was so lost, you know. It was the sort of thing one does not expect to happen to one. It was not like a fight, for instance.” ‘“It was not,” I admitted. He appeared changed, as if he had suddenly matured.
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Joseph Conrad (Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Conrad)
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But it would be vain to attempt to describe the struggle that followed: that domestic tragedy would have to be told at length if told at all, and it included various tragedies; not only the subjugation of poor Carry, the profanation of her life, and cruel rending of her heart, but such a gradual enlightening and clearing away of all the lovely prejudices and prepossessions of affection from the eyes of Lady Lindores, as was almost as cruel. The end of it was, that one of these poor women, broken in heart and spirit, forced into a marriage she hated, and feeling herself outraged and degraded, began her life in bitterness and misery, with a pretence of splendor and success and good-fortune which made the real state of affairs still more deplorable; and the other, feeling all the beauty of her life gone from her, her eyes disenchanted, a pitiless, cold day-light revealing every angle once hid by the glamour of love and tender fancy, began a sort of second existence alone. If
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Mrs. Oliphant (The Ladies Lindores)
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I threw my binder of materials down on our apartment’s floral couch. “Seriously, pink is a neutral color! And what’s elegant about navy blue? No one ever says, ‘Hey, you know what’s elegant? The Navy!’”
Arianna rolled her dead guys. “There is nothing neutral about pink. They need a color that looks good as a background to any shade of dress.”
“What color clashes with pink?”
“Orange?”
“Well, if anyone shows up in an orange dress, she deserves to clash. Yuck.”
“Chill out. You can do a lot with navy.”
I sank down into the couch next to her. “I guess. I could do navy with silver accents. Stars?”
“Yawn.”
“Snowflakes?”
“Gee, now you’re getting creative for a winter formal.”
I ignored her tone, as usual. I was just glad she was here. She’d been gone a lot lately. “Hmm . . . maybe something softer. Like a water and mist theme?” I asked.
“I . . . actually kind of like that.”
“Wanna help me with the sketches?”
She leaned forward and turned on Easton Heights. “Decorating a stupid dance is all yours. You’re the one who decided to be more involved in your ‘normal life.’ I’d prefer to be sleeping six feet under.”
“This is probably a bad time to mention I also might have signed up to help with costumes for the spring play. And since I know nothing about sewing, I kind of maybe signed you up as a volunteer aide.”
She sighed, running one glamoured corpse hand through her spiky red and black hair. “I am going to kill you in your sleep.”
“As long as it doesn’t hurt.”
We hummed along to the opening theme, which ended when the door banged open and my boyfriend walked through, shrugging out of his coat and beaming as he dropped a duffel bag. “Free! What did I miss?” Lend asked, his cheeks rosy from the cold and his smile lighting up his watery eyes beneath his dark glamour ones.
“I lost the vote on color schemes for the dance, the last episode of Easton Heights before they go into reruns is back on in three minutes, and Arianna is going to murder me in my sleep.”
“As long as it doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s what I said!
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Kiersten White (Endlessly (Paranormalcy, #3))
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As associate beauty editor, it was my job to represent the magazine at get-togethers like these: to rub elbows and be pleasant and professional. Seriously, it was the easiest gig in the world! And yet it wasn’t always so easy for me. “I’ll take one of those.” I stopped a dude with a tray of champagne. “Thanks, honey.” “Hi, Cat!” a beauty publicist with a clipboard said. “Thanks so much for coming!” “Good to see you,” I lied. Thunder clapped outside. “The gang’s over there,” she said. The publicist was referring to the usual group of beauty editors—my colleagues. They were from every title you’ve ever heard of: Teen Vogue, Glamour, Elle, Vogue, W, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, O, Shape, Self. I attended events alongside them every day, and yet I never felt like I belonged. I’d spent years trying to get into their world: interning, studying mastheads, interviewing all over town. But now that I was one of them, I felt defective—self-conscious and out of place in the dreamy career I’d worked so hard for, and unable to connect with these chic women I’d idolized.
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Cat Marnell (How to Murder Your Life)
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And as I reached the ticket attendant myself, I heard the Prince de Saxe (if this is who he really was) say with a smile: “I don’t know which number. My cousin told me I need only ask for her box.” He may well have been the Prince de Saxe; perhaps it was the Duchesse de Guermantes (and if it was, I would be able to see her living out one of the moments of her unimaginable life in her cousin’s box) that he saw in his mind’s eye when he used the words “my cousin told me I need only ask for her box,” and this feeling was so strong that his distinctive smiling gaze and the utter simplicity of his words caressed my heart (far more than any abstract reverie would have done) with the alternate intuitions of a possible happiness and a vague glamour. At least, by uttering these words to the ticket attendant, he opened up an ordinary evening in my everyday life to the possibility of entry into a new world: the corridor to which he was directed after he had mentioned the word “box” and into which he now turned was damp and cracked and seemed to lead to marine grottoes, to the mythological realm of the water nymphs.
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Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
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People talk about Eisenhower's golden age.... It all happened without me. What is the vice presidency? The Constitution dictates only two duties: casting the deciding vote if the Senate is deadlocked and replacing the president if he dies or is impeached. apart from waiting for those two things to happen, you made the rest up and were duly forgotten by history. The exception being Aaron Burr, who shot someone, decisively lowering the bar for the rest of us.
What I remember is small pieces of the world: the West Wing, the insides of planes and hotel lobbies and conference rooms. My life was dinners with Pat and the children; airplane flights; placeholder meetings with foreign dignitaries during which I nodded and reminded them I had no power to make and agreement but would speak to the president. Stomach-turning formal breakfasts, speeches to party elders and tradesmen. I opened factories in Detroit and Akron, breathing the various stinks of canneries, slaughterhouses, or rubber plans and bestowing that vice presidential combination of glamour, flattery, and the tacit reminder that they didn't quite rate a visit from the top guy.
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Austin Grossman (Crooked)
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In good truth he had started in London with some vague idea that as his life in it would not be of long continuance, the pace at which he elected to travel would be of little consequence; but the years since his first entry into the Metropolis were now piled one on top of another, his youth was behind him, his chances of longevity, spite of the way he had striven to injure his constitution, quite as good as ever. He had come to that period of existence, to that narrow strip of tableland, whence the ascent of youth and the descent of age are equally discernible - when, simply because he has lived for so many years, it strikes a man as possible he may have to live for just as many more, with the ability for hard work gone, with the boon companions scattered, with the capacity for enjoying convivial meetings a mere memory, with small means perhaps, with no bright hopes, with the pomp and the circumstance and the fairy carriages, and the glamour which youth flings over earthly objects, faded away like the pageant of yesterday, while the dreary ceremony of living has to be gone through today and tomorrow and the morrow after, as though the gay cavalcade and the martial music, and the glittering helmets and the prancing steeds were still accompanying the wayfarer to his journey's end.
Ah! my friends, there comes a moment when we must all leave the coach with its four bright bays, its pleasant outside freight, its cheery company, its guard who blows the horn so merrily through villages and along lonely country roads.
Long before we reach that final stage, where the black business claims us for its own speecial property, we have to bid goodbye to all easy, thoughtless journeying and betake ourselves, with what zest we may, to traversing the common of reality. There is no royal road across it that ever I heard of. From the king on his throne to the laborer who vaguely imagines what manner of being a king is, we have all to tramp across that desert at one period of our lives, at all events; and that period is usually when, as I have said, a man starts to find the hopes, and the strength, and the buoyancy of youth left behind, while years and years of life lie stretching out before him.
The coach he has travelled by drops him here. There is no appeal, there is no help; therefore, let him take off his hat and wish the new passengers good speed without either envy or repining.
