Good Tenant Quotes

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it." "We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man." "Yes, but the bank is only made of men." "No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.

I hate talking where there is no exchange of ideas or sentiments, and no good given or received

Keep a guard over your eyes and ears as the inlets of your heart, and over your lips as the outlet, lest they betray you in a moment of unwariness. Receive, coldly and dispassionately, every attention, till you have ascertained and duly considered the worth of the aspirant; and let your affections be consequent upon approbation alone. First study; then approve; then love. Let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light discourse. - These are nothing - and worse than nothing - snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction. Principle is the first thing, after all; and next to that, good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth. If you should marry the handsomest, and most accomplished and superficially agreeable man in the world, you little know the misery that would overwhelm you if, after all, you should find him to be a worthless reprobate, or even an impracticable fool.

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license. When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.

Sir, people never wanted me to make it to squire. They won't like it any better if I become a knight. I doubt I'll ever get to command a force larger than, well, just me.' Raoul shook his head. 'You're wrong.' As she started to protest, he raised a hand. 'Hear me out. I have some idea of what you've had to bear to get this far, and it won't get easier. But there are larger issues than your fitness for knighthood, issues that involve lives and livelihoods. Attend,' he said, so much like Yayin, one of her Mithran teachers, that Kel had to smile. 'At our level, there are four kids of warrior,' he told Kel. He raised a fist and held up one large finger. 'Heroes, like Alanna the Lioness. Warriors who find dark places and fight in them alone. This is wonderful, but we live in the real world. There aren't many places without any hope or light.' He raised a second finger. 'We have knights- plain, everyday knights, like your brothers. They patrol their borders and protect their tenants, or they go into troubled areas at the king's command and sort them out. They fight in battles, usually against other knights. A hero will work like an everyday knight for a time- it's expected. And most knights must be clever enough to manage alone.' Kel nodded. 'We have soldiers,' Raoul continued, raising a third finger. 'Those warriors, including knights, who can manage so long as they're told what to do. These are more common, thank Mithros, and you'll find them in charge of companies in the army, under the eye of a general. Without people who can take orders, we'd be in real trouble. 'Commanders.' He raised his little finger. 'Good ones, people with a knack for it, like, say, the queen, or Buri, or young Dom, they're as rare as heroes. Commanders have an eye not just for what they do, but for what those around them do. Commanders size up people's strengths and weaknesses. They know where someone will shine and where they will collapse. Other warriors will obey a true commander because they can tell that the commander knows what he- or she- is doing.' Raoul picked up a quill and toyed with it. 'You've shown flashes of being a commander. I've seen it. So has Qasim, your friend Neal, even Wyldon, though it would be like pulling teeth to get him to admit it. My job is to see if you will do more than flash, with the right training. The realm needs commanders. Tortall is big. We have too many still-untamed pockets, too curse many hideyholes for rogues, and plenty of hungry enemies to nibble at our borders and our seafaring trade. If you have what it takes, the Crown will use you. We're too desperate for good commanders to let one slip away, even a female one. Now, finish that'- he pointed to the slate- 'and you can stop for tonight.

God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness - and LOVE; but if this idea is too vast for your human faculties - if your mind loses itself in its overwhelming infinitude, fix it on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to Heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.

Greg was a supernice guy and a good tenant.” “I met him only once, but he seemed pretty cool,” I said. “Of course, the neighbor across the street was convinced he was up to no good.” “Oh, my God, that racist bitch? I swear, I wanted to rent the place out to a black Jewish gay couple just to piss her off, but then I figured it wouldn’t be fair to the black Jewish gay couple.

One night (I was eleven years old at the time) he came and shook me from my sleep and announced, with the same grumbling laconism that he would have employed to predict a good harvest to his tenants, that I should rule the world.

Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.' 'But should you wish yourself to be like him?' 'No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.

I’ll tell you a piece of news--I hope you have not heard it before: for good, bad, or indifferent, one always likes to be the first to tell.

My favorite professor always used the quote “Don’t let anyone rent space in your head unless they’re a good tenant.

The world belongs to us, the wise ones, we declare...will we be pirates or captains, slumlords or godparents of time? Will we burn the furniture for heat or be good tenants?

Because, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly indeed, “when ye’re a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children—your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it’s clear to everyone who’s in charge.

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occured one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12 gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter, and crashing glass. Yet the neighbors reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the noise and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fires, and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door.

Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you. When I was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a precarious upbringing. I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman... I challenged everything, was continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and out of my mind... Peace and happiness to me were signs of inferiority, tenants of the weak, an addled mind. But as I went on...it gradually began to occur to me that I wasn't different from the others, I was the same... Everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty... Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt... I re-formulated. I don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occured. Something in me relaxed, smoothed out. I no longer had to prove that I was a man, I didn’t have to prove anything. I began to see things: coffee cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. Or a dog walking along a sidewalk. Or the way the mouse on my dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful. Then...it was gone. I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those... I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness... And finally I discovered real feelings of others, unheralded, like lately, like this morning, as I was leaving for the track, I saw my wife in bed, just the shape of her head there...so still, I ached for her life, just being there under the covers. I kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive. Feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

Dear Daniel, How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"? Lily Charlotte, NC Dear Lily, The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this. And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." You think about them all the time. Close the book but forget to turn off the light, just sit staring in bed until you blink and you're out of it, some noise on the other side of the wall reminding you you're still here. That's it, that's everything. There's no statue in the town square with an inscription with words to live by. The actor got slapped this morning by someone she loved, slapped right across the face, but there's no trace of it on any channel no matter how late you watch. How many people--really, count them up--know where you are? How many will look after you when you don't show up? The churches and train stations are creaky and the street signs, the menus, the writing on the wall, it all feels like the wrong language. Nobody, nobody knows what you're thinking of when you lean your head against the wall. Put a sweater on when you get cold. Remind yourself, this is the night, because it is. You're free to sing what you want as you walk there, the trees rustling spookily and certainly and quietly and inimitably. Whatever shoes you want, fuck it, you're comfortable. Don't trust anyone's directions. Write what you might forget on the back of your hand, and slam down the cheap stuff and never mind the bad music from the window three floors up or what the boys shouted from the car nine years ago that keeps rattling around in your head, because you're here, you are, for the warmth of someone's wrists where the sleeve stops and the glove doesn't quite begin, and the slant of the voice on the punch line of the joke and the reflection of the moon in the water on the street as you stand still for a moment and gather your courage and take a breath before stealing away through the door. Look at it there. Take a good look. It looks like rain. Love, Daniel Handler

. . . because we cannot conceive that as we grow up our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so fondly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain essentially the same individuals as before.

...however little you may value the opinions of those about you—however little you may esteem them as individuals, it is not pleasant to be looked upon as a liar and a hypocrite, to be thought to practise what you abhor, and to encourage the vices you would discountenance, to find your good intentions frustrated, and your hands crippled by your supposed unworthiness, and to bring disgrace on the principles you profess.

