Good Odyssey Quotes

There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you're going is as good as where you've been.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)

A good man follows his heart, but a wise man follows his heart without ignoring his brain.

Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.

Question me now about all other matters, but do not ask who I am, for fear you may increase in my heart it's burden of sorrow as I think back; I am very full of grief, and I should not sit in the house of somebody else with my lamentation and wailing. It is not good to go on mourning forever.

As a bull roars when feeding in the field, so roared the goodly door touched by the key and open flew before her.

It is a good principle in science not to believe any 'fact'---however well attested---until it fits into some accepted frame of reference. Occasionally, of course, an observation can shatter the frame and force the construction of a new one, but that is extremely rare. Galileos and Einsteins seldom appear more than once per century, which is just as well for the equanimity of mankind.

That was something else I’d learned from Homer—sometimes, to get the things that were good in life, you had to make a blind leap.

And it was difficult to imagine what answer Earth could possibly send, except a tactfully sympathetic, “Good-bye.

Our tenderness, compassion and kindness go with sensitive generous heart that should not be abused by others.

There are abusive individuals whose worst little demons are greed, sloth,envy, gluttony, pride and wrath enslaved by their god which is money. They usually set their false assumptions, wrong judgments, gossips and lies forceful than the ones who hold the truth but what they missed out is that the victims of their aggressions, the targets of their wrong accusations and the recipients of their repetitive harassments carry what is truly essential and what lives longer, that is: truth and goodness, both of which shall always prevail against their vicious, evil manners.

O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.

As important, in a media culture that feeds on celebrity, no movie star, no pop idol, no Nobel Prize winner stepped forward to demand that outsiders invest emotionally in a distant issue that lacks good video. “Tibetans have the Dalai Lama and Richard Gere, Burmese have Aung San Suu Kyi, Darfurians have Mia Farrow and George Clooney,” Suzanne Scholte, a long-time activist who brought camp survivors to Washington, told me. “North Koreans have no one like that.

Beware of destructive individuals whose spirits breathe every day the worst toxic oxygen of the soul, "SALIGIA" Superbia, Avaritia, Luxuria, Invidia, Gula, Ira, Acedia. No matter how much goodness, patience, understanding, assistance, forgiveness and letting go you have given them, they will resurface again and again at the doors of your home to impede your happiness. Let truth and goodness always prevail but never be again a doormat of their abusive, evil ways.

Journalism, to me, is just another drug – a free ride to scenes I'd probably miss if I stayed straight. But I'm neither a chemist nor an editor; all I do is take the pill or the assignment and see what happens. Now and then I get a bad trip, but experience has made me more careful about what I buy... so if you have a good pill I'm open; I'll try almost anything that hasn't bitten me in the past.

The places we visited were always richer and always more intricate than one could imagine. I loved to find out about the world, the good and the bad, in this way. For me, observing things with my own eyes was the only way. My wanderlust was also a wonderlust.

Reliability depended on redundancy and automatic checking, and human intervention was much more likely to do harm than good.

It is a joy to share good advice. It takes a grateful ear to listen wisely. It's always up for us to take the right action and fulfilling path that can truly serve for what is the best.

Deep rooted envy is the main cause why people put you down, blame, shame, misjudge, maltreat and malign you; abusing your goodness and generosity." from the book, Odyssey of a Heart, Home of a Soul

shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing therefore that I can do, any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now; let me not defer it nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

As they were speaking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any enjoyment from him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said: 'Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?' 'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master's hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.' So saying he entered the well-built mansion, and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years…

...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get. See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On. The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour. And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.

Love is wonderful, magical, and beautiful, but it can also be maddening, damaging, and dangerous,: she said. "It blinds us more than anything. It makes us selfish, it makes us feel like nothing else matters, and it tricks us into thinking the rest of the world doesn't exist - but it does exist. Whether you're on the high or low side of love, the world always moves on." "So you're saying love is a weakness?" Arthur asked. "That depends on you," Mother Goose said. "There's a reason we've got hearts and brains - we're supposed to listen to them both. A good man follows his heart, but a wise man follows his heart without ignoring his brain. Finding the right balance is one of the hardest parts of life.

I learned in WW II,” he said, “that the slightest bit of excitement in a leader is transmitted to the men. You might be afraid, but the fear gets magnified in the troops. Somebody has to keep his cool. If you’re a decent leader, you don’t dare lose it—for your own good. You’ve got to keep your unit up there doing its job.

beauty and pleasure are at the center of teaching. For the best teacher is the one who wants you to find meaning in the things that have given him pleasure, too, so that the appreciation of their beauty will outlive him. In this way—because it arises from an acceptance of the inevitability of death—good teaching is like good parenting.