Behld, he has had his turn, and let whosoever will, mount on the box-seat of life again, and tip the coachman and handle the ribbons - he shall take that journey no more, no more for ever. ("The Banshee's Warning")
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Charlotte Riddell
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I went to the lectern to speak, I could barely contain my emotion. I glanced down at my prepared notes but suddenly had little interest in them. Looking up at the girls, I just began to talk, explaining that though I had come from far away, carrying this strange title of First Lady of the United States, I was more like them than they knew. That I, too, was from a working-class neighborhood, raised by a family of modest means and loving spirit, that I’d realized early on that school was where I could start defining myself—that an education was a thing worth working for, that it would help spring them forward in the world. At this point, I’d been First Lady for just over two months. In different moments, I’d felt overwhelmed by the pace, unworthy of the glamour, anxious about our children, and uncertain of my purpose. There are pieces of public life, of giving up one’s privacy to become a walking, talking symbol of a nation, that can seem specifically designed to strip away part of your identity. But here, finally, speaking to those girls, I felt something completely different and pure—an alignment of my old self with this new role. Are you good enough? Yes, you are, all of you. I told the students of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson that they’d touched my heart. I told them that they were precious, because they truly were.
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
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So I got lucky. But then again, it took me many hundreds of rejections to manage to find that luck.
I am sure there is a lesson n that somewhere.
Someone had taken a punt and had faith in me. I wouldn’t let them down, and I would be eternally grateful to them for giving me that chance to shine.
Once DLE were on board, a few other companies joined them. It’s funny how, once one person backs you, somehow other people feel more comfortable doing the same.
I guess most people don’t like to trailblaze.
So before I knew it, suddenly, from nothing, I had the required funds for a place on the team. (In fact I was about £600 short, but Dad helped me out on that one, and refused to hear anything about ever being paid back. Great man.)
The dream of an attempt on Everest was now about to become a reality.
So many people over the years have asked me how to get sponsorship, but there is only one magic ingredient. Action. You just have to keep going.
Then keep going some more.
Our dreams are just wishes, if we never follow them through with action. And in life, you have got to be able to light your own fire.
The reality of planning big expeditions is often tedious and frustrating. There is no glamour in yet another potential sponsor’s rejection letter, and I have often felt my own internal fire flickering close to snuff point.
Action is what keeps it alight.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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A writer spinning out the manuscript of a book is like a banker generating debts he knows can never be repaid. From one perspective it’s a waste of time, ‘the deliberate pouring of water through a sieve’, in Dostoyevsky’s phrase. The effort will not be repaid. From another, however, it’s an incredibly important process in which cultural charisma – intellectual glamour – is generated via a mechanism of guilt. A bookshelf is a glamorous row of reproaches. We know that there are books we ought to read, and ought to have read, because they are said to be wonderful and capable of making us better people. They sit there on the shelf, seeming to watch us, waiting for our best moment of spiritual preparedness. Yet we fail to read them. As a result we feel guilty. The books seem to say to us: – You are trivial and lazy. Your life could be so much richer and more creative, yet you fritter away your attention on television and Facebook, or idle gossip, or sports, or Olafur Eliasson installations. This guilt is much more wonderful than the contents of the books themselves could ever be, and spiritually much more uplifting. The unreadness of books outstrips their readness in beauty and in utility. It’s tremendously important to believe that there are heights which we’ve failed to attain, mountains we can glimpse in the distance but not climb. It’s almost like believing in heaven. To quote Kafka once more: Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.
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Momus (HERR F)
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10 Watch EQ at the Movies Hollywood. It’s the entertainment capital of the world known for glitz, glamour, and celebrity. Believe it or not, Hollywood is also a hotbed of EQ, ripe for building your social awareness skills. After all, art imitates life, right? Movies are an abundant source of EQ skills in action, demonstrating behaviors to emulate or completely avoid. Great actors are masters at evoking real emotion in themselves; as their characters are scripted to do outrageous and obvious things, it’s easy to observe the cues and emotions on-screen. To build social awareness skills, you need to practice being aware of what’s happening with other people; it doesn’t matter if you practice using a box office hero or a real person. When you watch a movie to observe social cues, you’re practicing social awareness. Plus, since you are not living the situation, you’re not emotionally involved, and the distractions are limited. You can use your mental energy to observe the characters instead of dealing with your own life. This month, make it a point to watch two movies specifically to observe the character interactions, relationships, and conflicts. Look for body language clues to figure out how each character is feeling and observe how the characters handle the conflicts. As more information about the characters unfold, rewind and watch past moments to spot clues you may have missed the first time. Believe it or not, watching movies from the land of make-believe is one of the most useful and entertaining ways to practice your social awareness skills for the real world.
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Travis Bradberry (Emotional Intelligence 2.0)
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Schiller’s formula could be carried out only by applying a ruthless power standpoint, with never a scruple about justice for the object nor any conscientious examination of its own competence. Only under such conditions, which Schiller certainly never contemplated, could the inferior function participate in life. In this way the archaic elements, naïve and unconscious and decked in the glamour of mighty words and fair gestures, also came bursting through and helped to build our present “civilization,” concerning the nature of which humanity is at this moment in some measure of disagreement. The archaic power instinct, hitherto hidden behind the façade of civilized living, finally came to the surface in its true colours, and proved beyond question that we are “still barbarians.” For it should not be forgotten that, in the same measure as the conscious attitude may pride itself on a certain godlikeness by reason of its lofty and absolute standpoint, an unconscious attitude develops with a godlikeness oriented downwards to an archaic god whose nature is sensual and brutal. The enantiodromia of Heraclitus ensures that the time will come when this deus absconditus shall rise to the surface and press the God of our ideals to the wall. It is as though men at the close of the eighteenth century had not really seen what was taking place in Paris, but lingered on in an aesthetic, enthusiastic, or trifling attitude in order to delude themselves about the real meaning of that glimpse into the abysses of human nature. In that nether world is terror, And man shall not tempt the gods. Let him never yearn to see What they veil with night and horror!48
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C.G. Jung (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung))
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What a difference there is between possessing a woman with one’s body alone, because she is no more than a piece of flesh, and possessing the girl one used to see on the beach with her friends on certain days, without even knowing why it was on those days and not on others, so that one trembled to think one might not see her again. Life had been so kind as to reveal the whole extent of this young girl’s life, had lent first one optical instrument, then another, to see her with, and then added to carnal desire the accompaniment, multiplying and diversifying it, of other desires, more spiritual and less easily satisfied, which lie inert and unaffected when it is merely a question of the conquest of a piece of flesh, but which, when they want to gain possession of a whole field of memories from which they have felt nostalgically exiled, surge up wildly around carnal desire, extend it, are unable to follow it to the fulfillment, the assimilation, impossible in the form in which it is sought, of an immaterial reality, but wait for this desire halfway and, the moment the memory of it returns, are there to escort it once more; to kiss, not the cheeks of the first woman who comes along—anonymous, devoid of mystery and glamour, however cool and fresh those cheeks may be—but those of which I had so long been dreaming, would be to know the taste, the savor, of a color I had so often contemplated. One sees a woman, a mere image in life’s scene, like Albertine silhouetted against the sea, and then it becomes possible to detach that image, bring it close, and gradually observe its volume, its colors, as though it had been placed behind the lenses of a stereoscope. For this reason, women who tend to be resistant and cannot be possessed at once, of whom indeed it is not immediately clear that they can ever be possessed at all, are the only interesting ones.
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Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
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Then Strathcona discussed literature. He paid his tribute to the "Fleurs de Mal" and the "Songs before Sunrise"; but most, he said, he owed to "the divine Oscar." This English poet of many poses and some vices the law had seized and flung into jail; and since the law is a thing so brutal and wicked that whoever is touched by it is made thereby a martyr and a hero, there had grown up quite a cult about the memory of "Oscar." All up-to-date poets imitated his style and his attitude to life; and so the most revolting of vices had the cloak of romance flung about them—were given long Greek and Latin names, and discussed with parade of learning as revivals of Hellenic ideals. The young men in Strathcona's set referred to each other as their "lovers"; and if one showed any perplexity over this, he was regarded, not with contempt—for it was not aesthetic to feel contempt—but with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, intended to annihilate. One must not forget, of course, that these young people were poets, and to that extent were protected from their own doctrines. They were interested, not in life, but in making pretty verses about life; there were some among them who lived as cheerful ascetics in garret rooms, and gave melodious expression to devilish emotions. But, on the other hand, for every poet, there were thousands who were not poets, but people to whom life was real. And these lived out the creed, and wrecked their lives; and with the aid of the poet's magic, the glamour of melody and the fire divine, they wrecked the lives with which they came into contact. The new generation of boys and girls were deriving their spiritual sustenance from the poetry of Baudelaire and Wilde; and rushing with the hot impulsiveness of youth into the dreadful traps which the traders in vice prepared for them. One's heart bled to see them, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, pursuing the hem of the Muse's robe in brothels and dens of infamy!