I hate talking when there is no exchange of ideas or sentiments, and no good given or received

being a great despiser of tea and such slops, and a patron of malt liquors, bacon and eggs, ham, hung beef, and other strong meats, which agreed well enough with his digestive organs, and therefore were maintained by him to be good and wholesome for everybody, and confidently recommended to the most delicate convalescents or dyspeptics, who, if they failed to derive the promised benefit from his prescriptions, were told it was because they had not persevered, and if they complained of inconvenient results therefrom, were assured it was all fancy.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them . . . .

And if that illustration will not move you, here is another: -- We are children now; we feel as children, and we understand as children; and when we are told that men and women do not play with toys, and that our companions will one day weary on the trivial sports and occupations that interest them and us so deeply now, we cannot help being saddened at the thoughts of such an alteration, because we cannot conceive that as we grow up, our own minds will become so enlarged and elevated that we ourselves shall then regard as trifling those objects and pursuits we now so foolishly cherish, and that, though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will drink with us at other fountains of delight, and mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain the same individuals as before.

Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it.

your actions are all right so far; but I would have your thoughts changed; I would have you to fortify yourself against temptation, and not to call evil good, and good evil; I should wish you to think more deeply, to look further, and aim higher than you do.

Ah . . . listen. It’s better for your case, and your fancy lawyers would back me up, if you and I aren’t seen running around together. Primary investigator and defendant. It doesn’t look good.” “You mean I can’t—” Mavis shut her mouth, regrouped. “All right then, we won’t go running around together. Leonardo can work here. Roarke won’t mind, will you?” “On the contrary.” He took a satisfied drag on his cigarette. “I think it’s a perfect solution.” “One big happy family,” Eve mumbled. “The primary, the defendant, and the tenant of the murder scene, who also happens to be the victim’s former lover and the defendant’s current. Are you all insane?

New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private, for-profit health care "soulless vampire bastards making money off human pain." Now, I know what you're thinking: "But, Bill, the profit motive is what sustains capitalism." Yes, and our sex drive is what sustains the human species, but we don't try to fuck everything. It wasn't that long ago when a kid in America broke his leg, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun stuck a thermometer in his ass, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle, and you were done. The bill was $1.50; plus, you got to keep the thermometer. But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some bean counter decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. The more people who get sick, and stay sick, the higher their profit margins, which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O. Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries were they live longer than us? Oh, it's hardly worth it, they may live longer, but they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom. The problem with President Obama's health-care plan isn't socialism. It's capitalism. When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross Blue Shield. And it's not just medicine--prisons also used to be a nonprofit business, and for good reason--who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition, you're going to have trouble with the tenants. It's not a coincidence that we outsourced running prisons to private corporations and then the number of prisoners in America skyrocketed. There used to be some things we just didn't do for money. Did you know, for example, there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? FDR said he didn't want World War II to create one millionaire, but I'm guessing Iraq has made more than a few executives at Halliburton into millionaires. Halliburton sold soldiers soda for $7.50 a can. They were honoring 9/11 by charging like 7-Eleven. Which is wrong. We're Americans; we don't fight wars for money. We fight them for oil. And my final example of the profit motive screwing something up that used to be good when it was nonprofit: TV news. I heard all the news anchors this week talk about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. And I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it.

What is God?—I cannot see Him or hear Him.—God is only an idea.” ‘“God is Infinite Wisdom, and Power, and Goodness—and Love;

I hate talking where there is no exchange of ideas or sentiments, and no good given or received.

Revenge! No—what good would that do?—it would make him no better, and me no happier.

With such reflections as these, I was endeavouring to console myself, as I plodded home from the fields, one cold, damp, cloudy evening towards the close of October. But the gleam of a bright red fire through the parlour window, had more effect in cheering my spirits, and rebuking my thankless repinings, than all the sage reflections and good resolutions I had forced my mind to frame; for I was young then, remember — only four and twenty — and had not acquired half the rule over my own spirit, that I now possess — trifling as that may be.

I don’t know how to talk to you, Mrs. Huntingdon . . . you are only half a woman--your nature must be half human, half angelic. Such goodness overawes me; I don’t know what to make of it.

Could you measure the diameter of the globe?" "No, that I couldn't, sir," answered Schweik, "but now I'll ask you a riddle, gentlemen. There's a three-storied house with eight windows on each story. On the roof there are two gables and two chimneys. There are two tenants on each story. And now, gentlemen, I want you to tell me in what year the house porter's grandmother died?

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered. Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.

... It is nonsense to talk about injuring no one but yourself ... Without injuring hundreds, if not thousands, besides, in a greater or less degree, either by the evil you do or the good you leave undone.

I am not sure the loneliness of the place was not one of its chief recommendations. I take no pleasure in watching people pass the windows; and I like to be quiet.’ ‘Oh! as good as to say you wish we would all of us mind our own business, and let you alone.’ ‘No, I dislike an extensive acquaintance; but if I have a few friends, of course I am glad to see them occasionally. No one can be happy in eternal solitude.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered.  Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them;

Having your parents live rent free in a house is actually a good investment. When they die all you have to do is make sure that they leave everything to you because in some countries you don't pay tax on an inheritance, but you do on rent. And to think that your parents think that you are a nice person and that you love them, but all you are is a shrewd business person. Not to mention that you will also have good tenants who will look after the place. May greed be with us!

Sin, when in the body, cannot not stay put. It’s not a guest that stays in one room, making sure not to disturb the others. It is a tenant that lives in everything and goes everywhere. It can bleed into every part, choking out anything holy.

What to do with the Lookalofts even Mr. Plomacy could not decide. They must take their chance. They had been specially told in the invitation that all the tenants had been invited, and they might probably have the good sense to stay away if they objected to mix with the rest of the tenantry.

No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant – taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me, why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?

Why do you butcher your carabao and feed a throng because your son is getting a wife?" Father always blustered to them who come asking for loans. But always, in the end, the tenants got the money--what they needed for a "decent" funeral, a baptism, a wedding. And as their debts piled up, they promised, "Next harvest will be good...