Once I was asked by a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight, a man who took the liberty of glancing repeatedly at the correspondence in my lap, what instruction he should give his fifteen-year-old daughter, who wanted to be a writer. I didn't know how to answer him, but before I could think I heard myself saying, 'Tell your daughter three things.' "Tell her to read, I said. Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading to be trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language. She may be paying attention to things in the world beyond anyone else's comprehension, things that feed her curiosity, her singular heart and mind. Tell her to read classics like The Odyssey. They've been around a long time because the patterns in them have proved endlessly useful, and, to borrow Evan Connell's observation, with a good book you never touch bottom. But warn your daughter that ideas of heroism, of love, of human duty and devotion that women have been writing about for centuries will not be available to her in this form. To find these voices she will have to search. When, on her own, she begins to ask, make her a present of George Eliot, or the travel writing of Alexandra David-Neel, or To the Lighthouse. "Second, I said, tell your daughter that she can learn a great deal about writing by reading and by studying books about grammar and the organization of ideas, but that if she wishes to write well she will have to become someone. She will have to discover her beliefs, and then speak to us from within those beliefs. If her prose doesn't come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing on information, of which we are in no great need. So help her discover what she means. "Finally, I said, tell your daughter to get out of town, and help her do that. I don't necessarily mean to travel to Kazakhstan, or wherever, but to learn another language, to live with people other than her own, to separate herself from the familiar. Then, when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar, and will give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things. "Read. Find out what you truly are. Get away from the familiar. Every writer, I told him, will offer you thoughts about writing that are different, but these three I trust.

Indeed, good leaders were often good actors, able to convince their men if not themselves that they would somehow prevail.

the good news is that the pirates live in it, so you don’t have to worry about them sleeping in the house.” “Right,” Charlotte said with large eyes. “Nothing to worry about.

What strange times we live in, when good must disguise itself in the tawdry rags of evil!

They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears that gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

But it gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

They weren’t a special unit— just a group of guys who thought they were good, so they were good.

The secret to a successful career in virtually any field is good public relations. Forget results. Forget the facts. Perception is all that matters.

He translates one book of the Iliad, two of the Odyssey, plus an admirable slice of Plato’s Republic. Five lines on an average day, ten on a good one, scribbled onto yellow legal pads in his crimped pencil-writing and stuffed into boxes beneath the dining table. Sometimes he believes his translations are adequate. Usually he decides they’re terrible. He shows them to no one.

Now is probably a good time to make my confession about Finland, our next destination in this Nordic odyssey: I think the Finns are fantastic. I can't get enough of them. I would be perfectly happy for the Finns to rule the world. They get my vote, they've won my heart. If you ask me, they should just change the word 'fantastic' to 'Finntastic.' Helsinki? Heavensinki, more like.

Impressive displays of rhetoric and linguistic force are a good way to seem important and invite a particular kind of admiration, but they tend to silence dissent and discourage deeper modes of engagement.

Human beings have short lives.330 If we are cruel, everyone will curse us during our life, and mock us when we die. The names of those who act with nobleness are brought by travelers across the world, and many people speak about their goodness.

Apollodorus, the leading classical authority on Greek myths, records a tradition that the real scene of the poem was the Sicilian seaboard, and in 1896 Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon, came independently to the same conclusion. He suggested that the poem, as we now have it, was composed at Drepanum, the modern Trapani, in Western Sicily, and that the authoress was the girl self-portrayed as Nausicaa. None of his classical contemporaries, for whom Homer was necessarily both blind and bearded, deigned to pay Butler’s theory the least attention; and since he had, as we now know, dated the poem some three hundred years too early and not explained how a Sicilian princess could have passed off her saga as Homer’s, his two books on the subject are generally dismissed as a good-humoured joke. Nevertheless, while working on an explanatory dictionary of Greek myths, I found Butler’s arguments for a Western Sicilian setting and for a female authorship irrefutable. I could not rest until I had written this novel. It re-creates, from internal and external evidence, the circumstances which induced Nausicaa to write the Odyssey, and suggest how, as an honorary Daughter of Homer, she managed to get it included in the official canon. Here is the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father’s throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best.

You heard what the little filth said to me,” Ury growled. “He’ll be trouble. I say trench him now.” The other man spoke, his voice low and even. “I heard him, Ury. His mind is quick, and his Greek is good.” He knelt down beside my head. “Your choice, boy. Decide now.

...the slightest bit of excitement in a leader is transmitted to the men. You might be afraid, but the fear gets magnified in the troops. Somebody has to keep his cool. If you’re a decent leader, you don’t dare lose it— for your own good. You’ve got to keep your unit up there doing its job.

Her description of a perfect day sounds perfectly ordinary: “I will sleep long, have a relaxed breakfast. Then I’ll go out for some fresh air, chat with my husband or with friends. I might go to the theater, to the opera, or listen to a concert. If I’m rested, I might read a good book. And I would cook dinner. I like cooking!” These are the dreams of a person who had not been truly free for the last sixteen years. Though no longer young, Merkel is spry enough to enjoy the simplest of pleasures: country rambles, leisurely meals with (nonpolitical) friends, and music and books instead of charts, polls, and position papers. These pleasures will not replace the satisfaction of outsmarting a foe with her legendary stamina and command of facts. But, never one to ruminate over feelings, she will observe her own reaction to this new life with a scientist’s curiosity. In the short term, she is likely to spend time near her childhood home in the province of Brandenburg, where she first learned to love nature and which she still regards as her Heimat, or spiritual home. She’ll travel, too. Among her stated dreams is to fly over the Andes Mountains—an idealized destination; a metaphor for freedom.