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Upton Sinclair (The Metropolis)
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My mum once told me that the bravest sailors weren’t the ones who sailed through the storm, but the ones who remained in port whilst it raged out at sea. I never really understood what she meant by that, until now. For seventeen years I succeeded in standing back and watching that storm wreak havoc, never once venturing into the expanse of the ocean like a large proportion of kids on my estate had done. Unlike me, they were drawn into the glamour and the notoriety of joining a gang. Some did it for the promise of a family unit that they didn’t have at home. Some did it because they were too weak or too vulnerable to say no, while others did it because they were bored. And some, like Eastern, joined out of sheer desperation. I chose to stay away. It’s true, I might’ve been the delinquent kid that everyone saw when they looked at me. I might’ve gotten into trouble with the law, but I refused to set sail into a storm that wasn’t of my own making. I refused to join a gang. The way I saw it, whatever trouble I got into was on my terms and not for some self-proclaimed gang leader with a skewed view of the world and their own set of rules. I never wanted to be beholden to anyone but myself, and above all else, I always wanted more out of life than the hand I’ve been dealt. Maybe it was my mother’s fault for filling my head with far-fetched stories, but I wanted what was on the other side of the storm. I wanted what lay far, far beyond the horizon. Deep down I’d craved the life my mum used to tell me about in her stories. It gave me something to focus on, to dream about, even if it wasn’t real. Ironic then, that I’m now a part of the life I worked so hard to avoid, trying to protect the people I love from falling victim to it. And all because my love for a makeshift family meant I couldn’t stand back and watch the storm anymore. I must set sail right into the heart of it because I love Eastern, Tracy and Braydon enough to do something about their situation. They might not be my blood, but they are my family and I won’t abandon them in a time of need. Pity the same couldn’t be said for my own parents.
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Bea Paige (Reject (Academy of Misfits, #2))
“
What a difference there is between possessing a woman with one’s body alone, because she is no more than a piece of flesh, and possessing the girl one used to see on the beach with her friends on certain days, without even knowing why it was on those days and not on others, so that one trembled to think one might not see her again. Life had been so kind as to reveal the whole extent of this young girl’s life, had lent first one optical instrument, then another, to see her with, and then added to carnal desire the accompaniment, multiplying and diversifying it, of other desires, more spiritual and less easily satisfied, which lie inert and unaffected when it is merely a question of the conquest of a piece of flesh, but which, when they want to gain possession of a whole field of memories from which they have felt nostalgically exiled, surge up wildly around carnal desire, extend it, are unable to follow it to the fulfillment, the assimilation, impossible in the form in which it is sought, of an immaterial reality, but wait for this desire halfway and, the moment the memory of it returns, are there to escort it once more; to kiss, not the cheeks of the first woman who comes along—anonymous, devoid of mystery and glamour, however cool and fresh those cheeks may be—but those of which I had so long been dreaming, would be to know the taste, the savor, of a color I had so often contemplated. One sees a woman, a mere image in life’s scene, like Albertine silhouetted against the sea, and then it becomes possible to detach that image, bring it close, and gradually observe its volume, its colors, as though it had been placed behind the lenses of a stereoscope. For this reason, women who tend to be resistant and cannot be possessed at once, of whom indeed it is not immediately clear that they can ever be possessed at all, are the only interesting ones. For to know them, to approach them, to conquer them is to make the human image vary in shape, in size, in relief, a lesson in relativity in the appreciation of a woman’s body, a joy to see anew when it has regained its slender outline against the backdrop of reality. Women who are first encountered in a brothel are of no interest, because they remain static.
”
”
Marcel Proust (The Guermantes Way (In Search of Lost Time, #3))
“
I miss Diana more than I can express. The world seems a colder place without her luminous presence. To had had Diana’s friendship, to have known her personally, has been a gift beyond comparison. She brought joy and pride and a touch of glamour to my life for years. I loved and admired her without reservation.
When Patrick recognized her picture on magazine covers, I thought how incredible it was that we actually knew the beautiful, famous Diana. Best of all, we knew she was even lovelier inside. I read her letters, feeling deeply touched that she continued to care for us. Seeing her in person--warm, unpretentious, and radiant--was a thrill that lasted a long, long time. It truly was, “like being brushed by angels’ wings,” as my friend at the funeral had said. Whoever would have thought when I called for a nanny so many years ago, that magic would enter my life.
My family and I watched her dazzling progress from a shy teenager to a multi-faceted and charismatic woman. She fulfilled her many roles so beautifully. Yet to me, Diana was a beloved friend, not the world-famous Princess of Wales. Behind the glamour, I saw the qualities I’d always admired in her--kindness, integrity, and grace in all she did.
Above all, Diana was born to be a mother. Showing affection was as natural to her as breathing. I saw her tender care for my young son. I know she was an utterly devoted mother to her own boys, giving them unconditional love and deriving her greatest joy in life from them.
I’ve wished so often that her life had been a fairytale, that Diana had been spared the pain and loneliness she suffered. But without the despair, she might not have developed the strength and humanity that reached out to people everywhere. Diana instinctively looked beyond her own problems to ease the pain and distress of others. She touched so many people in her short lifetime.
I never thought it would end this way--that she would die so young. I will always remember, as the last hymn faded into silence at her funeral, the solemn tread of the soldiers’ boots--so haunting, so final--as they carried her casket through the Abbey. I couldn’t bear that she was leaving forever.
For months now, I’ve searched for some solace in this tragedy. I hope that Diana’s untimely death and the worldwide mourning for her have silenced forever those who belittled her values and doubted her appeal. She rests peacefully now beyond reproach--young and beautiful.
Diana, you were greater than we realized.
We will never, never forget you.
”
”
Mary Robertson (The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales)
“
Charles Bean, the official historian of Australia’s part in World War I, was unusual in dealing closely with the deeds of the soldiers on the front line, and not just the plans and orders of their leaders. At the end of his account of the Gallipoli landing in the Official History, he asked what made the soldiers fight on. What motive sustained them? At the end of the second or third day of the Landing, when they had fought without sleep until the whole world seemed a dream, and they scarcely knew whether it was a world of reality or of delirium – and often, no doubt, it held something of both; when half of each battalion had been annihilated, and there seemed no prospect before any man except that of wounds or death in the most vile surroundings; when the dead lay three deep in the rifle-pits under the blue sky and the place was filled with stench and sickness, and reason had almost vanished – what was it then that carried each man on? It was not love of a fight. The Australian loved fighting better than most, but it is an occupation from which the glamour quickly wears. It was not hatred of the Turk. It is true that the men at this time hated their enemy for his supposed ill-treatment of the wounded – and the fact that, of the hundreds who lay out, only one wounded man survived in Turkish hands has justified their suspicions. But hatred was not the motive which inspired them. Nor was it purely patriotism, as it would have been had they fought on Australian soil. The love of country in Australians and New Zealanders was intense – how strong, they did not realise until they were far away from their home. Nor, in most cases was the motive their loyalty to the tie between Australia and Great Britain. Although, singly or combined, all these were powerful influences, they were not the chief. Nor was it the desire for fame that made them steer their course so straight in the hour of crucial trial. They knew too well the chance that their families, possibly even the men beside them, would never know how they died. Doubtless the weaker were swept on by the stronger. In every army which enters into battle there is a part which is dependent for its resolution upon the nearest strong man. If he endures, those around him will endure; if he turns, they turn; if he falls, they may become confused. But the Australian force contained more than its share of men who were masters of their own minds and decisions. What was the dominant motive that impelled them? It lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the sort of man who would give way when his mates were trusting to his firmness; to be the sort of man who would fail when the line, the whole force, and the allied cause required his endurance; to have made it necessary for another unit to do his own unit’s work; to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he had set his hand to a soldier’s task and had lacked the grit to carry it through – that was the prospect which these men could not face. Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood.