I beg your pardon, Mrs. Graham - but you get on too fast. I have not yet said that a boy should be taught to rush into the snares of life, - or even wilfully to seek temptation for the sake of exercising his virtue by overcoming it; - I only say that it is better to arm and strengthen your hero, than to disarm and enfeeble the foe; - and if you were to rear an oak sapling in a hothouse, tending it carefully night and day, and shielding it from every breath of wind, you could not expect it to become a hardy tree, like that which has grown up on the mountain-side, exposed to all the action of the elements, and not even sheltered from the shock of the tempest.' 'Granted; - but would you use the same argument with regard to a girl?' 'Certainly not.' 'No; you would have her to be tenderly and delicately nurtured, like a hot-house plant - taught to cling to others for direction and support, and guarded, as much as possible, from the very knowledge of evil. But will you be so good as to inform me why you make this distinction? Is it that you think she has no virtue?' 'Assuredly not.' 'Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected therewith. It must be either that you think she is essentially so vicious, or so feeble-minded, that she cannot withstand temptation, - and though she may be pure and innocent as long as she is kept in ignorance and restraint, yet, being destitute of real virtue, to teach her how to sin is at once to make her a sinner, and the greater her knowledge, the wider her liberty, the deeper will be her depravity, - whereas, in the nobler sex, there is a natural tendency to goodness, guarded by a superior fortitude, which, the more it is exercised by trials and dangers, is only the further developed - ' 'Heaven forbid that I should think so!' I interrupted her at last." 'Well, then, it must be that you think they are both weak and prone to err, and the slightest error, the merest shadow of pollution, will ruin the one, while the character of the other will be strengthened and embellished - his education properly finished by a little practical acquaintance with forbidden things. Such experience, to him (to use a trite simile), will be like the storm to the oak, which, though it may scatter the leaves, and snap the smaller branches, serves but to rivet the roots, and to harden and condense the fibres of the tree. You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience, while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others. Now I would have both so to benefit by the experience of others, and the precepts of a higher authority, that they should know beforehand to refuse the evil and choose the good, and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression. I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself; - and as for my son - if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world - one that has "seen life," and glories in his experience, even though he should so far profit by it as to sober down, at length, into a useful and respected member of society - I would rather that he died to-morrow! - rather a thousand times!' she earnestly repeated, pressing her darling to her side and kissing his forehead with intense affection. He had already left his new companion, and been standing for some time beside his mother's knee, looking up into her face, and listening in silent wonder to her incomprehensible discourse. Anne Bronte, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (24,25)

I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace - Radiant palace - reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion - It stood there ! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This - all this - was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tunéd law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene !) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate ; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate !) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody ; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh - but smile no more.

Blackmail was paid by the tenant or farmer to a “superior” who might be a powerful reiver, or even an outlaw, and in return the reiver not only left him alone, but was also obliged to protect him from other raiders and to recover his goods if they were carried off. It reached the proportions of a major industry, with the blackmailers employing collectors and enforcers (known as brokers), and even something like accountants.

Climb down, sir!” Gerrit shouted. The driver shook his head. He had a pistol beside him on the bench. Gerrit suspected it was loaded. “The patroon will evict me if I give up his coach.” Gerrit had almost forgotten. This was Harenwyck, and on the estate, the tenants tithed to the patroon. “Then join us and become a free man with no lease, no rent, no tithe.” The coachman snorted. “It’s all fine and good for you to play these games with your brother, my lord, but I have a family to feed. And a brother and a cousin who have their own leaseholds to protect. Apart from Van Harens, there are no ‘free men’ at Harenwyck.” He cast a jaundiced eye over the bandits emerging from the woods to surround the carriage. “Not honest ones, anyway.” Thorland, Donna (2016-03-01). The Dutch Girl: Renegades of the American Revolution (p. 61). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The lobby of the Fanny Briggs Memorial Building was almost finished when she arrived. As if to distract from the minuscule and cramped philosophy of what would transpire on the floors above, the city offered visitors the spacial bounty of the lobby. The ersatz marble was firm underfoot like real marble, sheer, and produced trembling echoes effortlessly. The circle of Doric columns braced the weight above without complaint. The mural, however, was not complete. It started out jauntily enough to Lila Mae’s left. Cheerless Indians holding up a deerskin in front of a fire. The original tenants, sure. A galleon negotiating the tricky channels around the island. Two beaming Indians trading beads to a gang of white men—the infamous sale of the Island. Big moment, have to include that, the first of many dubious transactions in the city’s history. (They didn’t have elevators yet. That’s why the scenes look so flat to Lila Mae: the city is dimensionless.) The mural jumped to the Revolution then, she noticed, skipped over a lot of stuff. The painter seemed to be making it up as he went along, like the men who shaped the city. The Revolution scene was a nice setpiece—the colonists pulling down the statue of King George III. They melted it down for ammunition, if she remembers correctly. It’s always nice when a good mob comes together. The painting ended there. (Someone knocks at the door of her room in 117 Second Avenue, but she doesn’t open her eyes.) Judging from the amount of wall space that remained to Lila Mae’s right, the mural would have to get even more brief in its chronicle of the city’s greatest hits. Either the painter had misjudged how much space he had or the intervening years weren’t that compelling to him. Just the broad strokes, please.

Can you really derive no consolation from the thought that we may meet together where there is no more pain and sorrow, no more striving against sin, and struggling of the spirit against the flesh; where both will behold the same glorious truths, and drink exalted and supreme felicity from the same fountain of light and goodness—that being whom both will worship with the same intensity of holy ardor, and where pure and happy creatures both will love with the same divine affection?

I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago); THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER14 And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute’s well-tunèd law; Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed EDGAR ALLAN POE 15 Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered.  Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear.  Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.

Peasant families were close-knit. However, as the Black Death swept through village after village, it became difficult for young peasants to find spouses. The fragmentation of families by illness, coupled with new economic mobility, led many young men to move to the city. "In England, many noblemen encouraged this migration by converting their land to raising livestock rather than farming, evicting their tenants and closing down entire villages ... "...Sometimes a village was abandoned because the surrounding soils were depleted and ceased to yield good crops. In other locations, the decline in populations caused by the Black Death lowered food prices and made farming unprofitable. "But whatever the reason, once a village was abandoned, most of its peasants headed for the city to try to make their living. And as migration increased and the cities grew in size and importance, many noblemen decided to move their too ... however, in the city, nobles discovered that their relationship with the lower classes had changed. Men had opportunities for advancement regardless of social class; the manorial system did not exist in urban centers of growth and progress.

You alone decided to take on the burden of the estate. You made the decisions that led to the lease deal and the discovery of the iron deposits. Has it occurred to you that if any of the previous earls had bothered to make the land improvements they should have, the hematite bed would have been discovered decades ago? You certainly would have found it when you ordered the drainage trenches dug for the tenant farms. You see, Eversby Priory is in good hands: yours. You’ve changed hundreds of lives for the better, including mine. Whatever the word is for a man who’s done all that…it’s not ‘scapegrace.’” West paused. “My God, I can feel sincerity rising in my chest like a digestive disorder. I have to stop.

Packing to leave Atlanta is a lot easier than packing to come here. We bundle most everything up in our bedsheets and cram clothing into duffel bags, leaving the rugs and thrift store findings to whoever the next tenant may be. We leave the next morning, Scarlett waving a sarcastic farewell to the junkie downstairs before we take of in the hatchback, pop music blaring and me leaning toward Silas, both to avoid the door of death and to rest my head against his biceps. Ellison hasn’t changed, unsurprisingly. Buildings here are yellow and pale gold instead of harsh steel and silver. Trees dapple the sunlight across the car. The air is warmer, like loving arms that swirl around me for comfort. It’s so good to be home.