The problem with the world is not a shortage of brilliant theories or feel-good slogans. The problem is that we confuse proliferation of progressive terminology with profound empathy and purposeful engagement. We say the right things, but we fail to act on them because we want to feel virtuous without paying a price

As it turned out, one aspect of my personality would help me in my odyssey: I was a bider. Temperamentally suited to hold out for good cards, well accustomed to waiting. We Anhedonians have adapted to long periods between good news. Our national animal is the hope camel. We have no national bird. All the birds are dead.

Robin Hood said. “I AM THE GOBLIN KING AND I HATE TROLLS!” “And I am the Troll King and I hate goblins,” Tootles said. “How can we live together underground? Now say it!” “WHY DON’T WE PUT ASIDE OUR DIFFERENCES AND FORM OUR OWN NATION?” Robin Hood asked. “That is a good idea!” Tootles said. “We will form the Troll and Goblin Territory, start our own society, and prove we are not savage creatures!” “Hooray,” the men and boys said with very little enthusiasm. Trollbella cleared her throat to get the audience’s attention. “The trolls and goblins lived harmoniously in the underground territory for many years, until tragedy struck!” she narrated. All

so thanks for supplying all the inspiration.” “But think of everything you came up with all on your own,” she said. “You would have done just fine without me. I wish I had your imagination. What’s your secret to making a story so good? Do you have any writing tricks or rituals?” Conner had never thought about it before. He thought back to the very first time he wrote a story and recalled a tool that had helped him write ever since. “Whenever I write, I imagine everything in Dad’s voice,” he said. “I try to describe everything with the same energy and enthusiasm he had when he read stories to us. Sometimes when I miss him the most, writing makes me feel like he’s there with me.

For what it's worth, I know how you feel," Conner told him. "I used to doubt myself a lot. When people told me I wasn't good enough, I believed them. It's hard not to when you're young." "Tell me about it," Bold said. "Does it get better when you're older?" "It did for me," Conner said. "How?" Bolt asked. "Someone else believed in me," Conner said. "All it took was one person's approval and suddenly I believed myself, too. It gave me a shield to block out all the doubt and negativity. It made me realize I was just as capable and deserving as the people I compared myself to. But you know what? I was wrong." "You were?" Bolt asked. "Totally," Conner said. "I didn't need someone else. I had confidence in myself, deep down inside, the whole time. Approval is just a shortcut to self-worth, but sometimes we have to find things out on your own. Sometimes if we want something bad enough, we have to inspire ourselves to get it. Sometimes we have to be our own superhero." Out of everything Conner said, he could tell this resonated with the boy the most. If he wanted to help people, maybe he had to start with himself. "But what if I fail?" Bolt asked. "What if the Snake Lord wins and I don't save anyone? Then I'll never be a superhero." "A very wise man once told me that 'courage is what makes a superhero super,'" Conner said. "He never sad anything about succeeding.

In the summer of 1949, Borman was one of a select few cadets to tour postwar Germany. For him, the biggest impression came at the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau...The trip sickened and saddened him, and it reinforced his certainty that America was a force for good in the world, a country that stepped up to help suffering people and defend freedom.

...During my first few hours in Loja, I had good fortune to run into two young Mormon missionaries who let me sleep one night in their room and three further nights at their temple. My four days in Loja were somber ones, however, not so much because of the Mormons, who didn't try to convert me (at least not very strenuously), but because of the constant rain.

Each blooming flower breathe an open soul of nature's gratitude. Every blooming friendship is an opening of both heart and mind to touch a unique growth of one's soul. Jolly good friends make you bloom with joy even on a coldest winter as you share your common interests in life, in work, in art, with people and of your passion. Treasure your true friends and feel blessed in your life to have them.

In the West, we are perilously getting down to our last man. Liberal democracy, among us, is achieving the goal that Fukuyama predicted for it: It is eliminating the alpha males from our midst, and at a dizzyingly accelerating rate. But in Muslim societies, the alpha male is still alive and well. While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless…. We are proud if our sons get into a good college; they are proud if their sons die as martyrs. To rid your society of high-testosterone alpha males may bring peace and quiet; but if you have an enemy that is building up an army of alpha boys to hate you fanatically and who have vowed to destroy you, you will be committing suicide….

A reader once asked me, "Do you only write disaster books?' It was a good question, because my last three offerings could qualify as weather-related disaster books. But it's not the storms or even the ensuing calamity that really interests me so much as the people . . . ordinary people thrust into incredibly difficult situations where they have to rise to the challenge, persevere, and fight against long odds.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

Alexandrus, husband of lovely Helen, put on his goodly armour. First he greaved his legs with greaves of good make and fitted with ancle-clasps of silver; after this he donned the cuirass of his brother Lycaon, and fitted it to his own body; he hung his silver-studded sword of bronze about his shoulders, and then his mighty shield. On his comely head he set his helmet, well-wrought, with a crest of horse-hair that nodded menacingly above it, and he grasped a redoubtable spear that suited his hands.