”
”
John Hirst (The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770)
“
Alis coughed from the shadows of the house, and I remembered to start walking, to look toward the dais-
At Tamlin.
The breath knocked from me, and it was an effort to keep going down the stairs, to keep going my knees from buckling. He was resplendent in a tunic of green and gold, a crown of burnished laurel leaves gleaming on his head. He'd loosened the grip on his glamour, letting that immortal light and beauty shine through- for me.
My vision narrowed on him, on my High Lord, his wide eyes glistening as I stepped onto the soft grass, white rose petals scattered down it-
And Red ones.
Like drops of blood amongst the white, red petals had been sprayed across the path ahead.
I forced my gaze up, to Tamlin, his shoulders back, head high.
So unaware of the true extent of how broken and dark I was inside. How unfit I was to be clothed in white when my hands were so filthy.
Everyone else was thinking it. They had to be.
Every step was too fast, propelling me toward the dais and Tamlin. And toward Ianthe, clothed in dark blue robes tonight, beaming beneath the hood and silver crown.
As if I were good- as if I hadn't murdered two of their kind.
I was a murderer and a liar.
A cluster of red petals loomed ahead- just like the Fae youth's blood had pooled at my feet.
Ten steps from the dais, at the edge of that splatter of red, I slowed.
Then stopped.
Everyone was watching, exactly as they had when I'd nearly died, spectators to my torment.
Tamlin extended a broad hand, brows narrowing slightly. My heart beat so fast, too fast.
I was going to vomit.
Right over those rose petals, right over the grass and ribbons trailing into the ailse from the chairs flanking it.
And between my skin and bones, something thrummed and pounded, rising and pushing, lashing through my blood-
So many eyes, too many eyes, pressed on me, witness to every crime I'd committed, every humiliation-
I don't know why I'd even bothered to wear gloves, why I'd let Ianthe convince me.
The fading sun was too hot, the garden too hedged in. As inescapable as the vow I was about to make, binding me to him forever, shackling him to my broken and weary soul. The thing inside me was roiling now, my body shaking with the building force of it as it hunted for a way out-
Forever- I would never get better, never get free of myself, of the dungeon where I'd spent three months-
'Feyre,' Tamlin said, his hand steady, as he continued to reach for mine. The sun sank past the lip of the western garden wall; shadows pooled, chilling the air.
If I turned away, they'd start talking, but I couldn't make the last few steps, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't-
I was going to fall apart, right there, right then- and they'd see precisely how ruined I was.
Help me, help me, help me, I begged someone, anyone. Begged Lucien, standing in the front row, his metal eye fixed on me. Begged Ianthe, face serene and patient and lovely within that hood. Save me- please, save me. Get me out. End this.
Tamlin took a step toward me- concern shading those eyes.
I retreated a step. No.
Tamlin's mouth tightened. The crowd murmured. Silk streamers laden with globes of gold faelight twinkled into life above and around us.
Ianthe said smoothly. 'Come, Bride and be joined with your true love. Come, Bride, and let good triumph at last.'
Good. I was not good. I was nothing, and my soul, my eternal soul was damned-
I tried to get my traitorous lungs to draw air so I could voice a word. No- no.
But I didn't have to say it.
Thunder crackled behind me, as if two boulders have been hurled against each other.
People screamed, falling back, a few vanishing outright as darkness erupted.
I whirled, and through the night drifting away like smoke on a wind, I found Rhysand straightening the lapels of his black jacket.
'Hello, Feyre darkling,' he purred.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
The Eclipse ofAchievement In a society in which the dream of
success has been drained of any meaning beyond itself, men have
nothing against which to measure their achievements except the
achievements of others. Self-approval depends on public recognition
and acclaim, and the quality of this approval has undergone
important changes in its own right. The good opinion of friends
and neighbors, which formerly informed a man that he had lived
a useful life, rested on appreciation of his accomplishments.
Today men seek the kind of approval that applauds not their actions
but their personal attributes. They wish to be not so much
esteemed as admired. They crave not fame but the glamour and
excitement of celebrity. They want to be envied rather than respected.
Pride and acquisitiveness, the sins of an ascendant capitalism, have given way to vanity. Most Americans would still
define success as riches, fame, and power, but their actions show
that they have little interest in the substance of these attainments.
What a man does matters less than the fact that he has "made it."
Whereas fame depends on the performance of notable deeds acclaimed
in biography and works of history, celebrity-the reward
of those who project a vivid or pleasing exterior or have otherwise
attracted attention to themselves-is acclaimed in the news
media, in gossip columns, on talk shows, in magazines devoted to "personalities." Accordingly it is evanescent, like news itself,
which loses its interest when it loses its novelty. Worldly success
has always carried with it a certain poignancy, an awareness that
"you can't take it with you"; but in our time, when success is so
largely a function of youth, glamour, and novelty, glory is more
fleeting than ever, and those who win the attention of the public
worry incessantly about losing it.
”
”
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
“
I am now transfixed by this vintage sex-siren, who must be seventy if she’s a day. She is a woman who looks as though she is starring in a movie of her own life, and loving every minute of it. She is dazzling. Her long, platinum-blonde hair is twisted into a sexily dishevelled chignon, she wears several strings of pearls and even more make-up than Roni. Her eyes are heavily lined in black, her foundation could support a small bungalow, and her lips are painted into a perfect red pout. But somehow, on this woman, the effect is less lady of the night and more old-school Hollywood glamour.
”
”
Ruth Hogan (The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes)
“
I was scared to go near the unicorn because I felt so unworthy. My whole life I had felt unworthy, less than, and afraid to reach my full potential because I didn’t want to fail.
”
”
Chanda Hahn (Of Glass and Glamour (Daughters of Eville, #2))
“
My whole life I had felt unworthy, less than, and afraid to reach my full potential because I didn’t want to fail.
”
”
Chanda Hahn (Of Glass and Glamour (Daughters of Eville, #2))
“
The love that dare not speak its name" in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as "the love that dare not speak its name", and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
”
”
Oscar Wilde
“
Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
”
”
Carolyn G. Heilbrun
“
Busy street of emotions
On a languid Sunday afternoon on the busy street,
Everything everywhere appeared to be missing a beat,
Few of their desires, of their hopes, many of their own dreams,
And in midst of all this I could hear strange screams,
There was rush, there was movement, there was life in its busiest state,
Many loved to be a part of it whereas a few showed all signs of hate,
They were the ones who were not chasing life, they were after something different,
That the busy street did not offer, and to the most people caught in its glamour it nothing meant,
To me all appeared to be seeking the same illusive something,
A thing that is born of nothing, and to a few it means everything,
That something, about which I had no clue, but the busy street certainly knew about it,
It knew everything about it,
But it had concealed it from all, happy and sad alike,
For now it had kept everyone busy pursuing what he/she liked, and what next he/she would like,
It was then she appeared in the busiest corner of the street,
Where people crossed each other; but noone nobody did ever meet,
They all saw other people's eyes but not what their eyes could see,
All were in this maze of fascinations where they had been before, but there they again and again wished to be,
And then she got up and left this busy corner,
And whispered in my ear, “let me show you a life that is real and livelier!”
I followed her wherever she went,
And that is how my Sunday was spent,
Finally as the evening set in and people began to feel weary,
And life too seemed dreary,
I looked at the once busy street that was now empty and desolate,
“This is the fact of life, and this is what you shall be able to isolate!”
With these last words she disappeared,
And now on the street, only I and my infinite avatars appeared,
Everywhere, in everything, and the street got busy again,
Because now I was dealing with life in its reality: joy, sorrow, love, faith, defection, everything and even pain,
So whenever you visit this busy street, walk towards everything with every feeling,
Because in our lives we all are either with retreating joy or with an advancing pain dealing!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
We are a Sad generation indeed.
Everyday , We are entertained by scandals, gossip, rumors and quarrels.
We want to argue about everything. Yet , We are senseless, careless, clueless and we know less.
We are entertained by negativity . We find joy and comfort in the pain of others.
We are used being entertained by negativity that if there is none, We are looking for one.
We are amused by divorces, breakups, cyber bullying, retrenchment, and when others are failing.
That is why ? We want those who are doing well to fall.