The winter of 1789 was the hardest within living memory. No one, not even the old people of the district, had ever known anything like it. The cold weather set in early, and, coming on top of a bad harvest, led to great distress among the tenant farmers and the peasants. We were hard hit at the foundry too, for conditions on the road became impossible, what with frost and ice, and then snow; and we were unable to deliver our goods to Paris and the other big cities. This meant that we were left with unsold merchandise on our hands, and little prospect of getting rid of it in the spring, for in the meantime the traders in Paris would be buying elsewhere—if, that is, they ordered at all. There was a general drop in demand for luxury commodities at this time, owing to the unrest throughout the country.

Climb down, sir!” Gerrit shouted. The driver shook his head. He had a pistol beside him on the bench. Gerrit suspected it was loaded. “The patroon will evict me if I give up his coach.” Gerrit had almost forgotten. This was Harenwyck, and on the estate, the tenants tithed to the patroon. “Then join us and become a free man with no lease, no rent, no tithe.” The coachman snorted. “It’s all fine and good for you to play these games with your brother, my lord, but I have a family to feed. And a brother and a cousin who have their own leaseholds to protect. Apart from Van Harens, there are no ‘free men’ at Harenwyck.” He cast a jaundiced eye over the bandits emerging from the woods to surround the carriage. “Not honest ones, anyway.” Thorland, Donna (2016-03-01). The Dutch Girl: Renegades of the American Revolution (p. 61). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

When asked about the difficulties of sculpture, Michelangelo said, “It is easy. You just chip away all the stone that isn’t David.” It’s simple to cut things out of a life. You break up with a shitty partner, quit eating bread, delete the Twitter app. You cut it out, and the shape of what’s actually killing you clarifies a little. The whole Abrahamic world invests itself in this promise: Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t fuck or steal or kill, and you’ll be a good person. Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands. A rich man goes a whole day without killing a single homeless person and so goes to sleep content in his goodness. In another world, he’s buying crates of socks and Clif bars and tents, distributing them in city centers. But for him, abstinence reigns. I want to be the chisel, not the David. What can I make of being here? And what can I make of not? Normal people think of recovery as a kind of abstinence: they imagine us sitting around white-knuckled, sweating as we count our hours trying desperately to distract ourselves enough to not relapse. This is because for normal people, drinking is an activity, like brushing their teeth or watching TV. They can reasonably imagine excising drinking, like any other activity, without collapsing their entire person. For a drunk, there’s nothing but drink. There was nothing in my life that wasn’t predicated on getting drunk—either getting fucked up itself or getting money to get fucked up by working or slinging this drug for that drug or that drug for cash. Getting sober means having to figure out how to spend twenty-four hours a day. It means building an entirely new personality, learning how to move your face, your fingers. It meant learning how to eat, how to speak among people and walk and fuck and worse than any of that, learning how to just sit still. You’re moving into a house the last tenants trashed. You spend all your time ripping up the piss-carpet, filling in the holes in the wall, and you also somehow have to remember to feed yourself and make rent and not punch every person who talks to you in the face. There’s no abstinence in it. There’s no self-will. It’s a chisel. It’s surrender to the chisel. Of course you don’t hope to come out a David. It’s miracle enough to emerge still standing on two feet. —from BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx by Cyrus Shams

The wind blew steadily in from the desert seeping the sand in low, thin sheets. Afternoon waned, the sun sank, twilight crept over the barren waste. There were no sounds but the seep of sand, the moan of wind, the mourn of wolf. Loneliness came with the night that mantled Beauty Stanton’s grave. Shadows trooped in from the desert and the darkness grew black. On that slope the wind always blew, and always the sand seeped, dusting over everything, imperceptibly changing the surface of the earth. The desert was still at work. Nature was no respecter of graves. Life was nothing. Radiant, cold stars blinked pitilessly out of the vast blue-black vault of heaven. But there hovered a spirit beside this woman’s last resting-place — a spirit like the night, sad, lonely, silent, mystical, immense. And as it hovered over hers so it hovered over other nameless graves. In the eternal workshop of nature, the tenants of these unnamed and forgotten graves would mingle dust of good with dust of evil, and by the divinity of death resolve equally into the elements again.

I awoke to the fraud that had been committed in socialism’s name, and felt an immediate obligation to do something about it. All those laws formulated by the British Labour Party, which set out to organize society for the greater good of everyone, by controlling, marginalizing or forbidding some natural human activity, took on another meaning for me. I was suddenly struck by the impertinence of a political party that sets out to confiscate whole industries from those who had created them, to abolish the grammar schools to which I owed my education, to force schools to amalgamate, to control relations in the workplace, to regulate hours of work, to compel workers to join a union, to ban hunting, to take property from a landlord and bestow it on his tenant, to compel businesses to sell themselves to the government at a dictated price, to police all our activities through quangos designed to check us for political correctness. And I saw that this desire to control society in the name of equality expresses exactly the contempt for human freedom that I encountered in Eastern Europe.

We’d been expending heroic effort searching for an apartment, a frustrating process which we’d borne in mostly good humor although the bare spaces and empty rooms haunted with other people’s abandoned lives kicked up (for me) a lot of ugly echoes from childhood, moving boxes and kitchen smells and shadowed bedrooms with the life gone out of them all but more than this, pulsing throughout, a sort of ominous mechanical hum audible (apparently) only to me, heavily-breathing apprehensions which the voices of the brokers, ringing cheerfully against the polished surfaces as they walked around switching on the lights and pointing out the stainless-steel appliances, did little to dispel. And why was this? Not every apartment we saw had been vacated for reasons of tragedy, as I somehow believed. The fact that I smelled divorce, bankruptcy, illness and death in almost every space we viewed was clearly delusional—and, besides, how could the troubles of these previous tenants, real or imagined, harm Kitsey or me? “Don’t lose heart,” said Hobie (who, like me, was overly sensitive to the souls of rooms and objects, the emanations left by time)

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasies (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:— I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought’s dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago); And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute’s well-timed law; Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch’s high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door; A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more.

In 1777 the rebels tried to round up the rest of Johnson’s former tenants, but they too escaped to Canada. For the remainder of the Revolution Sir John Johnson and his Scotsmen, together with their Iroquois allies, engaged in protracted and violent warfare with the American rebels along the northern frontier.18 Several other groups of recent immigrants remained loyal to the Crown. Although many Dutch and Germans supported the Revolution, those who maintained their own language and culture did not. Similarly, the Huguenots who settled in New Rochelle, the only French immigrants who continued to speak their native tongue, supported the British. William Nelson explains why: Taking all the groups and factions, sects, classes, and inhabitants of regions that seem to have been Tory, they have but one thing in common: they represented conscious minorities, people who felt weak and threatened. . . . Almost all the Loyalists were, in one way or another, more afraid of America than they were of Britain. Almost all of them had interests that they felt needed protection from an American majority. Being fairly certain that they would be in a permanent minority (as Quakers or oligarchs or frontiersmen or Dutchmen) they could not find much comfort in a theory of government . . . based on the “common good” if the common good was to be defined by a numerical majority.