Conner, I'm so sorry." She sniffled. "Sorry for what?" Conner asked. "Sorry if I ever made you feel like that," Alex cried. "I know you don't remember, but there was a time I treated you exactly like the Ziblings are treating Bolt - and just like them, I had no idea how much I was hurting you. This story is much more personal than you think. It's about us." "Alex, I think you're over-reacting." he said. "You just don't see it," Alex said. "Since we were kids, people have always compared us to each other. Everyone always shamed you for not getting good grades like me, for not being as mature as me, or for not being as organized as me. But no one ever made me feel bad for not being more like you - I had no idea what it was like. But now that I'm watching Bolt, I see how painful it must have been." At first Conner thought his sister was crazy. There was no way a silly story he wrote could have been that meaningful. But the more she explained, the more sense it made. Alex had always been capable of so many things, she was like a superhero in his mind, a superhero he could never live up to.

Then the child of Zeus, Helen, decided she would mix the wine220 with drugs to take all pain and rage away, to bring forgetfulness of every evil. Whoever drinks this mixture from the bowl will shed no tears that day, not even if her mother or her father die, nor even if soldiers kill her brother or her darling son with bronze spears before her very eyes. Helen had these powerful magic drugs from Polydamna, wife of Thon, from Egypt, where fertile fields produce the most narcotics:230 some good, some dangerous. The people there are skillful doctors. They are the Healer’s people.

The Chinese ideograph for forbearance is a heart with a sword dangling over it, another instance of language's brilliant way of showing us something surprising and important fossilized inside the meaning of a word. Vulnerability is built into our hearts, which can be sliced open at any moment by some sudden shift in the arrangements, some pain, some horror, some hurt. We all know and instinctively fear this, so we protect our hearts by covering them against exposure. But this doesn't work. Covering the heart binds and suffocates it until, like a wound that has been kept dressed for too long, the heart starts to fester and becomes fetid. Eventually, without air, the heart is all but killed off, and there's no feeling, no experiencing at all. To practice forbearance is to appreciate and celebrate the heart's vulnerability, and to see that the slicing or piercing of the heart does not require defense; that the heart's vulnerability is a good thing, because wounds can make us more peaceful and more real—if, that is, we are willing to hang on to the leopard of our fear, the serpent of our grief, the boar of our shame without running away or being hurled off. Forbearance is simply holding on steadfastly with whatever it is that unexpectedly arises: not doing anything; not fixing anything (because doing and fixing can be a way to cover up the heart, to leap over the hurt and pain by occupying ourselves with schemes and plans to get rid of it.) Just holding on for hear life. Holding on with what comes is what makes life dear. ...Simply holding on this way may sound passive. Forbearance has a bad reputation in our culture, whose conventional wisdom tells us that we ought to solve problems, fix what's broken, grab what we want, speak out, shake things up, make things happen. And should none of this work out, then we are told we ought to move on, take a new tack, start something else. But this line of thinking only makes sense when we are attempting to gain external satisfaction. It doesn't take into account internal well-being; nor does it engage the deeper questions of who you really are and what makes you truly happy, questions that no one can ignore for long... Insofar as forbearance helps us to embrace transformative energy and allow its magic to work on us... forbearance isn't passive at all. It's a powerfully active spiritual force, (67-70).

There was no reason why Fox, which, by the time I joined, had been in business for nearly a decade and had been number one in the ratings for more than two years, should still have been running such a rinky-dink operation, with broken-down tape machines, control rooms that smelled like a sewer whenever it rained more than half an inch, chronic intentional understaffing, and a workforce composed of barely trained, underpaid children like myself. But that was the business model, and the ratings were good enough—and the on-air product was just this side of mistake-free enough—that there was no incentive for the bosses to change it.

Heilner went on: "Yes, things were certainly different then. Who knows anything about things like that around here? All these bores and cowards who grind away and work their fingers to the bone and don't realize that there's something higher than the Hebrew alphabet. You're no different." Hans kept silent. This Heilner fellow certainly was a strange one. A romantic, a poet. As everyone knew, he worked hardly at all and still he knew quite a bit, he knew how to give good answers, and at the same time despised his learning. “We're reading Homer," he went on in the same mocking tone, "as though the Odyssey were a cookbook. Two verses an hour and then the whole thing is masticated word by word and inspected until you're ready to throw up. But at the end of the hour the professor will say: 'Notice how nicely the poet has turned this phrase! This has afforded you an insight into the secret of poetic creativity!' Just like a little icing around the aorists and particles so you won't choke on them completely. I don't have any use for that kind of Homer. Anyway, what does all this old Greek stuff matter to us? If one of us ever tried to live a little like a Greek, he'd be out on his tail. And our room is called 'Hellas'! Pure mockery! Why isn't it called 'wastepaper basket' or 'monkey cage' or 'sweatshop'? All this classical stuff is a big fake.