We glamourize being toxic, alcoholics, drug addicts, adulterous, Blessers and being disrespectful.
We are excited by violence, chaos and disruption. We celebrate hypocrisy and barbaric behavior. We idolize criminals and reckless behavior. We are enjoying bad news. That we surround ourselves with it. We are bewitching our minds. No good will come out of us. When we surround ourselves with bad things. We will end up being bad ourselves.
”
”
D.J. Kyos
“
If your mind is sharp, your words will wound.
”
”
Sanjai Velayudhan (Dance of the Spirits: A Novel)
“
There is a beautiful rainbow awaiting your arrival down the road, with all the celebration and glamour. Get ready.
”
”
Hiral Nagda
“
Max’s List of Top Five Terrifying Things 1. Glamour glitches 2. Skeletons that come to life 3. Monsters 4. Ghosts 5. Jasmine Skink
”
”
Alyson Noel (Field Guide to the Supernatural Universe)
“
To tell about a man’s life by anecdote is swinish – yet history is now beginning to file away those peculiar sentiments that make glamour out of unhappiness, and unhappiness out of art.
With Pollock, we have a double tragedy – both death and a life in the art world came too soon.
Jackson, oh Jackson – we did not know you. Why do we feel it is our fault. Why is it that we make this terrible separation from what a man does and what a man is, from what a man should do, and from what a man can’t do. And how we watched you, El Matador, waiting for the slaughter or the glory.
”
”
Morton Feldman
“
Being a king comes with all the glitz and glamour to make up for having to sign your life away.
”
”
T.D. Bohanan (Royal Corruption: A Royal Romance (Royal Darkness Book 1))
“
Slavery was a deadly cancer eating into the life of the nation; but, somehow, it had cast such a glamour over us that we have acted somewhat as if our national safety were better preserved by sparing the cancer than by cutting it out.
”
”
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (Iola Leroy; Or, Shadows Uplifted (AmazonClassics Edition))
“
Think for yourself, but don't live for yourself.
Life's not about glamour, and it's not about wealth.
It's about preparation for the spirit's destination.
The ascension or descension in the eternal relocation.
Salvation or damnation.
Preservation or separation.
We're all in the Hands
of the King of creation.
”
”
Calvin W. Allison (The Sunset of Science and the Risen Son of Truth)
“
achieving success required a long, hard slog, during which the romance and the glamour and the nobility of the literary life proved to be more illusions waiting to be seen through.
”
”
Dean Koontz (A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog)
“
Do you know what a corpse lily is, Adonis?"
He glared at her, and didn't speak.
"Do not make me repeat myself, mortal. Yes or no?"
She dropped her glamour, and took a threatening step forward. Adonis' eyes widened, and he wiggled away, wimpering, "No."
"Pity. It is a parasitic flower that smells like decaying flesh. I am sure you are wondering what this has to do with you. It's a wager. If you touch another woman without consent, I will turn you into one."
Adonis went pale but managed to glare at her. "A wager usually implies I get something in return."
She shook her head at his stupidity.
"You do," she said, leaning close, "your life.
”
”
Scarlett St. Clair (A Touch of Darkness (Hades & Persephone, #1))
“
This new world Father Raphael had joined was full of joy and light, and governed by its own particular laws. In this world the help of the Lord would always come when it was truly needed. In this world wealth was ridiculous, and glamour and ostentatiousness absurd, while modesty and humility were beautiful and becoming. Here great and just souls truly judged themselves to be lesser and worse than any other man. Here the most respected were those who had fled from all worldly glory. And here the most powerful were those who with all their hearts had recognized the powerlessness of their own unaided humanity. Here the true power was hidden with frail elders, and it was understood that sometimes it was better to be old and ill than to be young and healthy. Here the youthful would leave behind the usual pleasures of their friends and mates in the normal world, and do so with no regrets, as long as they would not have to leave this special world without which they could no longer live. Here the death of each became a lesson to all, and the end of earthly life was just the beginning.
”
”
Tikhon Shevkunov (Everyday Saints and Other Stories)
“
Rubin admits that bureaucracy lacks glamour and charisma, and that queers are prone to live for the moment. But: ‘momentary excitements are intrinsically fragile, evanescent, and unstable. Part of the reason for our impaired memory of the older strata of queer knowledges is that the institutions and organizations that produced them are gone. Queer life is full of examples of fabulous explosions that left little or no detectable trace.’ The question is whether the spark is extinguished when an official story is made of the blast.
”
”
Jeremy Atherton Lin (Gay Bar: Why We Went Out)
“
Quoting Edgar Lee Masters, the poet who wrote about small-town America, she said, “The branches of a tree spread no wider than its roots. And how shall the soul of man be larger than the life he has lived?
”
”
Julie Satow (When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion)
“
No one knew much about the Twenty-Eighth Infantry. It was not a glamour outfit.
They knew about the Big Red One and the Screaming Eagles, about the Eighty-Second Airborne and Hell On Wheels, but not about Twenty-Eighth Infantry. The name was met with a certain silence, as if he was in a room full of Harvard graduates and told them his degree was by correspondence.
”
”
Miles Watson (A Story Never Told)
“
How could we convince skeptics that Rent the Runway would not take business away from top designers? More importantly, how could we convince them that it would actually benefit these designers? Our answer was to reframe Rent the Runway as an experiential brand marketing channel for designers. After all, Rent the Runway would offer its target customer, who is younger than that of the designer brands we encountered, the chance to experience the glamour of designer products at a more accessible price point, to build a memory with that brand, and to thereby be more inclined to purchase the brand’s products later in life. In
”
”
Chris LoPresti (INSIGHTS: Reflections From 101 of Yale's Most Successful Entrepreneurs)
“
What strange and thoughtless creatures we were, back in those days. We would go up to the rooftops to smoke, Wurth and I; and there in the company of other insomniac souls we would look out at the vast expanse of lights and glamour. We watched the towers as they climbed higher, and higher, as humanity reached for the skies.
”
”
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (Numbercaste)
“
Thanks," I said to the waitress as she waved toward a table and shoved a small menu in my hands.
"You will please to read the rules. English is on the behind," she said in a heavy French accent.
"Rules? Oh, like the cover charge and stuff? Sure." I flipped' the menu over, and the sane world I so desperately clung to quickly took a nosedive.
G & T IS A NEUTRAL GROUND. PLEASE FOLLOW THE RULES:
1. No summoning minions of any form, persuasion, or origin.
2. No wards are to be drawn within the club, either protective or otherwise.
3. Glamours are strictly prohibited. No exceptions will be allowed.
4. Patrons who squash imps will please scrape up the mess and deposit the remains in the imp bucket.
BEINGS AND ENTITIES WHO DISREGARD THE RULES WILL BE SUMMARILY DEALT WITH BY THE VENEDIGER.
"Ooookay," I said, wondering for the millionth time that day when life would return to my previously scheduled program. I glanced up at the waitress. She was clearly waiting for something. "Er... I agree?"
That was evidently it, because she nodded and headed toward the bar.
”
”
Katie MacAlister (You Slay Me (Aisling Grey, #1))
“
One of the more unpleasant aspects of living in New York City is how daily proximity to wealth and glamour can instill a desire for it where none existed before.
”
”
Kate Bolick (Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own)
“
He had loved the girl who had loved the glamour in herself, and that girl seemed to have disappeared. But he was happy to have Glinda as a friend. Well, in a nutshell: he had loved Galinda and this now was Glinda. Someone he could no longer quite figure out. Case closed.
”
”
Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1))
“
I like first editions, though I’ll sometimes settle for a later printing if it’s within a year or two of the book’s original publication date. Only these editions possess that distinctive aura of the original, a glamour that subsequent reissues can never recapture. That said, I do gravitate toward well printed, scholarly treatments of certain classic texts, with lots of notes and a good bibliography. If I’m going to spend my life reading books, I want my experiences to be optimal.
”
”
Michael Dirda (Browsings)
“
ada yang hidup glamour, terkadang lebih besar pasak daripada tiang, apakah bisa nyaman dan tenang dengan keadaan ini?