Mr. Ravenel, if you are to spend a fortnight here, you will conduct yourself like a gentleman, or I will have you forcibly taken to Alton and tossed onto the first railway car that stops at the station.” West blinked and looked at her, clearly wondering if she was serious. “Those girls are the most important thing in the world to me,” Kathleen said. “I will not allow them to be harmed.” “I have no intention of harming anyone,” West said, offended. “I’m here at the earl’s behest to talk to a set of clodhoppers about their turnip planting. As soon as that’s concluded, I can promise you that I’ll return to London with all possible haste.” Clodhoppers? Kathleen drew in a sharp breath, thinking of the tenant families and the way they worked and persevered and endured the hardships of farming…all to put food on the table of men such as this, who looked down his nose at them. “The families who live here,” she managed to say, “are worthy of your respect. Generations of tenant farmers built this estate--and precious little reward they’ve received in return. Go into their cottages, and see the conditions in which they live, and contrast it with your own circumstances. And then perhaps you might ask yourself if you’re worthy of their respect.” “Good God,” West muttered, “my brother was right. You do have the temperament of a baited badger.” They exchanged glances of mutual loathing and walked away from each other.

How is he, Amelia?” she finally brought herself to whisper. There was no need for Amelia to ask who “he” was. “Merripen has changed,” she said cautiously, “nearly as much as you and Leo. Cam says what Merripen has accomplished with the estate is no less than astounding. It requires a broad array of skills to direct builders, craftsmen, and groundsmen, and also to repair the tenant farms. And Merripen has done it all. When necessary, he’ll strip off his coat and lend his own back to a task. He’s earned the respect of the workers—they never dare to question his authority.” “I’m not surprised, of course,” Win said, while a bittersweet feeling came over her. “He has always been a very capable man. But when you say he has changed, what do you mean?” “He has become rather … hard.” “Hard-hearted? Stubborn?” “Yes, and remote. He seems to take no satisfaction in his success, nor does he exhibit any real pleasure in life. Oh, he has learned a great deal, and he wields authority effectively, and he dresses better to befit his new position. But oddly, he seems less civilized than ever. I think …” An uncomfortable pause. “Perhaps it may help him to see you again. You were always a good influence.” Win eased her hands away and glowered down at her own lap. “I doubt that. I doubt I have any influence on Merripen whatsoever. He has made his lack of interest very clear.” “Lack of interest?” Amelia repeated, and gave a strange little laugh. “No, Win, I wouldn’t say that at all. Any mention of you earns his closest attention.” “One may judge a man’s feelings by his actions.” Win sighed and rubbed her weary eyes. “At first I was hurt by the way he ignored my letters. Then I was angry. Now I merely feel foolish.

November 22   |   Matthew 21:33–44 In a parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard, leases it to tenants, and then goes to another country. After a time, he sends servants to the vineyard to collect the fruit. Rather than give the master his profit, the tenants beat one servant, stone another, and kill a third. In response, the landowner sends more servants, only to see the same thing happen to them. Finally, thinking surely they will respect his son, the landowner sends his heir to the vineyard. Believing they will be able to keep the vineyard for themselves, the tenants kill the son. At that point, Jesus asks the Pharisees what the landowner will do in this situation. The Pharisees say what we would all say; they suggest doing what we would all want to do: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death” (v. 41 ESV). In other words, he’s going to turn that place into an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: no survivors. You see, the Pharisees, like us, are tuned in to the law. They’re thinking in terms of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They can’t see Jesus’s underlying point: they’re the tenants. Jesus quotes them Psalm 118, saying that the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. The son sent to the vineyard was rejected by the tenants … but that’s not the end of our story. Jesus says that anyone who comes into contact with this stone will be broken. All of our efforts, whether aimed at rebellion or at righteousness, will cease. The chief cornerstone will break us. There’s one important difference between the heir in the parable and Jesus. Jesus didn’t stay dead! And because Jesus was raised to new life and has given that new life to us, we can leave all our striving behind.

in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled "The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus: I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace— Radiant palace—reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion— It stood there! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow; (This—all this—was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tunéd law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of surpassing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate!) And, round about his home, the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley, Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever, And laugh—but smile no more.

The photographer was taking pictures with a small pocket camera but the sergeant sent him back to the car for his big Bertillon camera. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed left the cellar to look around. The apartment was only one room wide but four storeys high. The front was flush with the sidewalk, and the front entrance elevated by two recessed steps. The alleyway at the side slanted down from the sidewalk sufficiently to drop the level of the door six feet below the ground-floor level. The cellar, which could only be entered by the door at the side, was directly below the ground-floor rooms. There were no apartments. Each of the four floors had three bedrooms opening on to the public hall, and to the rear was a kitchen and a bath and a separate toilet to serve each floor. There were three tenants on each floor, their doors secured by hasps and staples to be padlocked when they were absent, bolts and chains and floor locks and angle bars to protect them from intruders when they were present. The doors were pitted and scarred either because of lost keys or attempted burglary, indicating a continuous warfare between the residents and enemies from without, rapists, robbers, homicidal husbands and lovers, or the landlord after his rent. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, mammoth sexual organs, vulgar limericks, opened legs, telephone numbers, outright boasting, insidious suggestions, and impertinent or pertinent comments about various tenants’ love habits, their mothers and fathers, the legitimacy of their children. “And people live here,” Grave Digger said, his eyes sad. “That’s what it was made for.” “Like maggots in rotten meat.” “It’s rotten enough.” Twelve mailboxes were nailed to the wall in the front hall. Narrow stairs climbed to the top floor. The ground-floor hallway ran through a small back courtyard where four overflowing garbage cans leaned against the wall. “Anybody can come in here day or night,” Grave Digger said. “Good for the whores but hard on the children.” “I wouldn’t want to live here if I had any enemies,” Coffin Ed said. “I’d be scared to go to the john.” “Yeah, but you’d have central heating.” “Personally, I’d rather live in the cellar. It’s private with its own private entrance and I could control the heat.” “But you’d have to put out the garbage cans,” Grave Digger said. “Whoever occupied that whore’s crib ain’t been putting out any garbage cans.” “Well, let’s wake up the brothers on the ground floor.” “If they ain’t already awake.

I glanced over and saw Wyatt glaring at me. Journey’s “Lovin’ Touchin’, Squeezin’” was playing on the radio. “What?” I asked. “You secretly hate me, don’t you.” He gestured toward the radio. “You can’t stand the thought of me taking a much needed nap and leaving you to drive without conversation. You’re torturing me with this sappy stuff.” “It’s Journey. I love this song.” Wyatt mumbled something under his breath, picked up the CD case, and started looking through it. He paused with a choked noise, his eyes growing huge. “You’re joking, Sam. Justin Bieber? What are you, a twelve-year old girl?” There’s gonna be one less lonely girl, I sang in my head. That was a great song. How could he not like that song? Still, I squirmed a bit in embarrassment. “A twelve-year old girl gave me that CD,” I lied. “For my birthday.” Wyatt snorted. “It’s a good thing you’re a terrible liar. Otherwise, I’d be horrified at the thought that a demon has been hanging out with a bunch of giggling pre-teens.” He continued to thumb through the CDs. “Air Supply Greatest Hits? No, no, I’m wrong here. It’s an Air Supply cover band in Spanish.” He waved the offending CD in my face. “Sam, what on earth are you thinking? How did you even get this thing?” “Some tenant left it behind,” I told him. “We evicted him, and there were all these CDs. Most were in Spanish, but I’ve got a Barry Manilow in there, too. That one’s in English.” Wyatt looked at me a moment, and with the fastest movement I’ve ever seen, rolled down the window and tossed the case of CDs out onto the highway. It barely hit the road before a semi plowed over it. I was pissed. “You asshole. I liked those CDs. I don’t come over to your house and trash your video games, or drive over your controllers. If you think that will make me listen to that Dubstep crap for the next two hours, then you better fucking think again.” “I’m sorry Sam, but it’s past time for a musical intervention here. You can’t keep listening to this stuff. It wasn’t even remotely good when it was popular, and it certainly hasn’t gained anything over time. You need to pull yourself together and try to expand your musical interests a bit. You’re on a downward spiral, and if you keep this up, you’ll find yourself friendless, living in a box in a back alley, stinking of your own excrement, and covered in track marks.” I looked at him in surprise. I had no idea Air Supply led to lack of bowel control and hard core drug usage. I wondered if it was something subliminal, a kind of compulsion programmed into the lyrics. Was Russell Hitchcock a sorcerer? He didn’t look that menacing to me, but sorcerers were pretty sneaky. Even so, I was sure Justin Bieber was okay. As soon as we hit a rest stop, I was ordering a replacement from my iPhone.

The late Duke disliked having guests, so he ordered the mattresses to be given to the tenants. It was a good excuse to discourage visitors.

this girl before and they told each other their names. The richness of the autumn came into the air, the throb of the engine, the abundance of the farm, the hickory nuts which she offered to the girl and which her thin hands took. She was Dorine Wheatley. ‘We moved into MacMurtrie’s tenant house a while back,’ she said. ‘Are there any parties around here? Any fellows to have a good time with?

Always require that the security deposit be paid in full along with the rent prior to the tenant obtaining occupancy. Allowing a tenant to pay their security deposit in installments after they have gained occupancy is never a good idea for a few reasons: 1.  Any financially responsible person should be able to afford the move-in amount required for the property. If they can’t afford the security deposit, you may want to reconsider your screening criteria. 2.  It sets a bad precedent from the very beginning that you are the type of landlord who is wishy-washy and will negotiate on important matters. Don’t negotiate on important matters!

Can I pay my deposit in installments?” The landlord should always collect all of the move-in funds in full prior to letting the tenant obtain occupancy. If they can’t afford the security deposit, they probably aren’t very good at handling their money. This is a good indication you’ll have trouble later. Early in our career, we used to allow tenants to do this until we realized that it never worked, not even once. Unless you enjoy chasing down security deposit payments on your weekends and evenings, simply respond to this question with a firm, “Our policy states the security deposit must be paid in full prior to getting the keys.

Can my due date be the 15th?” “No.” Trust us on this one. It might be fine on your first unit or two, but as you gain experience and build your portfolio, you will quickly regret your decision to allow your tenants to have different due dates. Having the rent due on the first is standard in the rental industry. Again, this question may indicate they are not good at handling their money. It’s not necessarily a deal-killer, but it’s definitely a sign that they live paycheck to paycheck (as many tenants do).

Excellent credit: 781-850 • Good credit: 661-780 • Fair credit: 601-660 • Poor credit: 501-600 • Bad credit: Below 500 In

Excellent credit: 781-850 • Good credit: 661-780 • Fair credit: 601-660 • Poor credit: 501-600 • Bad credit: Below 500

whereas a current landlord may not want to lose a good tenant or may be overly excited to get rid of a bad one.

This falls under the same category as requiring good references from past landlords. Obviously, an eviction equals a bad reference. A very bad reference. An eviction on a tenant’s record is the equivalent to committing murder in a landlord’s eyes.

Question: “Do you accept the XYZ government assistance program?” Answer (if you don’t want to accept that program): “One of our screening standards requires a minimum monthly income of three times the rent.” Question: “I was evicted three years ago. Is that a problem?” Answer: “One of our screening standards requires good references from all previous landlords for the last five years.” Question: “Do you rent to people with bad credit?” Answer: “One of our screening standards requires a credit score of at least 600.

My simple philosophy is to get good tenants and leave them alone. That means I emphasize selecting the right people (those inclined to be long-term, respectful tenants). And then—other than routine maintenance or reminders—I leave them to live peacefully in the unit. Of course, if a tenant calls or contacts me about an issue, I respond right away. I aim to be a background presence in tenants’ lives, helpful when needed, but not in the way.

One of the top reasons tenants move from one place to another is because of their non-responsive landlord. Therefore, it’s not just cordial to have good communication, it’s also good for business.

If you want to avoid fines and possible jail time, don’t discriminate against any of the protected classes (race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, disability, and other locally protected classes). Be careful in the language you use in your advertising, on the phone, in person, in your documents, and anywhere else in your business. And maintain good records in case someone ever wants to bring a case against you for violating the Fair Housing Laws.

Good contractors never need to fight for work, so make sure you are their favorite client, and you’ll never need to fight for them.

in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask The mnemonic is “Very Few Wizards Properly Ask [for help].” Here’s what it might look like before you have a product: Hey Pete, I'm trying to make desk & office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We’re just starting out and don’t have anything to sell, but want to make sure we’re building something that actually helps (framing). I’ve only ever come at it from the tenant’s side and I’m having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord’s perspective (weakness). You’ve been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal).

One landlord wrote to the Milwaukee PD: “This is one girl in one apartment who is having trouble with her boyfriend. She was a good tenant for a long time—until her boyfriend came around. Probably things are not going to change, so enclosed please find a copy of a notice terminating her tenancy served today.

Smith suggests that we are more driven by our loves than our ideas because we are more desiring beings than thinking beings. We have thoughts and ideas, but what’s behind them is our deeply held loves, idols, hopes, and imaginations. To bring it home to our own school communities: if what really drives people is their affections rather than their thoughts, the primary task of the Christian school is to shape our students’ loves and desires. Smith says, “What if education ... is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information, but about the formation of hearts and desires? What if we began by appreciating how education not only gets into our head but also (and more fundamentally) grabs us by the gut? What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions – our visions of ‘the good life’ – and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect?”29 Bold implication: How do we use student literacy to shape loves and desires? What about science? Chapel? Recess? I get excited to think about our schools grabbing students by the gut! That’s truly distinctive. It’s infectious and contagious. We should hope to find new ways to employ our curriculum to love God, what He loves and His gospel, because it’s life-giving. Yes, we want students to get excited when they learn about Van Gogh’s sunflowers, but we also hope that through their learning, they come to love God and others more. That’s a challenging task; it’s a lot harder than attaching a verse to a lesson. However, we must dare to accept the endeavor because we don’t want to see students merely conform to boundaries set before them. We want to see them transform, and we fully believe that this only happens when students come to love God because they see how much they need Him and how good He is. This is where life-long change happens. This is where a foundation built at our schools can stick with them into college and life. This drives our missional hope and confidence because we believe the gospel restores people; it restores families; it restores culture. Maybe, we should speak of a worldview as engaging the world through an embodiment of beliefs. As Christians, this looks like embodying the core tenants of the faith – embodying need, embodying thanksgiving, embodying hope, embodying rescue and restoration. When we take on these beliefs, our desires change. This is especially true as the Spirit transforms us through our habits being brought into conformity with these beliefs. As a result, much of the conversation about the Christian worldview must consider what it will look like when the gospel starts to seep and ooze out of us.

There are nations of Europe where an inhabitant considers himself a kind of colonist, indifferent to the destiny of the place that he inhabits. The greatest changes come about in his country without his concurrence; he does not even know precisely what has taken place; he suspects; he has heard the event recounted by chance. Even more, the fortune of his village, the policing of his street, the fate of his church and of his presbytery do not touch him; he thinks that all these things do not concern him in any fashion and that they belong to a powerful foreigner called the government. For himself, he enjoys these goods as a tenant, without a spirit of ownership and without ideas of any improvement whatsoever. This disinterest in himself goes so far that if his own security or that of his children is finally compromised, instead of occupying himself with removing the danger, he crosses his arms to wait for the nation as a whole to come to his aid. Yet this man, although he has made such a complete sacrifice of his free will, likes obedience no more than any other. He submits, it is true, at the pleasure of a clerk; but it pleases him to defy the law like a defeated enemy, as soon as force is withdrawn. Thus one sees him swinging constantly between servitude and license. When nations have arrived at this point, they must modify their laws and their mores or they perish, for the source of public virtues is almost dried up; one still finds subjects in them, but one no longer sees citizens. I

Nick implied the job pays crap, so they can’t expect me to be some sort of art professor, right?” She paused when the bartender appeared with a bottle of beer and a slender fluted glass of champagne. The bubbles streaming upward through the pale liquid reminded him of Emma’s personality: round and fizzy, rising as high as they could go. He felt like shit. “Of course, I still need to find a place to live,” Emma said after taking a sip of her drink. “But as long as I have a place to work, I’m good. I can always buy a tent.” “You don’t have to buy a tent,” he said curtly. “Just joking.” She reached across the table and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “But at least now I don’t have to worry about finding a place to live where I can also work.” He drank some beer straight from the bottle, relishing its sour flavor. Closing his eyes, he pictured that small, windowless room in the community center, its linoleum floor, its cinderblock walls, its sheer ugliness. She was thrilled because she thought it was her only option. But it wasn’t. “Look, Emma—if you want, I’ll take my house off the market. I don’t have to get rid of it. If you want to continue to live there…” She’d raised her champagne flute to her lips, but his words clearly startled her enough to make her lower the glass and gape at him. “But you came to Brogan’s Point to sell the house.” “It can wait.” “And I can’t keep teaching there. You said so yourself. There are those nasty zoning laws. And insurance issues, and liability. All that legal stuff.” She pressed her lips together, effectively smothering her radiant smile. “Taking the room at the community center means I’ll be able to teach there this summer in Nick’s program. So I’ll earn a little more money and maybe make contact with more people who might want to commission Dream Portraits.” She shook her head. “I can make it work.” “You could make it work in my house, too. Stay. Stay as long as you want. We’re not a landlord and tenant anymore. We’ve gone beyond that, haven’t we?” She stared at him, suddenly wary. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t sure what was troubling her. “Emma. We’ve made love. Several times.” Several spectacular times, he wanted to add. “You can stay on in the house. Forget about the rent. That’s the least I owe you.” Her expression went from wary to deflated, from deflated to suspicious. Her voice was cool, barely an inch from icy. “You don’t owe me anything, Max—unless you want to pay me for your portrait. I can’t calculate the cost until I figure out what the painting will…entail.” She seemed to trip over that last word, for some reason. “But as far as the house… I don’t need you to do that.” “Do what? Take it off sale? It isn’t even on sale yet.” “You don’t have to let me stay on in the house because we had sex. I didn’t make love with you because I wanted something in return. You don’t owe me anything.” She sighed again. The fireworks vanished from her eyes, extinguished

The tenants' association broke up, and nobody else bothered trying to make our building look good. What's the point? You can't do nothing when the folks around you just don't care. Mama says people who have nothing of their own don't know how to take care of other people's things. Maybe that's so. I think people are just selfish. They got no problem making a mess of the train or the schoolyard of this building, but they wouldn't scribble on the walls or throw trash all over their own apartment. Mama says, don't be so sure. I think sometimes people want to own something so bad that they just can't help themselves. I know kids at school who carry markers with them wherever they go just so they can leave their tag someplace. To show that they've been there, or maybe to pretend that that space is theirs.

 the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other: the landlord-tenant relationship;she was proud of her good relationship with the household staff.  an emotional and sexual association between two people: she has a daughter from a previous relationship.

(...) but indeed, it is nonsense to talk about injuring no one but yourself; it is impossible to injure yourself - especially by such acts as we allude to - without injuring hundreds, if not thousands, besides, in a greater or less degree, either by the evil you do or the good you leave undone.

Truth is a tenant in the house of virtue.

Better an empty house than a bad tenant’ and ‘something is better than nothing’- these proverbs are contradictory! 1st one says, ‘it is better not to have something than having something’ but 2nd one says, ‘it is better to have something than not having something’! If the tenant is bad, then he is rejectable as per 1st proverb but acceptable as per 2nd one. The two proverbs are balanced if we say, ‘something good is better than nothing’!

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So,

Birds— and Territory My dad and I designed a house for a wren family when I was ten years old. It looked like a Conestoga wagon, and had a front entrance about the size of a quarter. This made it a good house for wrens, who are tiny, and not so good for other, larger birds, who couldn’t get in. My elderly neighbour had a birdhouse, too, which we built for her at the same time, from an old rubber boot. It had an opening large enough for a bird the size of a robin. She was looking forward to the day it was occupied. A wren soon discovered our birdhouse, and made himself at home there. We could hear his lengthy, trilling song, repeated over and over, during the early spring. Once he’d built his nest in the covered wagon, however, our new avian tenant started carrying small sticks to our neighbour’s nearby boot. He packed it so full that no other bird, large or small, could possibly get in. Our neighbour was not pleased by this pre- emptive strike, but there was nothing to be done about it. “If we take it down,” said my dad, “clean it up, and put it back in the tree, the wren will just pack it full of sticks again.” Wrens are small, and they’re cute, but they’re merciless. I had broken my leg skiing the previous winter— first time down the hill— and had received some money from a school insurance policy designed to reward unfortunate, clumsy children. I purchased a cassette recorder (a high- tech novelty at the time) with the proceeds. My dad suggested that I sit on the back lawn, record the wren’s song, play it back, and watch what happened. So, I went out into the bright spring sunlight and taped a few minutes of the wren laying furious claim to his territory with song. Then I let him hear his own voice. That little bird, one- third the size of a sparrow, began to dive- bomb me and my cassette recorder, swooping back and forth, inches from the speaker. We saw a lot of that sort of behaviour, even in the absence of the tape recorder. If a larger bird ever dared to sit and rest in any of the trees near our birdhouse there was a good chance he would get knocked off his perch by a kamikaze wren.

I'm here at the earl's behest to talk to a set of clodhoppers about their turnip planting. As soon as that's concluded, I can promise you that I'll return to London with all possible haste." Clodhoppers? Kathleen drew in a sharp breath, thinking of the tenant families and the way they worked and persevered and endured the hardships of farming... all to put food on the table of men such as this, who looked down his nose at them. "The families who live here," she managed to say, "are worthy of your respect. Generations of tenant farmers built this estate- and precious little reward they've received in return. Go into their cottages, and see the conditions in which they live, and contrast it with your own circumstances. And then perhaps you might ask yourself if you're worthy of their respect." "Good God," West muttered, "my brother was right. You do have the temperance of a baited badger." They exchanged glances of mutual loathing and walked away from each other.

Lastly the corporate office design Gauteng will also require to be planned with particular furniture and tools requirements in mind. It is also important to consideration on sufficient working spaces. Interior office design has turned a little more complex as compare than interior design for residential assignments. This article is all about corporate interiors and project management Gauteng. Interior Office design Floor plans The interior floor plan for an office is first task for space planning. It require skill as well as good creativity for problem solving ability but also special facts of building sets as well as information of the company's needs who will dwell there, normally known as the client as well as tenant. Here the floor plan layout requires to meet all the companies obligations such as how many offices, meeting rooms and storage areas among others and also forces with the applicable regulations as well as standards. The floor plan will also include office designs for different technical and engineering services which include: • Electrical plans for lighting and power • Services designs for Emergency such as exit signs, emergency lighting and mass departure warning methods • Designs related to communications services including phones and computers • Designs related to Fire sprinklers of fire recognition systems and also flames hose reels • Air conditioning Designs • Plumbing services Designs • Designs for safety and entry control systems The corporate interiors and project management needs to be planned with keeping in mind not only all the standards necessary but also the needs of the client's requirements. Office re fit is a general good design perform for work flow and helpful working environments. • Finding the amount of offices, conference rooms and release plan workstations obligatory by the client. • Finding sufficient normal facilities which include storage areas, filing areas, printing areas, and staff facilities including kitchens and toilet facilities. • Office layout for right sitting of offices and workstation work areas to take full advantage of entry to natural light. • Concern of main workflow spaces and flow corridors. • Site of public areas including the reception as well as meeting rooms to keep away from disturbance to the common office work areas. • Area of heavy load luggage compartment systems to make sure structural uprightness of the floor. • Right area for break out as well as staff relaxation areas. • Correct furniture and tools planning

Investment In Real Estate Is A Worthwhile Endeavor Several factors has to be studied by any individual who is planning an investment in real estate. For example, if business properties are desired, the client should are aware of they may be targeting certain conditions that aren't typically seen with residential properties. Nonetheless, for the appropriate particular person, and for those who plan fastidiously and receive good recommendation, this feature investment will be highly profitable. Individuals looking for commercial properties can certainly find that there are numerous kinds of institutions by which to come up with selection. For instance, an individual should purchase a restaurant or lodge, or invest in a retail store. The consumer may also select to buy an investment property comparable to your rent amount advanced and make an income from leaseing every unit. Office constructings can also be a smart selection, as tenants will likely be seen reasonably ardmore three wheelock quickly. It's fundamental, nevertheless, to buy such properties in nearly anything that receives beneficiant traffic. Most commercial institutions fail if they can't appeal to a steady transfer of customers. Buying residential property is something customers may additionally wish to think about that these planning to decide on their investment portfolios. For instance, an individual may decide to obtain a dwelling that have been renovated. Sometimes called "handyman specials, " such properties will be repaired which can offered during profit. Fortuitously, usually they are cheaper than properties that are in good repair. It is also a possibility to build an ad or residential property can be an investment. Builders who've satisfactory money to finance exceptionally challenge made having a tract of land and fill homes for it on the market to the general public. However, as soon as again, it is essential to pick a location carefully, as it may possibly nominal good to supply homes for sale in a part of the country in which nobody wants to live. Purchasing the primary property one finds is rarely a clever program of action. Instead, it is always the most effective interest match investor to comparability store attempting to discover at a couple of home or business earlier than making a final decision. It will make sure that the excellent ill use made. It can be more suitable obtain authorized advice every time one is planning to purchase various types property. This is even if that the buyer must have assurance that the property just isn't encumbered, and he or she can even want knowledgeable to make all the paperwork regarding the transaction is legal. Finally, individuals planning an investment in real estate will find that it plan of action is sensible, supplied they plan with care and hire a reliable broker to supervise their transactions.

Some patrons acted from respect or friendship for their clients, others from a sense of noblesse oblige, and yet others because the free people's gratitude could be profitable. Vulnerable black people paid premium prices for goods and services that white men and women bought cheaply. Landlords who rented land to black planters often exacted higher rents from them than they did from white tenants, just as employers who hired free black

I once watched in awe as a New York City tenant lawyer exclaimed, “Good!” when she was shown statistics about declining white male incomes.

Scientist’s intellect is their ship as they navigate through the treacherous waters of detail where, hopefully, their good sense and rationale leads them to truth. Religious leaders already have the truth and those tenants that are not well-defined don’t need a defense because faith shields them from the onslaught of details and facts." - Fillossofee, Messages from a Grandfather - an ebook