the shimmering green water, and then, in an instant, it was gone altogether. The little circles in the water gradually disappeared too. Are you still there? he asked, after a few seconds. I love it. He smiled. Just be careful. You too . . . Are you leaving now? Yes . . . for good. I'll miss you. There was a long, drawn-out silence, and then, as if from another dimension, her voice said, Good . . . do. When he was sure she was gone, he unfolded his legs, and stood up. For a moment, he studied his own shadow falling on the water; with the end of his pact with Kaliya, his shadow had been returned to him . . . as had his soul. With the ring gone too now, there was little to remind him of his terrible odyssey . . . little

My love of publishing goes back to my first job on the hometown newspaper when I was a 16-year-old cub reporter, but I caught a novel version of the word and the idea at a 1980 poetry reading by Allan Ginsberg. That night he exhorted all in the audience to remember the original sense of the word when he said that every public reading of a poem was a bona fide form of publishing, taking the good word to the people. For the last word on getting published let’s turn to one of the least recognized, in her own time, of all great writers, Emily Dickinson, who said, “Publication—is the auction of the Mind of Man.” Of her 1775 poems, only seven were published in her lifetime, which flies in the face of the academic exhortation to “publish or perish.” Dickinson rarely published, but her poetry is imperishable.

Consider carefully the merest event: in the best of cases, the positive and negative elements that participate in it balance out; generally the negatives predominate. Which is to say, it would have been preferable that it not take place. We should then have been dispensed from taking part in it, enduring it. What is the good of adding anything at all to what is or seems to be? History, a futile odyssey, has no excuse, and on occasion we are tempted to inculpate art itself, however imperious the need from which it emanates. To produce is accessory; what matters is to draw on one’s own depths, to be oneself in a total fashion, without stooping to any form of expression. To have built great cathedrals derives from the same error as to have waged great battles. Better to try to live in depth than to advance through centuries toward a débâcle.

In the West, we are perilously getting down to our last man. Liberal democracy, among us, is achieving the goal that Fukuyama predicted for it: It is eliminating the alpha males from our midst, and at a dizzyingly accelerating rate. But in Muslim societies, the alpha male is still alive and well. While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless…. We are proud if our sons get into a good college; they are proud if their sons die as martyrs. To rid your society of high-testosterone alpha males may bring peace and quiet; but if you have an enemy that is building up an army of alpha boys to hate you fanatically and who have vowed to destroy you, you will be committing suicide…. The end of testosterone in the West alone will not culminate in the end of history, but it may well culminate in the end of the West.

If your taste, and therefore the taste buds of your soul, have grown accustomed to the flavor of bitterness—and consuming it to the last drop, your playful spirit has run completely dry—do this, and you’ll discover the highly sought but rarely found fountain of youth. Push far out from the populated shore, then stretch out over the side of your canoe, and peer down into the deep deep waters. When the shark begins to emerge within your reflection, don’t be afraid, let it completely devour your big head, as you have also taught the beast to consume others. Fear not! You will no longer need it on your odyssey. The humiliating disfiguration will kill you but it won’t hurt you. Rather, it will make space for your heart to turtlehead as an old, wise, and happy sage with an insatiable thirst for the drunkenness of good spirits, that can be found in every home, temple, and tavern that litters the shore, and brings cheer and love of life to the rigid bitter bones.

A new legend swept Oregon, from Roseburg all the way north to the Columbia, from the mountains to the sea. It traveled by letter and by word of mouth, growing with each telling. It was a sadder story than the two that had come before it--those speaking of a wise, benevolent machine and of a reborn nation. It was more disturbing than those. And yet this new fable had one important element its predecessors lacked. It was true. The story told of a band of forty women--crazy women, many contended--who had shared among themselves a secret vow; to do anything and everything to end a terrible war, and end it before all the good men died trying to save them. They acted out of love, some explained. Others said they did it for their country. There was even a rumor that the women had looked on their odyssey to Hell as a form of penance, in order to make up for some past failing of womankind. Interpretations varied, but the overall moral was always the same, whether spread by word of mouth or by U.S. Mail. From hamlet to village to farmstead, mothers and daughter and wives read the letters and listened to the words--and passed them on.

The story of The Rape of the Lock, sylphs and all, could have been told, though not so effectively, in prose. The Odyssey and the Comedy have something to say that could have been said well, though not equally well, without verse. Most of the qualities Aristotle demands of a tragedy could occur in a prose play. Poetry and prose, however different in language, overlapped, almost coincided, in content. But modern poetry, if it ‘says’ anything at all, if it aspires to ‘mean’ as well as to ‘be’, says what prose could not say in any fashion. To read the old poetry involved learning a slightly different language; to read the new involves the unmaking of your mind, the abandonment of all the logical and narrative connections which you use in reading prose or in conversation. You must achieve a trance-like condition in which images, associations, and sounds operate without these. Thus the common ground between poetry and any other use of words is reduced almost to zero. In that way poetry is now more quintessentially poetical than ever before; ‘purer’ in the negative sense. It not only does (like all good poetry) what prose can’t do: it deliberately refrains from doing anything that prose can do. Unfortunately, but inevitably, this process is accompanied by a steady diminution in the number of its readers. Some have blamed the poets for this, and some the people. I am not sure that there need be any question of blame. The more any instrument is refined and perfected for some particular function, the fewer those who have the skill, or the occasion, to handle it must of course become. Many use ordinary knives and few use surgeons’ scalpels. The scalpel is better for operations, but it is no good for anything else. Poetry confines itself more and more to what only poetry can do; but this turns out to be something which not many people want done. Nor, of course, could they receive it if they did. Modern poetry is too difficult for them. It is idle to complain; poetry so pure as this must be difficult. But neither must the poets complain if they are unread. When the art of reading poetry requires talents hardly less exalted than the art of writing it, readers cannot be much more numerous than poets. The explication of poetry is already well entrenched as a scholastic and academic exercise. The intention to keep it there, to make proficiency in it the indispensable qualification for white-collared jobs, and thus to secure for poets and their explicators a large and permanent (because a conscript) audience, is avowed. It may possibly succeed. Without coming home any more than it now does to the ‘business and bosoms’ of most men, poetry may, in this fashion, reign for a millennium; providing material for the explication which teachers will praise as an incomparable discipline and pupils will accept as a necessary moyen de parvenir. But this is speculation.

As they spoke, 290 Argos, the dog that lay there, raised his head and ears. Odysseus had trained this dog but with no benefit—he left too soon to march on holy Troy. The master gone, boys took the puppy out to hunt wild goats and deer and hares. But now he lay neglected, without an owner, in a pile of dung from mules and cows—the slaves stored heaps of it outside the door, until they fertilized the large estate. So Argos lay there dirty,300 covered with fleas. And when he realized Odysseus was near, he wagged his tail, and both his ears dropped back. He was too weak to move towards his master. At a distance, Odysseus had noticed, and he wiped his tears away and hid them easily, and said, “Eumaeus, it is strange this dog is lying in the dung; he looks quite handsome, though it is hard to tell if he can run, or if he is a pet, a table dog,310 kept just for looks.” Eumaeus, you replied, “This dog belonged to someone who has died in foreign lands. If he were in good health, as when Odysseus abandoned him and went to Troy, you soon would see how quick and brave he used to be. He went to hunt in woodland, and he always caught his prey. His nose was marvelous. But now he is in bad condition, with his master gone, long dead. The women fail to care for him.320 Slaves do not want to do their proper work, when masters are not watching them. Zeus halves our value on the day that makes us slaves.” With that, the swineherd went inside the palace, to join the noble suitors. Twenty years had passed since Argos saw Odysseus, and now he saw him for the final time— then suddenly, black death took hold of him.

Don’t let your obsession with perfection become the enemy of being good enough.

After the deep recession of 1981–82, the country had had several good years under the Reagan presidency. (Though at a price: The federal debt—or accumulated deficits—had tripled from fiscal 1980 to fiscal 1989.) Beginning in 1989, the economy grew at below-typical rates.

Canto I And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller, Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end. Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean, Came we then to the bounds of deepest water, To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven Swartest night stretched over wretched men there. The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin; Poured we libations unto each the dead, First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads; As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods, A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep. Dark blood flowed in the fosse, Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides Of youths and of the old who had borne much; Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender, Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads, Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms, These many crowded about me; with shouting, Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts; Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze; Poured ointment, cried to the gods, To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine; Unsheathed the narrow sword, I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead, Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth, Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other. Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech: “Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? “Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?” And he in heavy speech: “Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle. “Going down the long ladder unguarded, “I fell against the buttress, “Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. “But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied, “Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed: “A man of no fortune, and with a name to come. “And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.” And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban, Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first: “A second time? why? man of ill star, “Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region? “Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever “For soothsay.” And I stepped back, And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus “Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, “Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came. Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus, In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away And unto Circe. Venerandam, In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:

The problem with the world is not a shortage of brilliant theories or feel-good slogans. The problem is that we confuse proliferation of progressive terminology with profound empathy and purposeful engagement.

A good enemy defined a soldier in ways a fool never could.

Now, what did “feel” really mean to a computer? Another very good question, but hardly one to be considered at that particular moment. Then,

He dropped his Sig over the edge of the berm and pulled the stock into his shoulder, and took a second to get a good cheek weld. He settled in then and waited.

The enormous heat of re-entry ionized the air around the capsule causing a total communications blackout. For four and a half minutes the world held its breath. Were the men all right? Had the heat shield been damaged in the explosion? Was the craft now disintegrating in the upper atmosphere? There must have been a few whoops of joy in Mission Control when the radio finally sparked back into life. Odyssey splashed down in the Pacific Ocean southeast of American Samoa and just 6.5 km (4 miles) from the recovery ship, USS Iwo Jima. The crew were generally in good shape. And they were home.

Frankly, I had enjoyed the war; it had given me many bad moments, lots of good ones, plenty of excitement, and with everything found for us.

Gray watched the hydrofoil settle crookedly into the water and pondered the old quote from Edmund Burke. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Good luck is the expression of your divinity within.

On Wednesday, April 9, 1969, Bush, who was just beginning his second term as a congressman, flew to see the former president at LBJ’s ranch at Stonewall, Texas, about 220 miles from Houston. “Mr. President, I’ve still got a decision to make and I’d like your advice,” Bush said. “My House seat is secure—no opposition last time—and I’ve got a position on Ways and Means. I don’t mind taking risks, but in a few more terms, I’ll have seniority on a powerful committee. I’m just not sure it’s a gamble I should take, whether it’s really worth it.” “Son,” Johnson said, “I’ve served in the House. And I’ve been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they’re both good places to serve. So I wouldn’t begin to advise you what to do, except to say this—that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.” The former president paused. “Do I make my point?

Admiral,” Eric said, “for a good, solid defense of your people, what you need is a strong corps of soldiers who serve, not because they must, but because they see honor in it.

Son,” Johnson said, “I’ve served in the House. And I’ve been privileged to serve in the Senate, too. And they’re both good places to serve. So I wouldn’t begin to advise you what to do, except to say this—that the difference between being a member of the Senate and a member of the House is the difference between chicken salad and chicken shit.” The former president paused. “Do I make my point?

That would be one lousy way to end the human race, locked in a nuclear war with the Block while a Drasin fleet came down on all their heads. Not that there are many good ways to end the human race, I suppose.

I suppose it’s a good thing that the Marines taught me to work with what I had instead of what I needed, Eric thought dryly as he ran a few more calculations through the computer. Otherwise this job would be frustrating and impossible instead of just impossible.

A good captain was one thing, and important, to be sure, but a lucky captain, well, that was something every crew could get behind.

That was fine with Bermont. As a Canadian he’d always had the sneaking suspicion that Americans were crazy in more than just the good ways, and Texans were all that and a side of loco in his experience.

If I had been a Chinese student, Cheng Hao would have shouted all these failings at me, while occasionally whacking me with a wooden staff to emphasize his criticisms. Shaolin’s pedagogical style was profoundly corporal. China has a saying parents often use with their children when they punish them, da shi teng, ma shi ai (smacking is fondness; scolding is love). But I was a foreigner. More important, because he was only nineteen, I was two years older than he was. So he only said, “Good…very good…better…you’re getting better” as I stumbled through the morning.

Good morning, Dr. Chandra. This is Hal. I am ready for my first lesson.” There

We even found time, and nomenclature, for loosely related campaigns. One was the 2011 imbroglio in Libya known at the outset as Operation Odyssey Dawn, a good name for a Las Vegas pole dancer but a bit exotic for a military campaign.

Advani jokingly used to say, 'Gen Jacob is not good for democracy; people don't want elections but Jacob's rule'. (App.: Editorial Goa.)

Reflex or Response I did not survive to be untouched. The emotional patterns of our lives are very strong. They often come into being because we've needed them to survive. But sooner or later, we all arrive at moments where the very thing that has saved us is killing us, keeping us from truly living. Being invisible once kept us from being hurt, but now we are vanishing. Or listening once kept us in relation, but now we are drowning in our unheard cries. Or avoiding conflict once kept us out of the line of fire, but now we are thirsting for contact that is real. Early in my life, I learned to protect myself, and this meant that I became very good at catching things. In fact, I never went anywhere without my catcher's mitt. No matter what came at me, nothing could surprise me. And while this saved me from the unpredictable assaults of my family, and even helped me in my odyssey through cancer, it eventually had a life of its own. Everything—birds, women, friends, truth—was intercepted by the quick reflex of my mitt. Eventually, nothing got through, and the very thing that helped me survive was now keeping me from being touched. The softness and wonder of the world was vanishing from my life. But I did not survive to live at a distance from things, and so I began the long and painful process of putting my mitt down, of regaining choice about when and how to protect myself. I began to realize that letting life in was a deeper way to survive.

she knew that pacifism was the superior way of life. The problem was that it was a lot like communism in that it was only perfect on paper. Put it in the real world and things fell apart fast because it depended on the good will and behavior of people for it to work. And people are an ugly sort at the best of times. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man was kind. In the land of pacifists, it was the man who was willing to throw a punch.

He turned toward the bookshelf, his back to her, saying nothing. He held out one hand and she gave him the Eliot to shelve. His voice was rough. “‘Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.’” Caroline stepped back into her heels. “I always thought she stole that line from Homer. He was all about the ‘winged words’ in the Odyssey, and then Eliot comes along with that line and everyone falls all over it.” Brooks seemed to be examining the shelf again. “I thought you liked George Eliot.” “I do. I think she was brilliant. But what does that line mean, anyway? Is it about influence? Writing? Distance?” She shrugged, wishing he would step away from the books and turn around. “Maybe it means that sometimes what we say doesn’t come across the way we mean it to.” He finally turned, his lips tilted up a bit at the corners. “I always liked ‘nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.’ I think that’s the perfect Eliot quote for the moment we head off to a garden party.

This was the greatest day ever. This morning as you walked to school, you saved a child’s life by pulling him out of the way of an oncoming bus. Then you got an A-plus on a huge biology test even though you studied for only forty-five seconds. Then you were named Student of the Millennium in your school. With the award you were given a brand-new sports car, an all-expenses-paid trip to the moon, and a statue of yourself that will grace the courtyard at your school for all eternity. Then you hit the game-winning home run for your school’s baseball team. There happened to be a major-league scout in the stands, and he wants you to be the new cleanup hitter for the New York Yankees. Your starting salary will be eight billion dollars. What a day! It was so good that you went home that night, sat on your bed, and told . . . no one. Of course not! If you had a day like that, you would tell everyone! You’d throw a party for six hundred of your closest friends to announce what happened. Right? Well, becoming a Christian is actually way better than all of those things. The statue and the eight billion dollars will fade away some day. But the decision to follow Jesus will mean something for all eternity.

While some of the earliest copies of non-biblical writings date to thousands of years later than their originals (Homer’s Odyssey is unusually good; only five hundred years separate the copies from the original), we have fragments of the New Testament that date to within decades of the events they record. This does not allow enough time for distortion or myth making.

I slid my hand back down his leg to his boot to get hold of the wire. Hood leaned down, and whispered, “Kug, that feels good, turns me on.” What an asshole! I found his laces and sure enough, on his left leg, the one bent back, was a trip wire.

if we were lucky enough to be living a good life, we should recognize this gift and thank God for it by looking out for others who need our help in breaking out of the cycle of poverty.

Quoting the Odyssey, he responded: You are of good blood, dear child, because of the kind of words you say.

I love you, Achilles Odyssey” Deirdre said, and Achilles had never felt more happy. His heart raced, and his palms got sweaty as he looked into those honey-brown eyes and said,“Ah yes, that’s the problem. I can’t love you. I love you more than anything in this world, in this universe. But I’m a God and you’re a human and one day you’ll be gone and I’ll be there and my heart will shatter and I’ll never love someone again. And one day you’ll realize what you’re doing, who you’re dating, what you’re getting yourself into, and you’ll leave, and you’ll love someone else and you’ll tell them you love them just like you told me and I will never, never get over that. I love you, Deirdre Ameyfarm, but I can’t be here anymore. I have to...” His breath caught in his throat as he swallowed a sob. “leave. For good.” [NOTE: this quote is from a prompt: When someone’s heart breaks, so does the rest of our world. This creates valleys, fissures, and cracks in the pavement. What’s the story behind the Grand Canyon?]

This sextant consists of a list of books with brief indications of what he thought them good for. At the head were ‘the Four Books’ of Confucius and Mencius, these providing an all-sufficient guide, for ‘a man who really understands them’, ‘to all problems of conduct that can arise’. As ancillary to these he then named the Odyssey, for ‘intelligence set above brute force’; Greek tragedy for ‘rise of sense of civic responsibility’; and the Divina Commedia for ‘life of the spirit’. He also named Brooks Adams’s Law of Civilization and Decay as the ‘most recent summary of “where in a manner of speaking” we had got to half a century ago’.

I’m saying that you need to talk to someone, Eric,” Blake said softly, awkwardly. Eric snorted. Neither of them had ever been any good at the touchy-feely bullshit, and it always showed.

Odyssey Planning 101 Create three alternative versions of the next five years of your life. Each one must include: 1. A visual/graphical timeline. Include personal and noncareer events as well—do you want to be married, train to win the CrossFit Games, or learn how to bend spoons with your mind? 2. A title for each option in the form of a six-word headline describing the essence of this alternative. 3. Questions that this alternative is asking—preferably two or three. A good designer asks questions to test assumptions and reveal new insights. In each potential timeline, you will investigate different possibilities and learn different things about yourself and the world. What kinds of things will you want to test and explore in each alternative version of your life? 4. A dashboard where you can gauge a. Resources (Do you have the objective resources—time, money, skill, contacts—you need to pull off your plan?) b. Likability (Are you hot or cold or warm about your plan?) c. Confidence (Are you feeling full of confidence, or pretty uncertain about pulling this off?) d. Coherence (Does the plan make sense within itself? And is it consistent with you, your Workview, and your Lifeview?) • Possible considerations ° Geography—where will you live? ° What experience/learning will you gain? ° What are the impacts/results of choosing this alternative? ° What will life look like? What particular role, industry, or company do you see yourself in? • Other ideas ° Do keep in mind things other than career and money. Even though those things are important, if not central, to the decisive direction of your next few years, there are other critical elements that you want to pay attention to. ° Any of the considerations listed above can be a springboard for forming your alternative lives for the next five years. If you find yourself stuck, try making a mind map out of any of the design considerations listed above. Don’t overthink this exercise, and don’t skip it.