”
”
Dian Nafi (How to Reset Your Life)
“
Of course, often enough, the people in books are poor. But then they're so darn poor, it's crazy. And, often enough, just when everything's at its worst, some handy little legacy comes along and the new life opens out before them right away, like a great big tulip. Well, I only had one legacy in my life and I know what I did with that. It darn near ruined me.
”
”
Stephen Vincent Benét (Glamour)
“
Whatever it’s called, its pitch relies on glamour shots of earnest young men with dishevelled, flowing hair living in rural settings unsullied by the paraphernalia of modern life – except for the assault rifles and ammunition strapped to their chests.
”
”
Anonymous
“
What greater contrast of chiaroscuro is there than that between burning screen and darkened audience? Take any photograph of an intent audience, and it is an image from Fuseli: of pale faces staring out of the night. What medium is so dependent on sensation, with the screen so much larger than life and the constant threat that in a fraction of a second the image we are watching can change unimaginably? And what are the abiding themes of cinema but glamour, sexuality, fear, horror, danger, violence, suspense, averted disaster, true love, self-sacrifice, happy endings, and the wholesale realization of those hopes and anxieties that we are too shy to talk about in the daylight? Why is it dark in cinemas? So that the compulsive force of our involvement may be hidden.
”
”
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated)
“
She’ll beg a commoner to share the monotony of their unthrilling day with her. It’s just more evidence that people always need what they don’t have and the glamour of the famed life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
”
”
Sarah Noffke (The Monster Inside the Monster (Ren #3))
“
What had become of my life? It was a nonstop joyride of glamour and junk-punches lubricated by ghost slime and monster fluids. I didn't sign up for this snot-fest.
”
”
A.J. Aalto (Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files #3))
“
But that was the problem with New York: No matter how succesful you thought you were, there was always someone who was richer, more successful, more famous.. The idea of it was sometimes enough to make you want to give up.
”
”
Candace Bushnell (Trading Up)
“
But that’s what our society’s built on. Most people strive for this kind of life.” “Safety is very nice, but isn’t it also incredibly boring? How much do you miss out on because you’re following a known path? Shouldn’t life be a challenge? Shouldn’t we try to discover, to experiment as much as possible? Instead, we spend our days doing monotonous work and then at the end ask where all the time went. Sure, you have weekends and holidays to recover from work, but you’re often so exhausted you don’t have the energy to go explore.” “But there are also people who feel comfortable in their job.” “You mean the lucky few who were able to turn their passion into a profession? I don’t hate my job. And I know I should be grateful to even have a job, especially in these difficult economic times, and so on, and so on. But ultimately we just spend way too much time at work. And when you think about it, most of it’s just repetition and serves only to profit the company. You can slave away for years working for a company, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get recognized for it. But once you can no longer do what they ask, they get rid of you! It happened to my aunt. She was at the same company for forty years, was committed to the company, and never complained when she put in overtime. Then came new management, and she was laid off. Since then, she’s been taking pills made by Lagussa . . .” “But I think many people want security and structure in their lives. Look around: we all work, day after day. That’s how our system functions. If people were so unhappy with this situation, our free society would have undergone radical change a long time ago.” “Free society? You’re free only if you obey the rules—that’s not true freedom. The minute you want to follow a different path, you’re faced with limitations. A lot of people are afraid of that. We’re also distracted enough to never even consider if we’re happy or not. I only recently read that last year Germans watched an average of almost four hours of TV a day. On average! That doesn’t leave much time for reflection. Most go to work, where they have used their mind or body for the benefit of a company, and then they come home. Before they go to bed, they veg on the couch and watch lame TV shows that promise glamour and adventure—which very few people will ever experience. The shows are sold as reality. Then there are religions and substitute religions, and every now and then publicly organized mass drunkenness like Oktoberfest, all of which makes people lazy and content.” “So if it’s a big conspiracy, then who’s behind it? I don’t think business leaders meet regularly in Frankenstein’s castle to discuss how to keep people subdued.” “I
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Hendrik Falkenberg (Time Heals No Wounds (Baltic Sea Crime #1))
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People like or hate you for no reason but that's how the world works.
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Aiyaz Uddin
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While “complete victory can never be won,” Lombardi said, “it must be pursued, it must be wooed with all of one’s might. Each week there is a new encounter, each year there is a new challenge. But all of the display, all of the noise, all of the glamour, and all of the color and excitement, they exist only in the memory. But the spirit, the will to excel, the will to win, they endure, they last forever. These are the qualities, I think, that are larger and more important than any of the events that occasion them.
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David Maraniss (When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi)
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It’s a beautiful thing to be in Hollywood... the feeling of it... that classical glamour never dies.” She walked to the closet and back to the bed. “The actress lives a beautiful life once at a certain level... when her sink has a view and her phone calls aren’t rejections anymore, but producers, offices, playhouses in London, a director pitching his sacred screenplay. The food gets healthier, people around you are more positive... driving in traffic is even different because your car is nice, and the music you normally hate sounds different when life works... when you get the furniture you want... And mentors pass down movie posters from their mentors—so Hepburn never really dies. You keep it in your home... there’s room for everything... I treasure letters from other artists... studio invitations... Being a woman in Hollywood is entirely different than a man’s experience. All the time, by everyone, for everything, a woman is wanted... dinners... so many dinners... so many scripts lying around the room, in the sun... the people you have yet to meet... it’s not about fame—I do not care for the public praise... but what is truly compelling is when you make it big, you finally understand why there are palm trees in this city... Los Angeles suddenly turns on. Like a bulb you thought disliked you and would never light. But it lights. Of course, one must put the cocktail down, leave the house, and make more movies. But this is to say, the after hours are nice. When the camera is off and I return home, I get to love what is left.
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Kristian Ventura (A Happy Ghost)
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Being a king comes with all the glitz and glamour, but it's only because it tries to make up for forcing you to sign your life away.
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Mara Nan (From the Ashes (Royal Secrets Book 2))
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There’s a counterintuitive elegance to this idea that, when it comes to investing, beauty often lies in mundanity, not glamour.
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William P. Green (Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life)
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In life one must always learn to count to ten.
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Sara Gay Forden (The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed)
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When the opportunity to settle down presents itself, the glamour of the single life and all the potential options loom over our heads. The continuing fear many singles expressed in our interviews was that by getting into a serious relationship, they weren’t settling down but settling.
In today’s romantic climate, many people are plagued by what we will call “the upgrade problem.” Singles constantly wonder whether there is a better match, an upgrade.
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Aziz Ansari (Modern Romance)
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The Personal Assistant shows the consequences of living in an online world where nothing is as it seems, turning the glamour of an Insta-worthy life into a nightmare. Unputdownable and impossible to forget.
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Kimberly Belle (The Personal Assistant)
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Love! How many legends were organized for it? It was said that it is the most mysterious human feeling that pushes us to do things we are not ready for and heedless of us. Despite the reality, and the difficulties, we do the impossible, and in the name of love, we do miracles. Just legends but the truth is that history did not mention that any miracle has happened thanks to love.
Myths, of which there is no use but our consolation, and the justification of our blind rush behind unjustified, incomprehensible feelings, to do what we were not ready to do, and then we pay the price with a reassuring conscience, and with a comfortable mind, in the name of love.
If we analyze these feelings, love, anger, hate, tranquility, fear, we will find that they are another face of pain, just chemical reactions inside our bodies, and hormones controlled by our mind, it decides when to kindle the fire of love in us, and when to make hate blind us.
If you know how to motivate the mind to produce the hormone needed to produce the desired emotions, then you do not have to talk about anything anymore. It is all your emotions, which are yours.
This inevitably makes human feelings subject to causation in the universe, unless our feelings are from another world, not causal. Therefore, the most magical words remain, those that come out of the mouth of a lover describing his love for his lover, “I love you without reason.”
This is the impossibility desired, and in the subconscious, these words have charm and glamour, and the tongue of the lover says, “My love for you is not from this causal world, neither the color of your hair, nor your eyes, nor your body, nor your sweet voice, nor your way of speaking, nor anything that you possess is a reason why I love you, because my love for you is not causal, does not belong to this world.”
