Granted Sad Quotes

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love, Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I sat thinking how terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as incredible as living. One day we suddenly take the fact that we exist for granted - and then, yes, then we don’t think about it anymore until we are about to leave the world again.

Your head's like mine, like all our heads; big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there! But what do we choose to keep in this miraculous cabinet? Little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over. The world turns our key and we play the same little tune again and again and we think that tune's all we are.

On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart.

Which was how Britteny ended up nestled next to Mickey, under the shelter of a painter's drop cloth. She felt no pain. She saw no light. She heard, but barely. Her heart was still and silent. Yet she did not die.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; when there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand, to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying [to ourselves] that we are born to eternal life.

Ah, I feel a sadness on me, Dane. That's how the Irish people say it. In their language, you can't say, "I am sad," or "I am happy". They understood what we English have long forgot. We're not our sadness. We're not our happiness or our pain but our language hypnotizes us and traps us in little labelled boxes.

His appearance gives no clue to what his profession might be, and yet he doesn't look like a man without a profession either. Consider what he's like: He always knows what to do. He knows how to gaze into a woman's eyes. He can put his mind to any question at any time. He can box. He is gifted, strong-willed, open-minded, fearless, tenacious, dashing, circumspect—why quibble, suppose we grant him all those qualities—yet he has none of them! They have made him what he is, they have set his course for him, and yet they don't belong to him. When he is angry, something in him laughs. When he is sad, he is up to something. When something moves him, he turns against it. He'll always see a good side to every bad action. What he thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context—nothing is, to him, what it is: everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to a super-whole that, however, he knows nothing about. So every answer he gives is only a partial answer, every feeling an opinion, and he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is—some extraneous seasoning that somehow goes along with it, that's what interests him.

They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.

Sometimes words just arent enough. Sometimes it's easier to magically lose yourself in the memories long past, the ones you so selfishly took for granted. And sadly sometimes that's the only way to keep those people in your life- recapturing their glorious light before they fade. And inevitably their memory along with them.

Lost love is like watching a beautiful sunset on the beach disappear and the night never turns to day. You take for granted the time you had and you dream of the sun rising again.

A little difficult to know where you were with Elinor. She didn't reveal much of what she thought and felt about things. He liked that about her. He hated people who reeled off their thoughts and feelings to you, who took it for granted that you wanted to know all their mechanism. Reserve was always more interesting.

Brew coffee or tea, sit with a friend and ask them questions—questions just one step riskier than the last time you talked. As you listen, observe the flickers of sadness or hope that cross their face. Try to imagine what it must be like to live their story, suffer their losses, dream their dreams. Pray with them and dare to put into words their heart’s desires, and dare to ask God to grant them.

Everything is temporary, almost like a passing fase, some of laughter Some of pain. What we would do, If we had the chance to explore What we had taken for Granted the very day before, Some would say I'm selfish, To hold a little sadness in my eyes, But they don't feel the sorrow When I can't do, all that helps me feel alive. I can express my emotions, but I can't run wild and free, My mind and soul would handle it but hell upon my hip, ankle and knees, This disorder came about, as a friendship said its last goodbyes, Soooo this is what I got given for all the years I stood by? I finally stand still to question it, life it is in fact? What the fuck is the purpose of it all if you get stabbed in the back? And after the anger fills the air, the regret takes it places, I never wanted to be that girl, Horrid, sad and faded... So I took with a grain of salt, my new found reality, I am not of my pain, the disability doesnt define me. I find away to adjust, also with the absence of my friend, I trust the choices I make, allow my heart to mend. I pick up the pieces I retrain my leg, I find where I left off And I start all over again, You see what happens... When a warrior gets tested; They grow from the ashes Powerful and invested. So I thank all this heartache, As I put it to a rest, I move forward with my life And I'll build a damn good nest.

At times you’ve no one around to be blamed for all the shit you have to go through in life. It’s not always the mistake of the people of the world that you were not granted something you wished so bad to have. It’s just not written for you. It’s not as easy to feel as it sounds to hear this fact from your loved ones who’re trying to console you or read anywhere on a paper, unless and until you’re in those circumstances experiencing the thing you loved the most taken away from your hands. Every second feels like torture that you’ve never heard, never encountered, or experienced before.

It is not the contented or the glowing who have left many of the profound testimonies of what it means to be alive. It seems that such knowledge has usually been the privileged preserve of, and the only blessing granted to, the violently miserable.

He is a good man, and will climb up to the Six Blissful Seats. He has known sin and trouble and it has not made him bitter; he has known sorrow and it has not made him sad. In these last months that have been granted to him he is trying to do good, not

When I see those sad, abused and neglected animals on those commercials I feel despair for the human race. Too many people repay loyalty with faithlessness and give no thought to their own final hours when the might have to ask another to grant them the mercy that they withheld from those who trusted them.

Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind. [...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.' I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid. 'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.' [...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.

Caselli was a modest, taciturn man, in whose sad but proud eyes could be read: - He is a great scientist, and as his 'famulus', I am also a little great; - I, though humble, know things that he does not know; - I know him better than he knows himself; I foresee his acts; - I have power over him; I defend and protect him; - I can say bad things about him because I love him; that is not granted to you

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

They don't know how warm you are and how warm they are with you, not until they're cold. People think a bonfire is something they can build anywhere. It's not. It takes wood, an open space, ideally stars in the sky. They can't fabricate that. They don't know how warm you are until they're cold. They don't know your stars until you're not there.

But the healing place is within you. Healing is a gift you were granted at birth, just as you were granted others. Use your gifts, child. Use the beauty, the courage, the hope and the love that is in you. Call upon your strength. Use compassion and faith. Even during sad times joy is within you. Bring it forth. Wisdom is there to guide you. Use any one of your gifts and you will rouse the power of your healing place. Use all of them and you will sustain it.

My friend, still seemingly perplexed, asked me "So if it's not about genitals, what is it about trans women's bodies that you find so attractive?" I paused for a second to consider the question. Then I replied that it is almost always their eyes. When I look into them, I see both endless strength and inconsolable sadness. I see someone who has overcome humiliation and abuses that would flatten the average person. I see a woman who was made to feel shame for her desires and yet had the courage to pursue them anyway. I see a woman who was forced against her will into boyhood, who held on to a dream that everybody in her life desperately tried to beat out of her, who refused to listen to the endless stream of people who told her that who she was and what she wanted was impossible. When I look into a trans woman's eyes, I see a profound appreciation for how fucking empowering it can be to be female, an appreciation that seems lost on many cissexual women who sadly take their female identities and anatomies for granted, or who perpetually seek to cast themselves as victims rather than instigators. In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognised as female, a raw strength that only comes from unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world. In a trans woman's eyes, I see someone who understands that, in a culture that's seemingly fuelled on male homophobic hysteria, choosing to be female and openly expressing one's femininity is not a sign of frivolousness, weakness or passivity, it is a fucking badge of courage. Everybody loves to say that drag queens are "fabulous", but nobody seems to get the fact that trans women are fucking badass!

I should have seen it coming.” The words don’t surprise me, but they piss me off. I pull away and glare down at her. “Don’t you fucking dare, Nell Hawthorne. Don’t you dare put this on yourself. You should never have to see shit like this coming.” She backs away, stunned and afraid by the intensity I know is radiating off me. “Colton, I just meant he’s always shown—” “Stop. Just stop right there. Granted, you should’ve never gotten involved with a douchetard like him, but that’s no excuse for what he did.

I don't even know her But I feel a responsibility to do what's upstanding and right It's kinda like a code, yeah And you've been getting closer and closer, and crossing so many lines And it would be a fine proposition If I was a stupid girl But honey, I am no-one's exception This I have previously learned You understand perfectly You're the kind of man who makes me sad While she waits up You chase down the newest thing and take for granted what you have And it would be a fine proposition If I was a stupid girl And yeah, I might go with it If I hadn't once been just like her Don't look at me You've got a girl at home And everybody knows that Everybody knows that Don't look at me.

Malayan. It means ‘ashamed.’” He smiled to himself. It was a contraction of puki mahlu. Mahlu ashamed, puki a Golden Gulley. Malays grant feelings to that part of a woman: hunger, sadness, kindness, rapaciousness, hesitancy, shame, anger—anything and everything.

I won't lie to you. This changes things. It may even change you. I know it will change me." "I guess it's a reminder of the uncertainty in life and the foolishness of merely existing when the world is pleading with you to live. If you take anything from this, please take that. We take life for granted. We have to stop that. We have to start living.

I am as you see me. I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy. I learned young that being active breeds more activity. That the gift of studying is knowledge. That seeing grants sight. That if you don't feel anger, you won't be angry. Sadness and frustration, even tragedy, are inevitable, but that doesn't mean that happiness isn't there for us, for all of us. My secret is that I choose to be the person that I want to be. That I don't believe in destiny or predetermination, but in choice, and that each of us chooses to be the person we are. Whatever you want to be you can be; whatever you want to do you can do; wherever you want to go you can go. The world, and the life ahead, is ours for the taking. The future is unwritten, and you can make it whatever you want it to be.

I never understood the importance of touch, his touch . . . until I couldn’t have it. - Stella Grant

He . . . felt as if, wanting to be needed by everyone, he were merely becoming some sort of semi-invisible messenger.

What you must accept is that life can be messy, irrational, and horribly sad. Some things and people are out of our control, no matter how hard we try to manage them. It serves no purpose to waste energy in questioning every action you may or may not have taken. Such unending reassessment simply weighs you down and keeps you from appreciating the gifts that life has granted you, here and now.

And in an instant, Remus understood. He saw Grant properly for the first time, not as his protector, his champion, but as a person who was not so very different from him, who was just as vulnerable to suffering.

I am realizing people hurt in different ways. No pain looks the same. They don’t laugh at the same jokes. They stop tending to the garden. Leave all the lights off. Pick at their fingernails. I try not to focus on what their hurt looks like so much anymore, but what still remains the same; their perfume, their favorite colors and hiding places, and what it means to feel better. Getting out of bed. A good, warm lunch at the diner. Curling their hair or doing the dishes. Regardless of what sadness looks like, wearing their body like old clothes, I watch the way they come back to themselves, every time. Granting what time they need for themselves. Undressing the loneliness. Filling the absence. How gorgeous it is to watch someone be well.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.   O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

Apology I didn't mean to say so much to you. I should have thought to let the evening end by looking at the stars subdued into their antique blue and alabaster hues. Such looking would have fit with my intent. I didn't mean to speak that way to you. If I could take it back, I'd take it, undo it, and replace it with the things I meant to give—not what I let slip (it's true) like any pristine star of ornamental hue. I do not always do what I intend. I didn't mean to say so much to you. It slipped before I saw, before I knew. Or do we always do what we intend? Perhaps it's true and all along I knew what I was saying—but how I wanted you. I should have thought to let the evening end. The placid stars seemed filled and then subdued by what I did and did not want to do.

I was not the equal of my cousins in athletic ability or good looks, but I'd like to think God evened the score by granting me a modicum of common sense, which sometimes seems to be sadly missing in most descendants of Walter Kaminski, who have shown a tendency to live for the moment and think with their peckers.

The beads in her hair sparkled in the streetlight, and her sad gray eyes tore at him. He was head over heels in love with her, yet every choice he’d made had hurt her. His heart beat heavily. This could be the most important moment of his life—his only chance to win her back. He cleared his throat. “We’re not done.

When we experience a sad event it is natural to react to it with pain. The first arrow is the event. Our prolonged reactions to the event are the second arrows. It is natural to need time to recover. But we made it harder for ourselves when we second guess ourselves and feel guilty or ashamed. Instead we can work with and modify these emotions from the second arrow. We can have both the courage to accept our suffering and the skills to move beyond it. We can pardon ourselves and all those around us. This may be the most important thing - that we learn to grant ourselves mercy. That we forgive ourselves, that we accept our pain, mistakes, and vulnerability, and somehow manage to love ourselves and our own lives. ...And it is only when we grant ourselves mercy that we can extend this mercy to others.

It's the darkness of life. The light is here one day and gone the next. Only the fortunate get to take the light for granted. Only the sun is here today and tomorrow. Life and everything else is perishable. Sadness is nothing but a realizationof that impermanence. The expression of our fragility and mortality. -- Here Tomorrow

For people condemned to death, tradition prescribes an austere ceremony, calculated to emphasize that all passions and anger have died down, and that the act of justice represents only a sad duty towards society which moves even the executioner to pity for the victim. Thus the condemned man is shielded from all external cares, he is granted solitude and, should he want it, spiritual comfort; in short, care is taken that he should feel around him neither hatred nor arbitrariness, only necessity and justice, and by means of punishment, pardon. But to us this was not granted, for we were many and time was short. And in any case, what had we to repent, for what crime did we need pardon?

A kiss?" She repeated it to stall for time. This was the sort of thing that she'd taken for granted before the war. Men desired her; they always had. She wanted that back, wanted to flirt with Henri and be flirted with, and yet the very idea of it felt sad and a little lost, as if perhaps kisses didn't mean much anymore and flirtation even less.

my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse

She wove golden rays of sunshine, Into a long and flowing dress, That left the scent on everything she touched, Of nature's sweet caress, Everywhere the girl did go, The flowers would all bloom, And she could chase the lonely feeling, Out of every room, She could drive out all your sadness, And cause a frozen heart to thaw, She's paint the sky pink every morning, But nobody ever saw, No one thought to thank her, For the warmth upon their skin, Or for chasing all their demons, From where the night-time's breath had been, So she thought she wasn't needed, She could leave and they'd not care, But they'd taken her for granted, Since her light was always there, Because you never thank the ground, Until you know how it feels to fall, Or just how much you need the sun, Until it doesn't rise at all.

PHOENIX: As I was about to say… “Telekinesis” means “mind over matter.” U-Men: I’m not scared… I’ll match your natural powers with my electric blood transfusion. PHOENIX: No… No. I’m sorry, you won’t. All your minds… looking out through those little portholes… Naked insecurities crawling all over you like graffiti… So sad… You’ll be quiet and you’ll listen to someone else for just 5 minutes. Mind over matter? Think back to all that processed food you ate today to help calm your nerves. I’m thinking about it right now. I’m thinking of moving it up. U-Men: Aaautch! Bblaaauuurrr! PHOENIX: And moving it down. U-Men: Oh! Awwwww! PHOENIX: I don’t want you to get hurt but you have to understand… the more you annoy me the more I can’t help thinking about deconstructing you, molecule by molecule, memory by memory… until there’s nothing left but screaming, traumatized atoms. So don’t patronize me. Don’t threaten me. And don’t ever endanger any of my students again. Don’t even think about it. Or I’ll know.

Charming, happy, generous with his favors to his friends, Draco wasn't a psychopath. That was the sad and awful part, knowing human psychology well enough to know that Draco wasn't a monster. There had been ten thousand societies over the history of the world where this conversation could have happened. No, the world would have been a very different place indeed, if it took an evil mutant to say what Draco had said. It was very simple, very human, it was the default if nothing else intervened. To Draco, his enemies weren't people. And in the slowed time of this slowed country, here and now as in the darkness-before-dawn prior to the Age of Reason, the son of a sufficiently powerful noble would simply take for granted that he was above the law, at least when it came to some peasant girl. There were places in Muggle-land where it was still the same way, countries where that sort of nobility still existed and still thought like that, or even grimmer lands where it wasn't just the nobility. It was like that in every place and time that didn't descend directly from the Enlightenment. A line of descent, it seemed, which didn't quite include magical Britain, for all that there had been cross-cultural contamination of things like ring-pull drinks cans.

We were singing for Dr. Du Bois' spirit, for the invaluable contributions he made, for his shining intellect and his courage. To many of us he was the first American Negro intellectual. We knew about Jack Johnson and Jesse Owens and Joe Louis. We were proud of Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson and Roland Hayes. We memorized the verses of James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Countee Cullen, but they were athletes, musicians and poets, and White folks thought all those talents came naturally to Negroes. So, while we survived because of those contributors and their contributions, the powerful White world didn't stand in awe of them. Sadly, we also tended to take those brilliances for granted. But W.E.B. Du Bois and of course Paul Robeson were different, held on a higher or at least on a different plateau than the others.

THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US. The dark, sad face filled the sky. ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOME DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. Death took a step backward. It was impossible to read expression in Azrael’s features. Death glanced sideways at the servants. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

Azrael raised his finger to a face that filled the sky, lit by the faint glow of dying galaxies. There are a billion Deaths, but they are all aspects of the one Death: Azrael, the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the beginning and end of time. Most of the universe is made up of dark matter, and only Azrael knows who it is. Eyes so big that a supernova would be a mere suggestion of a gleam on the iris turned slowly and focused on the tiny figure on the immense whorled plains of his fingertips. Beside Azrael the big Clock hung in the center of the entire web of the dimensions, and ticked onward. Stars glittered in Azrael's eyes. The Death of the Discworld stood up. LORD I ASK FOR - Three of the servants of oblivion slid into existence alongside him. One said, Do not listen. He stands accused of meddling. One said, And morticide. One said, And pride. And living with intent to survive. One said, And siding with chaos against good order. Azrael raised an eyebrow. The servants drifted away from Death, expectantly. LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE.... Azrael's expression did not change. THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US. The dark, sad face filled the sky. ALL THINGS THAT ARE ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOMEDAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. Death took a step backwards. It was impossible to read expression in Azrael's features. Death glanced sideways at the servants. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN? He waited. LORD? said Death. In the time it took to answer, several galaxies unfolded, whirled around Azrael like paper streamers, impacted, then were gone. Then Azrael said: Yes.

Your eyes I saw differently when I looked with your eyes. I walked differently when I walked with your body. I wanted to show you clean things. Before brutality, sadness, despair, filth, pain, clean things that were only for you, clean things above all. But it didn’t come off as I intended. Again and again I peered into your eyes, as though searching for form in a deep, black mirror. If only we’d been living in a city back then, I heard my mother say several times during my childhood. If only an ambulance could have taken me to hospital. If only they’d put her in an incubator, that tiny rice cake of a baby. They were a new thing then, incubators. If only you hadn’t stopped breathing. And had therefore been granted all this life in my stead, I who would then never have been born. If it had been granted to you to go firmly forwards, with your own eyes and your own body, your back to the dark mirror.

When my father died... I felt so alone. Then I saw you...and it only made me more sad. When you look out into the abyss that awaits you as you grow older... You're always looking past your father. He's always there, facing it before you and telling you what to expect, preparing you for what's coming. He's a comfort you grow to...take for granted. Then when he's gone, it's just you...facing the abyss alone. See you in the room when he died... It just reminded me that one day you'll feel just as alone and scared as I did in that moment. But for now, you're sleeping...and you're happy... and everything is okay. Right now. In this moment... It almost seems cruel to wake you up.

My agony was soothed; I let myself be borne upon the current of this gentle night on which I had my mother by my side. I knew that such a night could not be repeated; that the strongest desire I had in the world, namely, to keep my mother in my room through the sad hours of darkness, ran too much counter to general requirements and to the wishes of others for such a concession as had been granted me this evening to be anything but a rare and casual exception.

Lord, make a channel of Thy peace that, where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that, where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that, where there is error, I may bring truth; that, where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that, where there is despair, I may bring hope; that, where there are shadows, I may bring light; that, where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted, to understand than to be understood; to love than to be loved; for it is by forgetting self that one finds; it is forgiving that one is forgiven; it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

Death is 'where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.' ....'In my world [(Africa)] death will come chasing. In your world [(the West)] it will start whispering in your ear to destroy yourself.' 'We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? ... A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means 'I survived' 'A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvellous, and she will turn around and smile.

When people are sad they usually make such unreasonable requests that, deity though I am, I am unable to fulfill them. Some pray to be made rich overnight. Some covet other people's wives. Some want to kill the people they hate. Some want the rain changed to sunny weather. Some even want the nose they were born with to be a little bigger. Everyone wants something else. They all pray in vain to Buddha and to the gods, even though their requests cannot possibly be granted, thus making nuisances of themselves.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Every

I love the buildings. They're called skyscrapers. They're the closest thing to an ocean here. But it's an ocean that goes straight up, not flat out. They say that the body of water stretching away to the east of Manhattan is the ocean but it isn't. Not my ocean, anyway. It's weird because back home I just took it for granted, my grey-green sea. Now I have a granite ocean. It gives me the same happy-sad feeling I need sometimes. When I look straight up at the buildings I can feel alone in a good way. Not in that horrible way of no one knows me.

Molden found that when people are rejected (social exclusion that is explicit, active, and direct) they feel a sense of loss that leads to prevention-focused responses. These people feel anxious, withdraw from the situation, and feel regret about things they said or actions they took. When people are simply ignored (social exclusion that is implicit, passive, and indirect) they feel a failure to achieve a social gain, a missed opportunity, which leads them to more promotion-focused responses. They feel sad and dejected but are more likely to attempt reengagement and to regret things they didn’t say and actions they didn’t take.

Mamaw also said that the best things in life die quickly, like the cherry blossom. Because something so beautiful can never last forever, shouldn’t last forever. It stays for a brief moment in time to remind us how precious life is, before fading away just as quickly as it came. She said that it teaches you more in its short life than anything that is forever by your side.” My throat began to close at the pain in her voice. She looked up at me. “Because nothing so perfect can last an eternity, can it? Like shooting stars. We see the usual stars above us every single night. Most people take them for granted, even forget they are there. But if a person sees a shooting star, they remember that moment forever, they even make a wish at its presence.” She took in a deep breath. “It shoots by so quickly that people savor the short time they have with it.” I felt a teardrop fall on our joined hands. I was confused, unsure why she was talking about such sad things. “Because something so completely perfect and special is destined to fade. Eventually, it has to blow away into the wind.” Poppy held up the cherry blossom that was still in her hand. “Like this flower.” She threw it into the air, just as a gust of wind came. The strong bluster carried the petals into the sky and away above the trees. It disappeared from our sight. “Poppy—” I went to speak, but she cut me off. “Maybe we’re like the cherry blossom, Rune. Like shooting stars. Maybe we loved too much too young and burned so bright that we had to fade out.” She pointed behind us, to the blossom grove. “Extreme beauty, quick death. We had this love long enough to teach us a lesson. To show us how capable of love we truly are.

Any animal can fuck. But only humans can experience sexual passion, something wholly different from the biological urge to mate. And sexual passion’s endured for millennia as a vital psychic force in human life — not despite impediments but because of them. Plain old coitus becomes erotically charged and spiritually potent at just those points where impediments, conflicts, taboos, and consequences lend it a double-edged character — meaningful sex is both an overcoming and a succumbing, a transcendence and a transgression, triumphant and terrible and ecstatic and sad. Turtles and gnats can mate, but only the human will can defy, transgress, overcome, love: choose. History-wise, both nature and culture have been ingenious at erecting impediments that give the choice of passion its price and value: religious proscriptions; penalties for adultery and divorce; chivalric chastity and courtly decorum; the stigma of illegitimate birth; chaperonage; madonna/whore complexes; syphilis; back-alley abortions; a set of “moral” codes that put sensuality on a taboo-level with defecation and apostasy… from the Victorians’ dread of the body to early TV’s one-foot-on-the-floor-at-all-times rule; from the automatic ruin of “fallen” women to back-seat tussles in which girlfriends struggled to deny boyfriends what they begged for in order to preserve their respect. Granted, from 1996’s perspective, most of the old sexual dragons look stupid and cruel. But we need to realize that they had something big in their favor: as long as the dragons reigned, sex wasn’t casual, not ever. Historically, human sexuality has been a deadly serious business — and the fiercer its dragons, the seriouser sex got; and the higher the price of choice, the higher the erotic voltage surrounding what people chose." -from "Back in New Fire

A story is told about David as a young boy in King Saul’s court. He asked permission to play on a beautiful harp that was sitting unused in the throne room. King Saul said: “It’s useless. I have been cheated. I paid a great deal for that harp because it was spoken of highly. But the best harpists have tried it, and it was painful to hear the ugly sounds it produced. It’s the worst harp that you could imagine.” David persisted; and because the king loved him greatly, he granted David permission to play it. The music was so beautiful that all the court wept. They had been moved to the depths of their hearts. “How is it,” demanded King Saul, “that so many tried to play this harp, and only you succeeded?” David replied, “All the others tried to play their own songs, and the harp refused to yield to their wishes. I played to the harp its own song. You saw its joy when I reminded it of the days when it was a young tree in the forest. I told it about sunbeams playing in its branches, about chirping birds and about lovers embracing each other in its shadow. The harp was glad to remember those days. “I told the story of the evil men who came and cut down the innocent tree. It was a sad day. Its life as a tree had finished. However, I told the harp that death cannot triumph over life. The tree has died as a tree, but its wood has become a harp, which can sing forever the glories of the eternal God. And the harp, which had wept when I told about her death, now rejoiced.

We've been told that all good things must come to an end. Even things that feel permanent. Stuff that maybe we take for granted. Like this town. Or for me, my mom. So how tightly are we supposed to hold on to stuff that we love? Really tightly? Or not at all? Should we be sad when they go away? Should we fight? Or is letting stuff we love go inevitable, like that old adage says?

A small light floated between us, only to vanish in an instant. “What are those?” Amar followed my gaze. “Wishes.” My eyes widened. “They grant wishes?” “Sadly, no. They’re wishes already made.” “Of what?” “Or who?” countered Amar. “Is this another secret the moon keeps from me?” “No,” said Amar with a grin. “It is a secret that I choose to keep from you.” “Why won’t you tell me?” “Because then this would lose all its fun.

A sixteenth-century poet, especially one who knew that he ought to be a curious and universal scholar, would possess some notions, perhaps not strictly philosophical, about the origin of the world and its end, the eduction of forms from matter, and the relation of such forms to the higher forms which are the model of the world and have their being in the mind of God. He might well be a poet to brood on those great complementary opposites: the earthly and heavenly cities, unity and multiplicity, light and dark, equity and justice, continuity--as triumphantly exhibited in his own Empress--and ends--as sadly exhibited in his own Empress. Like St. Augustine he will see mutability as the condition of all created things, which are immersed in time. Time, he knows, will have a stop--perhaps, on some of the evidence, quite soon. Yet there is other evidence to suggest that this is not so. It will seem to him, at any rate, that his poem should in part rest on some poetic generalization-some fiction--which reconciles these opposites, and helps to make sense of the discords, ethical, political, legal, and so forth, which, in its completeness, it had to contain. This may stand as a rough account of Spenser's mood when he worked out the sections of his poem which treat of the Garden of Adonis and the trial of Mutability, the first dealing with the sempiternity of earthly forms, and the second with the dilation of being in these forms under the shadow of a final end. Perhaps the refinements upon, and the substitutes for, Augustine's explanations of the first matter and its potentialities, do not directly concern him; as an allegorist he may think most readily of these potentialities in a quasi-Augustinian way as seeds, seminal reasons, plants tended in a seminarium. But he will distinguish, as his commentators often fail to do, these forms or formulae from the heavenly forms, and allow them the kind of immortality that is open to them, that of athanasia rather than of aei einai. And an obvious place to talk about them would be in the discussion of love, since without the agency represented by Venus there would be no eduction of forms from the prime matter. Elsewhere he would have to confront the problem of Plato's two kinds of eternity; the answer to Mutability is that the creation is deathless, but the last stanzas explain that this is not to grant them the condition of being-for-ever.

GET BEYOND THE ONE-MAN SHOW Great organizations are never one-man operations. There are 22 million licensed small businesses in America that have no employees. Forbes suggests 75 percent of all businesses operate with one person. And the average income of those companies is a sad $44,000. That’s not a business—that’s torture. That is a prison where you are both the warden and the prisoner. What makes a person start a business and then be the only person who works there? Are they committed to staying small? Or maybe an entrepreneur decides that because the talent pool is so poor, they can’t hire anyone who can do it as well as them, and they give up. My guess is the latter: Most people have just given up and said, “It’s easier if I just do it myself.” I know, because that’s what I did—and it was suicidal. Because my business was totally dependent on me and only me, I was barely able to survive, much less grow, for the first ten years. Instead I contracted another company to promote my seminars. When I hired just one person to assist me out of my home office, I thought I was so smart: Keep it small. Keep expenses low. Run a tight ship. Bigger isn’t always better. These were the things I told myself to justify not growing my business. I did this for years and even bragged about how well I was doing on my own. Then I started a second company with a partner, a consulting business that ran parallel to my seminar business. This consulting business quickly grew bigger than my first business because my partner hired people to work for us. But even then I resisted bringing other people into the company because I had this idea that I didn’t want the headaches and costs that come with managing people. My margins were monster when I had no employees, but I could never grow my revenue line without killing myself, and I have since learned that is where all my attention and effort should have gone. But with the efforts of one person and one contracted marketing company, I could expand only so much. I know that a lot of speakers and business gurus run their companies as one-man shows. Which means that while they are giving advice to others about how to grow a business, they may have never grown one themselves! Their one-man show is simply a guy or gal going out, collecting a fee, selling time and a few books. And when they are out speaking, the business terminates all activity. I started studying other people and companies that had made it big and discovered they all had lots of employees. The reality is you cannot have a great business if it’s just you. You need to add other people. If you don’t believe me, try to name one truly great business that is successful, ongoing, viable, and growing that doesn’t have many people making it happen. Good luck. Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and ultimately to get you where you want to go. Consider the behemoth online company Amazon: It has more than 220,000 employees. Apple has more than 100,000; Microsoft has around the same number. Ernst & Young has more than 200,000 people. Apple calls the employees working in its stores “Geniuses.” Don’t you want to hire employees deserving of that title too? Think of how powerful they could make your business.

Fine people on both sides? I was disgusted. Here was the same man I’d gone on television to defend when I believed it was appropriate. While I hadn’t been a supporter at the start of his campaign, he’d eventually convinced me he could be an effective president. Trump had proved to be a disrupter of the status quo during the primary and general election. Especially when he began to talk about issues of concern to black Americans. Dems have taken your votes for granted! Black unemployment is the highest it’s ever been! Neighborhoods in Chicago are unsafe! All things I completely agreed with. But now he was saying, 'I’m going to change all that!' He mentioned it at every rally, even though he was getting shut down by the leaders of the African American community. And what amazed me most was that he was saying these things to white people and definitely not winning any points there either. I’d defended Trump on more than one occasion and truly believed he could make a tangible difference in the black community. (And still do.) I’d lost relationships with family members, friends, and women I had romantic interest in, all because I thought advocating for some of his positions had a higher purpose. But now the president of the United States had just given a group whose sole purpose and history have been based on hate and the elimination of blacks and Jews moral equivalence with the genuine counterprotesters. My grandfather was born and raised in Helena, Arkansas, where the KKK sought to kill him and other family members. You can imagine this issue was very personal to me. In Chicago, the day before Trump’s press conference, my grandfather and I had had a long conversation about Charlottesville, and his words to me were fresh in my mind. So, yeah, I was hurt. Angry. Frustrated. Sad.

Next week is Beltane,” she reminded him. “Do you suppose we will make it through the wedding this time?” “Not if Gideon says you cannot get out of this bed,” he countered sternly. “Absolutely not!” she burst out, making him wince and cover the ear she’d been too close to. She immediately regretted her thoughtlessness, making a sad sound before reaching to kiss the ear she had offended with quiet gentleness. Jacob extricated himself from her hold enough to allow himself to turn and face her. “Okay, explain what you meant,” he said gently. “I refuse to wait another six months. We are getting married on Beltane, come hell or . . . necromancers . . . or . . . the creature from the Black Lagoon. There is no way Corrine is going to be allowed to get married without me getting married, too. I refuse to listen to her calling me the family hussy for the rest of the year.” “What does it matter what she says?” Jacob sighed as he reached to touch the soft contours of her face. “You and I are bonded in a way that transcends marriage already. Is that not what is important?” “No. What’s important is the fact that I am going to murder the sister I love if she doesn’t quit. And she will not quit until I shut her up either with a marriage or a murder weapon. Understand?” Clearly, by his expression, Jacob did not understand. “Thank Destiny all I have is a brother,” he said dryly. “I have been inundated with people tied into knots over one sister or another for the past weeks.” “You mean Legna. Listen, it’s not her fault if everyone has their shorts in a twist because of who her Imprinted mate is! Frankly, I think she and Gideon make a fabulous couple. Granted, a little too gorgeously ‘King and Queen of the Prom’ perfect for human eyes to bear looking at for long, but fabulous just the same.” Jacob blinked in confusion as he tried to decipher his fiancée’s statement. Even after all these months, she still came out with unique phraseologies that totally escaped his more classic comprehension of the English language. But he had gotten used to just shrugging his confusion off, blaming it on the fact that English wasn’t his first, second, or third language, so it was to be expected. “Anyway,” she went on, “Noah and Hannah need to chill. You saw Legna when she came to visit yesterday. If a woman could glow, she was as good as radioactive.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That means,” she explained, “that she looks as brilliantly happy as you make me feel.” “I see,” he chuckled. “Thank you for the translation.” He reached his arms around her, drawing her body up to his as close as he could considering the small matter of a fetal obstacle. He kissed her inviting mouth until she was breathless and glowing herself. “I thought I would be kind to you,” she explained with a laugh against his mouth. “You, my love, are all heart.” “And you are all pervert. Jacob!” She laughed as she swatted one of his hands away from intimate places, only to be shanghaied by another. “What would Gideon say?” “He better not say anything, because if he did that would mean he was in here while you are naked. And that, little flower, would probably cost him his vocal chords in any event.” “Oh. Well . . . when you put it that way . . .

A small light floated between us, only to vanish in an instant. “What are those?” Amar followed my gaze. “Wishes.” My eyes widened. “They grant wishes?” “Sadly, no. They’re wishes already made.” “Of what?” “Or who?” countered Amar. “Is this another secret the moon keeps from me?” “No,” said Amar with a grin. “It is a secret that I choose to keep from you.” “Why won’t you tell me?” “Because then this would lose all its fun.” I rolled my eyes and turned away from him when he caught me around the wrist. “Don’t you want to know what I wished for?” he said, his breath against my neck. “No,” I said, but my gaze was fixed on all the blinking lights. There were so many. And why did he say or who? when it came to his wishes? “I can’t stand deception.” “Then stop flattering yourself.” He laughed and released me. “I’ll tell you what I wished for if you give me a kiss.” I turned to face him. “Even if I did, you might lie. There’s no way to prove that you wished for what you said you did.” He smiled. “Clever as ever.” “Or unwilling to kiss you.” “Another lie,” he said, grinning.

With his Don Juan Mozart enters the little immortal circle of those whose names, whose works, time will not forget, because eternity remembers them. And though it is a matter of indifference, when one has found entrance there, whether one stands highest or lowest, because in a certain sense all stand equally high, since all stand infinitely high, and though it is childish to dispute over the first and the last place here, as it is when children quarrel about the order assigned to them in the church at confirmation, I am still too much of a child, or rather I am like a young girl in love with Mozart, and I must have him in first place, cost what it may. And I will appeal to the parish clerk and to the priest and to the dean and to the bishop and to the whole consistory, and I will implore and adjure them to hear my prayer, and I will invoke the whole congregation on this matter, and if they refuse to hear me, if they refuse to grant my childish wish, I excommunicate myself, and renounce all fellowship with their modes of thought; and I will form a sect which not only gives Mozart first place, but which absolutely refuses to recognize any artist other than Mozart; and I shall beg Mozart to forgive me, because his music did not inspire me to great deeds, but turned me into a fool, who lost through him the little reason I had, and spent most of my time in quiet sadness humming what I do not understand, haunting like a specter day and night what I am not permitted to enter. Immortal Mozart! Thou, to whom I owe everything; to whom I owe the loss of my reason, the wonder that caused my soul to tremble, the fear that gripped my inmost being; thou, to whom I owe it that I did not pass through life without having been stirred by something. Thou, to whom I offer thanks that I did not die without having loved, even though my love became unhappy. Is it strange then that I should be more concerned for Mozart's glorification than for the happiest moment of my life, more jealous for his immortality than for my own existence? Aye, if he were taken away, if his name were erased from the memory of men, then would the last pillar be overthrown, which for me has kept everything from being hurled together into boundless chaos, into fearful nothningness.

May I?” asked Amar. I nodded. With a small knife, Amar deftly clipped a number of strands. Quickly, he twirled them into a bracelet and slipped it onto his wrist. There was another bracelet on his hand that I had not noticed until now. A simple strap of black leather tied into an elegant knot. “Thank you for this,” he said, pulling his sleeve over the other strap. “It’s nothing,” I said, trying for lightness. “And yet I would trade everything for it,” he said. There was no tease in his voice. Nothing but a strange straightforwardness, like he’d never said anything more honest in his entire life. “Then you must be relieved I gave it willingly.” “Astounded,” he murmured, still tracing the circlet. He looked at me and something light fluttered in my stomach. “Not relieved. Relief is when you want something to stop.” A small light floated between us, only to vanish in an instant. “What are those?” Amar followed my gaze. “Wishes.” My eyes widened. “They grant wishes?” “Sadly, no. They’re wishes already made.” “Of what?” “Or who?” countered Amar. “Is this another secret the moon keeps from me?” “No,” said Amar with a grin. “It is a secret that I choose to keep from you.