A lie loved by the mind of the lovers, a legend among the millions which says, that nothing in this world can anticipate the feelings and moods of human beings before they occur, and more precisely, the private feelings and fluctuations, of an individual, to be precise, and not just of a large group of people, the more we try to customize it, the more difficult it becomes.
And where the indicators of the collective mind, the demagogue, can give us an idea of the general direction and the future fluctuations of a society or group of people, not because of a weakness in the lines of defense of feelings, but rather because we know that the mob, the collective mind, and the herd, will force many to follow it, even if it violates what they feel, what they want at their core. The mind is designed for survival, and you know that survival’s chances are stronger with the stronger group, the more number, it will secrete all the necessary hormones, to force you to follow the herd.
However, the feelings assigned to a particular person remain an impossible task, so many people are able to deceive each other by showing signs of expected trends and fluctuations that contradict the reality of what they feel.
Humans and scientists have treated it as something unpredictable, coming from another world, a curse on science, as if it were a whiff of a magical spell cast on us from the immemorial.
But in fact, emotions are causal, and every cause has a causative. Like everything else in this world, the laws of chaos and randomness apply to them.
They can be accurately predicted, formulated into mathematical equations, and even manipulated. All it takes is to have something that contains all the cosmic events, a number we did not imagine, starting with the flutter of a butterfly, a breath of air, temperatures across the universe, a word a man says to his son, a donkey’s kick, a rabbit’s jump, and ending with the movement of stars and planets, and cosmic explosions, and beyond, and able to deal with them, and with the hierarchical possibilities of their occurrence.
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Ahmad I. AlKhalel (Zero Moment: Do not be afraid, this is only a passing novel and will end (Son of Chaos Book 1))
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She'd completed a small still life in oils, her first time experimenting with anything save watercolors, and she was rather proud of it. She'd plied the light just as she'd wanted, illuminating a scatter of ephemera, fraying silk and loose buttons and bits of worn glass. On a whim, she had painted one of her straw glamours, the wreath presiding over the gentle chaos.
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Rowenna Miller (The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill)
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A few months ago, leaving for college seemed glamourous, but now it’s hard to believe that this little dorm room, with its scratchy sheets and a lock that sticks, is home. It’s hard to accept that this is my new life, that these are my new friends. I am one in many here. There are dozens here as good as me, even more who are smarter, funnier. And it scares me because before I stuck out and now I blend in.
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Samantha Schutz (I Don't Want To Be Crazy)
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average citizen, skeptical and mistrustful of government, feels that paying taxes is tantamount to throwing money at corrupt politicians for little in return. The American saying—only two things in life are certain: death and taxes—
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Sara Gay Forden (The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed)
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The life of a soldier far from the cannon's roar has little glamour to it.
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Harry Turtledove (The Guns of the South)
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Stripped of the glamour and beauty of youth, everything we ever did-it all looks different now. We can see our choices as acts in themselves, not stages on life's way, for if progress in human history is an illusion, so is progress in a human life.
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Sheila Heti (Pure Colour)
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Is this the inner truth behind why faeries who deal with mortals tend to specialize in glamours? Could they be said to be the only mode of defense when interacting with a creature that can hide motivations and tell untruths? Are glamours actually a form of untruth or are they instead the use of magic to highlight and underline truths, bringing those truths to human eyes through the use of enchantment? If this is the case then a glamour would temporarily initiate a human being into a faerie way of seeing the world. Such as when Robert Kirk tells us of the Faerie Seers placing one hand upon the head and one on the foot of another to share the Sight with them. A skill like this could be used either to befuddle a human or induct them into a new world. To paraphrase Dali, like art, glamours are lies that help us see the truth. Pause for a moment to consider this idea, and the truly alien perspective on life you would have if you existed in such a world. Remember when you do that time passes differently in Faerie, that you no longer have the burden of time weighing on you, waiting to age you, the spectre of human death before you. That you possess, perhaps, a tongue that not only cannot lie but a mind with no proper understanding of being able to conceal truth. When you encounter a creature that does lie and cheat your only defense in the face of it is to mirror their own nature back at them with an enchantment, dazzle them with their own greed.
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Lee Morgan (Sounds of Infinity)
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Not all clothing had to wait for its aristocratic owner’s demise to be sold on to playhouses. Fashion at court changed rapidly, and that which had cost the equivalent of a large town house to buy could appear upon the back of the most ambitious only a handful of times before appearing passé. For those like Robert Dudley, patron of one of the acting companies, handing on such clothes could form part of his financial support package, perhaps in lieu of cash for private performances. It was also possible for such public display of his recently worn clothing to be seen as advertising and promoting his standing among the populace. The stage was a fashion show and a window on to the rarefied world of court and courtiers. It held much the same appeal as the Hollywood glamour films of the 1930s and the more modern celebrity lifestyle shows. The
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Ruth Goodman (How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life)
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A moving story of shattered dreams in which Barbara March achieved international stardom adored for her dramatic soprano voice of unique beauty and passion. At the peak of her considerable powers adverse circumstances closed that chapter in her life and living with this regret haunted her deeply and emotionally throughout her life
As her thoughts centred on the tragic death of her husband Edward feeling somewhat saddened as she approached her sixtieth birthday. Still glamourous and beautiful she decides to go on a cruise and another phase in her life was beginning and what that might hold for her she could only imagine and that was where she befriends Lord Marcus Logan the laird of Glen Haven Castle on the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2nd and in the weeks to come on-board ship the emotional attraction was established and strong. Her life was not over a new chapter had begun, a year later they were married.
It soon becomes apparent to Marcus that in the shadows of Barbara's life going back into the past and having to recall the loss of her career had hurt her deeply and emotionally, that chapter was one subject on which she found it painful to cope with and she avoided it whenever she could.
Glen Haven will take you on an enchanting journey with dear friends with heart-warming thoughts of all times and a great deal of nostalgia, you will never want to lose the stories spell or bid farewell to its wonderful characters. All that I could say of the story to any purpose I have endeavoured to say it.
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Margaret L. Lauder
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This world will not recognize real people and their real struggle. Because the majority are fake here. They have sold their souls to live the life of luxury and comfort.
They deal in the currency of glitz and glamour. They are driven by the pettiness of greed and patheticity of selfishness. They don't recognize honesty, integrity, and real struggle!
But you do not become a cynic. You cannot give up on your idealism and integrity. Lend a hand to the poor and needy. Stand up for the Innocents. Be a voice for the voiceless in this world!
Don't let them take away the real hero or real heroine in you! Believe in yourself. Never doubt your capabilities. Stay real and stay humble.
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Avijeet Das
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Hannah shook her head, exasperated. She did that a lot, I noticed. A fierce energy infused her every long-limbed movement, led her easily to frustration. Emmeline, by contrast, had the calculated posture of a doll come to life. Their features, similar when considered individually- two neat noses, two pairs of intense blue eyes, two pretty mouths- manifested themselves uniquely on each girl's face. Where Hannah gave the impression of a fairy queen- passionate, mysterious, compelling- Emmeline's was a more accessible beauty. Though still a child, there was something in the way her lips parted in repose that reminded me of a glamour photograph I had once seen when it fell from the pedlar's pocket.
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Kate Morton (The House at Riverton)
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I had been exposed to the motion picture industry at oblique angles ever since I arrived in Los Angeles in 1964, and some of its working arrangements seemed to me far more magical than that glamour for which the Industry was noted: there was the way in which failure escalated the possibilities of success, the way in which price bore no relation to demand. There was the way in which millions of dollars were gambled on ephemeral, unpredictable and, uncomfortably often, invalid ideas of marketability. There was the way that many, perhaps most, people in the Industry remained unconscious of their own myths and superstitions. There was the Eldorado mood of life in the capital, the way in which social and economic fortunes could shoot up or plummet down, as in a mining boom town, on no more than rumors, the hint of a rich vein, the gossip that the lode was played out.
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John Gregory Dunne (The Studio)
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Of course, everyone knew that Heaven was incomparably superior, but to Neil it had always seemed too remote to consider, like wealth or fame or glamour. For people like him, Hell was where you went when you died, and he saw no point in restructuring his life in hopes of avoiding that. And since God hadn’t previously played a role in Neil’s life, he wasn’t afraid of being exiled from God. The prospect of living without interference, living in a world where windfalls and misfortunes were never by design, held no terror for him.
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Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others)
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She appreciated her own reflection- she looked less than a tenth of her earthly age- but knew the years were bound to catch up. There had been a time or two when she had put a glamour on herself, to reverse those years, to remember and even to capture the attention of a young man so she could make the kind of vigorous love she had enjoyed before. But she wouldn't have tried to keep up the glamour permanently, or to create the violent kind of spells that she could have to remain in a state of perpetual youth. The crone cannot be a sage or wisewoman until she reaches beyond the shallow confines of her skin. Children of the earth must also change, like the seasons do. Autumn had seen herself in all these transitions: the tentative buds of spring; the heavy sensuality of summer. And now, like the fall, she was colorful and majestic but right on the verge of winter, to be stripped down to what was really important, the bare branches of what was true.
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Amy S. Foster (When Autumn Leaves)
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Grit and glamour, Bruises and champagne, There’s nothing to enamour, About the poison in our veins. Land and riches, Money and gold, Freshly repaired with stitches, And now already sold. Wealth can bring you terrible things. And what weighs you down, isn’t all diamond rings. Shadowed and rough, Lost and without love, A hard life makes you tough, There’s no room for a white dove. Cheap and broken, Shattered and slain, Although it remains unspoken, Both understand the other’s pain.
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Cece Rose (Grit & Glamour (Sins & Riches #1))
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There's nothing remotely glamorous about waiting hand and foot on a fusspot like Opal, but what a pinched and useless life we'd lead if our only goal was glamour.
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Nancy Atherton (Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold (Aunt Dimity Mystery, #24))
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Instead of bemoaning the games’ hold over children, we should be exploiting the techniques that game designers have developed. They’ve refined the basic steps of self-control: setting clear and attainable goals, giving instantaneous feedback, and offering enough encouragement for people to keep practicing and improving. After noticing how hard people work at games, some pioneers are pursuing the “gamification” of life by adapting these techniques (like establishing “quests” and allowing people to “level up”) for schools and workplaces and digital collaborations. Video games give new glamour to old-fashioned virtues. Success is conditional—but it’s within your reach as long as you have the discipline to try, try again.
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Roy F. Baumeister (Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength)
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For a moment, I feel a twinge of sympathy. The rest of the world sees the money, the glamour, the flawless hair and wardrobe. Without seeing the inside view, they never realize that Dee is caged. The fame Is like a dream house – it’s a picture perfect from the outside, and it’s some thing Dee built herself. But now that she lives here, a tall fence runs around the border of her life, keeping others out and barricading her in
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Emery Lord (Open Road Summer)
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Dimly I perceived that is was these very handicaps and my struggle against them which had lifted life out of mediocrity, given it its glamour, made it worth while; that the individuals from whom destiny demands too much are infinitely more vital than those of whom it asks too little.
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vera brit
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The truth is that there is no centre, no portal where all the decadence and glamour you craved opens up for you. There is just a lot of people standing about pretending they know where it is, pretending that they are part of its heart.
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Guy Mankowski
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He’s just the only relevant director, the only one. Every other film ye see is just totally obsolete, just completely dishonest. The thing with Tarantino is that he doesn’t pretend there’s a real world out there for his films to show us – there are only more films. And the “real world” is only a copy of films – Tarantino knows this. Ah, he’s just amazin. But all these other directors, they keep tryin to make films about “real” people – as if they still exist! They just don’t get it. I mean, like, ye see a guy in a film, and he’s sittin in a doorway down some alley, wearin a dark coat and drinkin whiskey from a hip flask. And we’re supposed to believe that what ye see is what ye get, and this character is doin all this in a natural way, and he’s not even aware of the glamour of it, of how much it reminds ye of, like, fifty other films. Whereas in “real life” the camera is always on you. You’re always in a film.’
‘That’s the point of Tarantino – he’s after givin up on reality. He knows that it disappeared back in the forties or whenever. He doesn’t pretend we’re still livin in that time when people had, like, emotional journeys and dramatic conflicts and, ye know, moral dilemmas. He’s cut the crap.
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Rob Doyle (Here Are the Young Men)
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Gone the glitter and glamour; gone the pompous wealth beside naked starvation; gone the strange excitement of a polyglot and many-sided city; gone the island of Western civilization flourishing in the vast slum that was Shanghai.
Good-by to all that: the well-dressed Chinese in their chauffeured cars behind bullet-proof glass; the gangsters, the shakedowns, the kidnapers; the exclusive foreign clubs, the men in white dinner jackets, their women beautifully gowned; the white-coated Chinese “boys” obsequiously waiting to be tipped; Jimmy’s Kitchen with its good American coffee, hamburgers, chili and sirloin steaks. Good-by to all the night life: the gilded singing girl in her enameled hair-do, her stage make-up, her tight-fitting gown with its slit skirt breaking at the silk clad hip, and her polished ebony and silver-trimmed rickshaw with its crown of lights; the hundred dance halls and the thousands of taxi dolls; the opium dens and gambling halls; the flashing lights of the great restaurants, the clatter of mah-jongg pieces, the yells of Chinese feasting and playing the finger game for bottoms-up drinking; the sailors in their smelly bars and friendly brothels on Szechuan Road;
the myriad short-time whores and pimps busily darting in and out of the alleyways; the display signs of foreign business, the innumerable shops spilling with silks, jades, embroideries, porcelains and all the wares of the East; the generations of foreign families who called Shanghai home and lived quiet conservative lives in their tiny vacuum untouched by China; the beggars on every downtown block and the scabby infants urinating or defecating on the curb while mendicant mothers absently scratched for lice; the “honey carts” hauling the night soil through the streets; the blocks-long funerals, the white-clad professional mourners weeping false tears, the tiers of paper palaces and paper money burned on the rich man’s tomb; the jungle free-for- all struggle for gold or survival and the day’s toll of unwanted infants and suicides floating in the canals; the knotted rickshaws with their owners fighting each other for customers and arguing fares; the peddlers and their plaintive cries; the armored white ships on the Whangpoo, “protecting foreign lives and property”; the Japanese conquerors and their American and Kuomintang successors; gone the wickedest and most colorful city of the old Orient: good-by to all that.
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Edgar Snow (Red China Today: The Other Side of the River)
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Minimalism is countercultural. We live in a world that idolizes celebrities. They are photographed for magazines, interviewed on the radio, and recorded for television. Their lives are held up as the gold standard and are envied by many. People who live minimalist lives are not championed by the media in the same way. They don't fit into the consumerist culture promoted by the corporations and politicians. Yet, they live a life that is attractive and inviting. While most people are chasing after success, glamour, and fame, minimalism calls out to us with a smaller, quieter, calmer voice. It invites us to slow down, consume less, but enjoy more. And when we meet someone living a simplified life we often recognize we have the chasing the wrong things all along.
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Joshua Becker (Clutterfree with Kids)
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This is the story of a man named Neil Fisk, and how he came to love God.
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Of course, everyone knew that Heaven was incomparably superior, but to Neil it had always seemed too remote to consider, like wealth or fame or glamour. For people like him, Hell was where you went when you died, and he saw no point in restructuring his life in hopes of avoiding that. And since God hadn't previously played a role in Neil's life, he wasn't afraid of being exiled from God. The prospect of living without interference, living in a world where windfalls and misfortunes were never by design, held no terror for him.
Now that Sarah was in Heaven, his situation had changed. Neil wanted more than anything to be reunited with her, and the only way to get to Heaven was to love God with all his heart.
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And God sent him to Hell anyway.
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Ted Chiang (Hell is the Absence of God)
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Historians say, "The winter of 'seventy-four to 'seventy-five was a time of deep depression." But historians do not take little children into consideration. Deep depression? To three children on the prairie it was a time of glamour.
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Bess Streeter Aldrich (A Lantern in Her Hand)
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Because I loved Estée. Because I admired her. I drew strength and courage from her. I needed her in my life. To me, Estee was a sterling example of how to get ahead on pure determination and honest hard work. My father had failed me in that respect, but Estée, well, Estée was my role model, even if I couldn't always follow her advice.
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Renée Rosen (Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl)