Heated Argument Quotes

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I’ve watched congregations devote years and years to heated arguments about whether a female missionary should be allowed to share about her ministry on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement . . . all while thirty thousand children die every day from preventable disease. If that’s not an adventure in missing the point, I don’t know what is.
Rachel Held Evans (A Year of Biblical Womanhood)
Are you trying to bring me to my knees? Or win the argument?” His hand flexes at my hip as his heated gaze sweeps over me. “Yes,
Rebecca Yarros (Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2))
In the heat of an argument, my mother once told me, "Someday you can go to a therapist and tell him all about how your terrible mother ruined your life. But it will be your ruined life you're talking about. So make a life for yourself in which you can feel happy, and in which you can love and be loved, because that's what's actually important." You can love someone but not accept him; you can accept someone but not love him. I wrongly felt the flaws in my parents' acceptance as deficits in their love. Now, I think their primary experience was of having a child who spoke a language they'd never thought of studying.
Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity)
I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One teenaged boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down. In a second floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response.
Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)
Nothing does reason more right, than the coolness of those that offer it: For Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders, than from the arguments of its opposers.
William Penn
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.
William Ewart Gladstone
I picked up the phone and dialed up John on his cell. One ring, and then- "I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, VINNY!" "John?" "Oh, Dave. Sorry. I had been having a heated argument here on my phone and then I hung up in disgust. Then when the phone rang I just assumed, without checking, that it was the person I was having an argument with so I just blindly shouted insults into the phone. How embarrassing." "I’m getting sick of that one, John.
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End, #1))
soon as voices are raised productivity is lost. Disagreeing for disagreement’s sake won’t get you very far. To win a heated argument, you have to keep your cool.
Dana Perino (And the Good News Is...: Lessons and Advice from the Bright Side)
Emily just knew that the grocery store clerk’s cousin had slipped on a bath mat and fallen out a second-story open window only to be saved because the woman landed on a discarded mattress. But what interested Emily most about the incident was how the cousin had subsequently met a man in physical therapy who introduced her to his half brother who she ended up marrying and then running over with her car a year later after a heated argument. And that man, it was discovered, had been the one to dump the mattress in her yard. He’d saved her so that she could later cripple him. Emily found that not ironic but intriguing. Because everything, she believed, was connected.
Holly Goldberg Sloan (I'll Be There)
Argument need not be heated; it can be punctuated with courteous smiles - or sympathetic tears.
J. Sidlow Baxter (Awake, My Heart: Daily Devotional Studies for the Year)
She was attempting to be a nonpartisan, logical peacemaker. There is nothing more annoying in a heated argument than a nonpartisan, logical peacemaker.
Alice Ozma (The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared)
His own exclamation: “Women should be free—as free as we are,” struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as nonexistent. “Nice” women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore—in the heat of argument—the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them. Such verbal generosities were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern.
Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence)
The future says: Dear mortals; I know you are busy with your colourful lives; I have no wish to waste the little time that remains On arguments and heated debates; But before I can appear Please, close your eyes, sit still And listen carefully To what I am about to say; I haven't happened yet, but I will. I can't pretend it's going to be Business as usual. Things are going to change. I'm going to be unrecognisable. Please, don't open your eyes, not yet. I'm not trying to frighten you. All I ask is that you think of me Not as a wish or a nightmare, but as a story You have to tell yourselves - Not with an ending In which everyone lives happily ever after, Or a B-movie apocalypse, But maybe starting with the line 'To be continued...' And see what happens next. Remember this; I am not Written in stone But in time - So please don't shrug and say What can we do? It's too late, etc, etc, etc. Dear mortals, You are such strange creatures With your greed and your kindness, And your hearts like broken toys; You carry fear with you everywhere Like a tiny god In its box of shadows. You love festivals and music And good food. You lie to yourselves Because you're afraid of the dark. But the truth is: you are in my hands And I am in yours. We are in this together, Face to face and eye to eye; We're made for each other. Now those of you who are still here; Open your eyes and tell me what you see.
Nick Drake
Love isn’t like the grand romantic gestures you see in the movie. It isn’t a kiss and happily ever after, no matter how much I’d like it to be. It’s late night texts and tired calls after a long day on location, and heated arguments that end in 3 a.m. Facetimes apologizing to each other. It involves a lot of missing what other couples have-normalcy.
Ashley Poston (Bookish and the Beast (Once Upon a Con, #3))
Ginsberg turned out to be depressingly prescient when, after a heated argument with Norman Podhoretz in 1958, he yelled, 'We'll get you through your children!' For countless American families, that turned out to be only too true.
Roger Kimball (The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America)
Why do you insist on calling me Jocelyn?" I made sure my tone wasn't argumentative, just curious. Because I was curious. His lips touched mine, soft, gentle, and he pulled back, those pale blue eyes of his bright with heat. "Joss is a girl's name. Possibly a tomboy's name." He smirked. "Jocelyn, on the other hand, is a woman's name. A really sexy woman's name." He pulled back."So strip Jocelyn." Okay. He could call me Jocelyn.
Samantha Young
The Law: You must never disagree In the midst of a negotiation, debate or heated argument, try and remember that the key to changing someone’s mind is finding a shared belief or motive that will keep their brain open to your point of view.
Steven Bartlett (The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life)
After luncheon, accordingly, when the other two had settled themselves into the chimney-corner and had started a heated argument on the subject of EELS,
Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)
Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better. Succumb not to the snows of winter. Nor be bested by the heat of summer. Be strong in body. Unfettered by desire. Not enticed to anger. Cultivate a quiet joy. Count yourself last in everything. Put others before you. Watch well and listen closely. Hold the learned lessons dear. A thatch-roof house, in a meadow, nestled in a pine grove's shade. A handful of rice, some miso, and a few vegetables to suffice for the day. If, to the East, a child lies sick: Go forth and nurse him to health. If, to the West, an old lady stands exhausted: Go forth, and relieve her of burden. If, to the South, a man lies dying: Go forth with words of courage to dispel his fear. If, to the North, an argument or fight ensues: Go forth and beg them stop such a waste of effort and of spirit. In times of drought, shed tears of sympathy. In summers cold, walk in concern and empathy. Stand aloof of the unknowing masses: Better dismissed as useless than flattered as a "Great Man". This is my goal, the person I strive to become.
Kenji Miyazawa (雨ニモマケズ [Ame ni mo makezu])
I got into heated arguments with brothers and sisters who claimed that the oppression of black people was only a question of race. I argued that there were Black oppressors as well as white ones. Black folks with money have always tended to support candidates who they believed would protect their financial interests. As far as i was concerned, it didn't take too much to figure that black people are oppressed because of class as well as race, because we are poor and because we are Black. It would burn me every time some body talked about Black people climbing the ladder of success. Anytime you're talking about a ladder, you're talking about a top and a bottom, an upper class and a lower class, a rich class and a poor class. As long as you got a system with a top and bottom, Black people are always going to end up at the bottom because we're easiest to discriminate against. That's why i couldn't see fighting within the system. Both the Democratic and Republican party are controlled by millionaires. They are interested in holding on to their power while i was interested in taking it away. They were interested in supporting fascist dictatorships in South and Central America, while i was interested in seeing them overthrown. They were interested in seeing racist, fascist regimes in Africa while i was interested in seeing them overthrown. They were interested in defeating the Viet Cong and i was interested in seeing their liberation.
Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
Arguments escalate when we want to be right more than we want to be CHRIST. It's easy to get blinded in the heat of disagreement. Soon, all we want is to win. Even if victory requires sin. The one who wins the argument is usually the one who acts LESS like Christ.
Francis Chan (You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity)
A Persian, a Turk, an Arab, and a Greek were traveling to a distant land when they began arguing over how to spend the single coin they possessed among themselves. All four craved food, but the Persian wanted to spend the coin on angur; the Turk, on uzum; the Arab, on inab; and the Greek, on stafil. The argument became heated as each man insisted on having what he desired. A linguist passing by overheard their quarrel. “Give the coin to me,” he said. “I undertake to satisfy the desires of all of you.” Taking the coin, the linguist went to a nearby shop and bought four small bunches of grapes. He then returned to the men and gave them each a bunch. “This is my angur!” cried the Persian. “But this is what I call uzum,” replied the Turk. “You have brought me my inab,” the Arab said. “No! This in my language is stafil,” said the Greek. All of a sudden, the men realized that what each of them had desired was in fact the same thing, only they did not know how to express themselves to each other. The four travelers represent humanity in its search for an inner spiritual need it cannot define and which it expresses in different ways. The linguist is the Sufi, who enlightens humanity to the fact that what it seeks (its religions), though called by different names, are in reality one identical thing. However—and this is the most important aspect of the parable—the linguist can offer the travelers only the grapes and nothing more. He cannot offer them wine, which is the essence of the fruit. In other words, human beings cannot be given the secret of ultimate reality, for such knowledge cannot be shared, but must be experienced through an arduous inner journey toward self-annihilation. As the transcendent Iranian poet, Saadi of Shiraz, wrote, I am a dreamer who is mute, And the people are deaf. I am unable to say, And they are unable to hear.
Reza Aslan (No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)
There's a wonderful, perhaps apocryphal story that people tell about Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the brilliant, prickly, and iconoclastic late senator from New York. Apparently, Moynihan was in a heated argument with one of his colleagues over an issue, and the other senator, sensing he was on the losing side of the argument, blurted out: 'Well, you may disagree with me, Pat, I'm entitled to my own opinion." To which Moynihan frostily replied, "You are entitled to you own opinion, but you are not entitled to you own facts.
Barack Obama (The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream)
I left them to it, the pointing of fingers on maps, the tracing of mountain villages, the tracks and contours on maps of larger scale, and basked for the one evening allowed to me in the casual, happy atmosphere of the taverna where we dined. I enjoyed poking my finger in a pan and choosing my own piece of lamb. I liked the chatter and the laughter from neighbouring tables. The gay intensity of talk - none of which I could understand, naturally - reminded me of left-bank Paris. A man from one table would suddenly rise to his feet and stroll over to another, discussion would follow, argument at heat perhaps swiftly dissolving into laughter. This, I thought to myself, has been happening through the centuries under this same sky, in the warm air with a bite to it, the sap drink pungent as the sap running through the veins of these Greeks, witty and cynical as Aristophanes himself, in the shadow, unmoved, inviolate, of Athene's Parthenon. ("The Chamois")
Daphne du Maurier (Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories)
While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably right. I hope they are. "Blindsight" is a thought experiment, a game of "Just suppose" and "What if". Nothing more. On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used exactly the same argument to prove their own superioirity, a thousand years ago: "if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?" Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role. The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The game is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only those who haven't yet lost.
Peter Watts (Blindsight (Firefall, #1))
Hatred like an untamed dog cannot be hidden. It constantly rears up its ugly head as lies and strifes.
Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu
What was the problem? Couldn't a guy have a heated argument with his secret billionaire boyfriend at hockey practice with out an audience?
Avon Gale (Save of the Game (Scoring Chances, #2))
The heated argument about the true essence of Islam is simply pointless. Islam has no fixed DNA. Islam is whatever Muslims make of it.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
She had sworn to her father that she would not spend more, but she was not a gentleman who needed to pretend that an angry retort in the midst of a heated argument was
Timothy Underwood (The Cost of a Kiss: An Elizabeth and Darcy Story (Mr. Underwood's Variations))
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Kenneth Burke (The Philosophy of Literary Form)
Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
She had sworn to her father that she would not spend more, but she was not a gentleman who needed to pretend that an angry retort in the midst of a heated argument was a solemn vow before God.
Timothy Underwood (The Cost of a Kiss: An Elizabeth and Darcy Story (Mr. Underwood's Variations))
He is having a heated argument with the voice inside his head about whether or not his mother will know if he dies because maternal intuition and also fortune teller when the door behind him opens.
Erin Morgenstern (The Starless Sea)
When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to back channel personal attacks, which are far nastier and more harmful than any heated argument over issues
Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team)
The vibration of laughter increased, and for some reason it did even more to warm her than the heat from his big, strong body. “You know, Sister Beth, you’re a dangerous woman.” “You said that before, and I assume you’re being sarcastic.” She was too sleepy to come up with a real argument, too warm and safe for the first time in days to bestir herself. “I can’t imagine anyone more pathetically weak than I am. What could I possibly do to you?” “Sweetheart, you could make me fall in love, and that’s fatal.
Anne Stuart (On Thin Ice (Ice, #6))
The hardest time to say something that turns another back to the Lord is during an argument. We get heated and easily tempted to say something we don’t mean. Perhaps in our anger for the moment we mean what we say. But when we start thinking more rationally, we realize that’s not our heart at all. So we end up regretting our words. In this example we see that the words start with the heart. We need to learn to back down and cool off a minute. If we aren’t meditating on the Lord, in our anger we will let something slip. It’s good to remember to cool off and spend some time with God. Think about the situation, then go back and speak when your heart is sober.
Adam Houge (The 7 Most Powerful Prayers That Will Change Your Life Forever)
But the arguments we had over free will and monads, while heated, were never as combatative as the ones we had over our marriage. I knew I was in trouble when, in one philosophical discussion, Harlene proved I didn’t exist.
Woody Allen (Apropos of Nothing)
My opponents' first argument was that the rocks of the earth--which are generally agreed to have once been in a hot and melted state--would have required far longer to lose their heat than the Scriptures described. My reply was that the earth had indeed cooled at great speed, being made possible by a process I termed Divine Refrigeration.
Matthew Kneale (English Passengers)
Matthias nodded to the fisherman and Rotty winked back at him, giving a brief tug on the beard of his disguise. He poled the boat rapidly down the canal. As they approached Zentsbridge, Matthias caught sight of the huge bottleboat parked beneath it. It was wide enough that the hulls scraped as Rotty tried to pass. The bottle man and Rotty broke into a heated argument, and Nina let loose another wail, long and loud enough that Matthias wondered if she was trying to compete with the plague siren. “Perhaps some deep breathing?” the medik suggested from the railing. Matthias gave Nina the barest warning glance. They could fake a pregnancy. They couldn’t fake an actual birth. At least he didn’t think they could. He wouldn’t put anything past Kaz at this point.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Edna had once told Madame Ratignolle that she would never sacrifice herself for her children, or for any one. Then had followed a rather heated argument; the two women did not appear to understand each other or to be talking the same language. Edna tried to appease her friend, to explain. 'I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children; but I wouldn't give myself. I can't make it more clear; it's only something which I am beginning to comprehend, which is revealing itself to me.
Kate Chopin (The Awakening)
You’ve had sex with that girl!” He blinked at my tone and my words, then his face heated. “And?” I blinked that he didn’t even try and deny it. “And…and…” Not having a real argument, I sighed and hung my head. “And I’m tired of running into girls who know what making love to you feels like. “ He sighed and stepped into me, cupping my face. His voice and face softer, he shook his head. “No one but you knows what making love to me feels like.” Raising his eyebrows, he rested his head against mine. “I didn’t even know what making love was like until you.” Pulling back, he tilted his head at the building. “What happened with that girl…was just sex. A mindless, physical act that had no meaning or feeling behind it. It was just pleasure…and I don’t even really remember it.” Squatting down, he met my eye. “I remember every single time with you. Even before we were together, being with you haunted my dreams. I couldn’t forget, even when I wanted to…” His thumbs brushed over my cheeks as I felt tears falling down them. “You…seared me. That’s making love. That is something that none of them have over you. You are…unforgettable…and I love you.” Sniffling, I swallowed a couple times before I could finally say, “I love you, too.
S.C. Stephens (Effortless (Thoughtless, #2))
So, what do you go for in a girl?” He crows, lifting a lager to his lips Gestures where his mate sits Downs his glass “He prefers tits I prefer ass. What do you go for in a girl?” I don’t feel comfortable The air left the room a long time ago All eyes are on me Well, if you must know I want a girl who reads Yeah. Reads. I’m not trying to call you a chauvinist Cos I know you’re not alone in this but… I want a girl who reads Who needs the written word & uses the added vocabulary She gleans from novels and poetry To hold lively conversation In a range of social situations I want a girl who reads Who’s heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene Or even Heat magazine Who’ll tie back her hair while reading Jane Eyre And goes cover to cover with each water stones three for two offer but I want a girl who doesn’t stop there I want a girl who reads Who feeds her addiction for fiction With unusual poems and plays That she hunts out in crooked bookshops for days and days and days She’ll sit addicted at breakfast, soaking up the back of the cornflakes box And the information she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox Cos she’s interesting & unique & her theories make me go weak at the knees I want a girl who reads A girl who’s eyes will analyze The menu over dinner Who’ll use what she learns to kick my ass in arguments so she always ends the winner But she’ll still be sweet and she’ll still be flirty Cos she loves the classics and the classics are dirty So late at night she’d always have me in a stupor As she paraphrases the raunchier moments from the works of Jilly Cooper See, some guys prefer asses Some prefer tits And I’m not saying that I don’t like those bits But what’s more important What supersedes Is a girl with passion, wit and dreams So I’d like a girl who reads.
Mark Grist
Our most heated argument concerned the preponderance of women in my epic and Athene’s ubiquity, and the precedence given to famous women when Odysseus meets the ghosts of the departed. I had mentioned only Tyro, Antiope, Alcmene, Jocasta, Chloris, Leda, Iphimedeia, Phaedra, Procris, Ariadne, Maera, Clymene and, naturally, Eriphyle, and let Odysseus describe them to Alcinous. “My dear Princess,” said Phemius, “if you really think that you can pass off this poem as the work of a man, you deceive yourself. A man would give pride of place to the ghosts of Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus’s old comrades, and other more ancient heroes such as Minos, Orion, Tityus, Salmoneus, Tantalus, Sisyphus and Hercules; and mention their wives and mothers incidentally, if at all; and make at least one god help Odysseus at some stage or other.” I admitted the force of his argument, which explains why, now, Odysseus first meets a comrade who has fallen off a roof at Circe’s house—I call him Elpenor—and cracks a mild joke about Elpenor’s having come more quickly to the Grove of Persephone by land than he by sea. I also allow Alcinous to ask after Agamemnon, Achilles and the rest, and Odysseus to satisfy his curiosity. For Phemius’s sake I have even let Hermes supply the moly in passages adapted from my uncle Mentor’s story of Ulysses. In my original version I had given all the credit to Athene.
Robert Graves (Homer's Daughter)
If you allow disagreements and arguments to escalate, you are making the bone of contention of whatever you are heatedly arguing about more important than your relationship.
Chris Prentiss (The Laws of Love: Creating the Relationship of Your Dreams)
It's the golden glint of a kind heart that nourishes the fabric of society, not the scorching heat of argumentation.
Abhijit Naskar (Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism)
Then there was a major disruption with Errol Flynn, who arrived at rehearsal in the midst of a heated argument with his wife Lili Damita. The couple kept bickering through the reading until Woodruff erupted. “It was magnificent,” said Flynn’s costar, Olivia De Havilland, in Radio Mirror. “Never in all my life have I seen such wrath. I stood before my mirror night after night, trying to register anger like that.
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
That does not mean that the Islamic State has been ‘un-Islamic’ or ‘anti-Islamic’, as some people argue. It is particularly ironic when Christian leaders such as Barack Obama have the temerity to tell self-professing Muslims such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi what it means to be Muslim. The heated argument about the true essence of Islam is simply pointless. Islam has no fixed DNA. Islam is whatever Muslims make of it.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
Robert Hall was once overheard saying amid the heat of an argument, "Calm me, O Lamb of God!" But we may go further and say, "Lord Jesus, let Your patience arise in me, as a spring of fresh water in a briny sea.
F.B. Meyer (The Secret of Guidance (Moody Classics))
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly understood by every worshipping soul: We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill. Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I beseech thee, show me thy glory.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
To lovers out there … Happy Valentines Day. There may be obstacles along the way. The maybe be heated argument and different opinion. There maybe temptations, misunderstanding, mistakes and fights. There may be fear and doubts. There may be demands with no supply. There may be expectations, needs and wants that are not meet . Love conquers them all, because Love never gives up and it endures through all the circumstances.
D.J. Kyos
Nearby, at the edge of a newly planted peach orchard, the karpos Peaches stood in all his diapered glory. (Oh, sure. She showed up after the danger had passed.) He was engaged in a heated conversation with a young female karpos whom I assumed was a native of the area. She looked much like Peaches himself, except she was covered in a fine layer of spines. 'Peaches,' Peaches told her. 'Prickly Pear!' the young lady rejoined. 'Peaches!' "Prickly Pear!' That seemed to be the extent of their argument. Perhaps it was about to devolve into a death match for local fruit supremacy. Or perhaps it was the beginning of the greatest love story ever to ripen. It was hard to tell with karpoi.
Rick Riordan (The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo, #5))
I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first recess. This was not true of Jem and me. We acquired no traumas from watching our father win or lose. I’m sorry that I can’t provide any drama in this respect; if I did, it would not be true. We could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious than professional, but this was from watching lawyers other than our father. I never heard Atticus raise his voice in my life, except to a deaf witness.
Harper Lee
Strange, how complications melt away in the face of disaster. How all the fear and shame and tangled knots of logic suddenly dissolve in the heat, leaving only the core of love that cares nothing for the noise in our heads, that dismisses our arguments and ignores our hesitations.
Issac Marion
snuck into the vacant copilot’s room next to our victim, carrying a bucket with the sea cucumber. I crept through the room, being careful not to make any noise. I removed the sea cucumber and slid it into our victim’s toilet, being careful not to splash any water. The sea cucumber looked like a world record, giant turd. It was jet black, about fourteen inches long and thick around as a coke can. Neither of our pilots was a scuba diver and I guessed they would never suspect the giant turd was really a sea creature. The humongous turd impersonator lay motionless in the bottom of the toilet bowl, leaking a faint reddish dye. When they discovered the state of the toilet the pilots began a heated argument, blaming each other for not flushing the disgusting mound of excrement. This was a serious breach of etiquette for an officer and gentleman. The hapless pilots finally tried flushing and the toilet backed up and flooded the bathroom. They had to summon a plumber who immediately recognized the turd for what it was, a sea cucumber, and said it must have somehow crawled up through the pipes. Neither pilot ever guessed they were the victims of a practical joke. The prank was flawless and I still have the picture of the cucumber in their toilet.
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
Montaigne admits to getting carried away in the heat of an argument, exaggerating the naked truth by the vigor of his words. Yet we all insist upon our opinions, forcing them upon others by iron and fire. Better to be tentative than to be recklessly sure, to be an apprentice at sixty than to present oneself as a doctor at ten.
Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre)
It’s a rather beautiful discovery: in a world where so many people seem to hold extreme views with strident certainty, you can deflate somebody’s overconfidence and moderate their politics simply by asking them to explain the details. Next time you’re in a politically heated argument, try asking your interlocutor not to justify herself, but simply to explain the policy in question. She wants to introduce a universal basic income, or a flat tax, or a points-based immigration system, or Medicare for all. OK, that’s interesting. So what exactly does she mean by that? She may learn something as she tries to explain. So may you. And you may both find that you understand a little less, and agree a little more, than you had assumed.
Tim Harford (The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics)
He tossed on the pillow, trying to dislodge the flies that tormented him every waking hour. Had there always been so many? He had never noticed them so keenly before; but now, tied to this bed, he began to think that had he been Pharaoh, he would have let the Hebrew children go anywhere they wanted, with whatever they wanted, at the beginning of the fourth plague, without any more argument.
Sarah Beth Brazytis (The Letter (Letters from Home #1))
The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary … You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.
Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves)
In summer, most ramen restaurants in Tokyo serve hiyashi chūka, a cold ramen noodle salad topped with strips of ham, cucumber, and omelet; a tart sesame- or soy-based sauce; and sometimes other vegetables, like a tomato wedge or sheets of wakame seaweed. The vegetables are arranged in piles of parallel shreds radiating from the center to the edge of the plate like bicycle spokes, and you toss everything together before eating. It's bracing, ice-cold, addictive- summer food from the days before air conditioning. In Oishinbo: Ramen and Gyōza, a young lifestyle reporter wants to write an article about hiyashi chūka. "I'm not interested in something like hiyashi chūka," says my alter ego Yamaoka. It's a fake Chinese dish made with cheap industrial ingredients, he explains. Later, however, Yamaoka relents. "Cold noodles, cold soup, and cold toppings," he muses. "The idea of trying to make a good dish out of them is a valid one." Good point, jerk. He mills organic wheat into flour and hires a Chinese chef to make the noodles. He buys a farmyard chicken from an old woman to make the stock and seasons it with the finest Japanese vinegar, soy sauce, and sake. Yamaoka's mean old dad Kaibara Yūzan inevitably gets involved and makes an even better hiyashi chūka by substituting the finest Chinese vinegar, soy sauce, and rice wine. When I first read this, I enjoyed trying to follow the heated argument over this dish I'd never even heard of. Yamaoka and Kaibara are in total agreement that hiyashi chūka needs to be made with quality ingredients, but they disagree about what kind of dish it is: Chinese, Japanese, or somewhere in between? Unlike American food, Japanese cuisine has boundary issues.
Matthew Amster-Burton (Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo)
The rapt pupil will be forgive for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be visrtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it wil commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature-but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all. So where is the country of the Tsar of Death? Where is the nation of the Tsar of Life? They are not so easy to find, yet each day you step upon both one hundred times or more. Every portion of Eath is infinitely divided between them, to the smallest unit of measure, and smaller yet. Even the specks of soil war with one another. Even the atoms strangle each other in their sleep. To reach the country of the Tsar of Life, which is both impossibly near and hopelessly far, you must not wish to arrive there, but approach is stealthily, sideways. It is best to be ill, in a fever, a delirium. In the riot of sickness, when the threatened flesh rouses itself, all redness and fluid and heat, it is easiest to topple over into the country you seek. Of course, it is just as easy, in this manner to reach the country of the Tsar of Death. Travel is never without risk.
Catherynne M. Valente (Deathless)
We note that occasionally the remark is made that what Carnot called heat was actually entropy, which is conserved in his cycle. Although it would be preposterous to say that Carnot discovered entropy, we may understand why his argument worked and why Clausius and Thomson were able to rescue his cycle and incorporate it in the new discipline. Essentially he saw that there was something that was conserved in reversible processes; this was not heat or caloric, however, but what was later called entropy.
Carlo Cercignani (Ludwig Boltzmann: The Man Who Trusted Atoms)
Two centuries ago, the United States settled into a permanent political order, after fourteen years of violence and heated debate. Two centuries ago, France fell into ruinous disorder that ran its course for twenty-four years. In both countries there resounded much ardent talk of rights--rights natural, rights prescriptive. . . . [F]anatic ideology had begun to rage within France, so that not one of the liberties guaranteed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man could be enjoyed by France's citizens. One thinks of the words of Dostoievski: "To begin with unlimited liberty is to end with unlimited despotism." . . . In striking contrast, the twenty-two senators and fifty-nine representatives who during the summer of 1789 debated the proposed seventeen amendments to the Constitution were men of much experience in representative government, experience acquired within the governments of their several states or, before 1776, in colonial assembles and in the practice of the law. Many had served in the army during the Revolution. They decidedly were political realists, aware of how difficult it is to govern men's passions and self-interest. . . . Among most of them, the term democracy was suspect. The War of Independence had sufficed them by way of revolution. . . . The purpose of law, they knew, is to keep the peace. To that end, compromises must be made among interests and among states. Both Federalists and Anti-Federalists ranked historical experience higher than novel theory. They suffered from no itch to alter American society radically; they went for sound security. The amendments constituting what is called the Bill of Rights were not innovations, but rather restatements of principles at law long observed in Britain and in the thirteen colonies. . . . The Americans who approved the first ten amendments to their Constitution were no ideologues. Neither Voltaire nor Rousseau had any substantial following among them. Their political ideas, with few exceptions, were those of English Whigs. The typical textbook in American history used to inform us that Americans of the colonial years and the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras were ardent disciples of John Locke. This notion was the work of Charles A. Beard and Vernon L. Parrington, chiefly. It fitted well enough their liberal convictions, but . . . it has the disadvantage of being erroneous. . . . They had no set of philosophes inflicted upon them. Their morals they took, most of them, from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Their Bill of Rights made no reference whatever to political abstractions; the Constitution itself is perfectly innocent of speculative or theoretical political arguments, so far as its text is concerned. John Dickinson, James Madison, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, and other thoughtful delegates to the Convention in 1787 knew something of political theory, but they did not put political abstractions into the text of the Constitution. . . . Probably most members of the First Congress, being Christian communicants of one persuasion or another, would have been dubious about the doctrine that every man should freely indulge himself in whatever is not specifically prohibited by positive law and that the state should restrain only those actions patently "hurtful to society." Nor did Congress then find it necessary or desirable to justify civil liberties by an appeal to a rather vague concept of natural law . . . . Two centuries later, the provisions of the Bill of Rights endure--if sometimes strangely interpreted. Americans have known liberty under law, ordered liberty, for more than two centuries, while states that have embraced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, with its pompous abstractions, have paid the penalty in blood.
Russell Kirk (Rights and Duties: Reflections on Our Conservative Constitution)
Without denying that adaptation may be one of God's methods of operation, it may be definitely said, that an intelligent Master of the universe, in which we believe, has the power to prepare an earth to fit the needs of man; or fit man to meet the conditions of earth. If He were not able to do so, He would be inferior to His creatures who build houses for human comfort, and equip them with heating, freezing, and many other devices. The argument for adaptation, standing alone, requires chance as a creative force. That we do not and cannot believe.
John A. Widtsoe (An Understandable Religion)
Cassian was sizing up Nesta, a gleam in his eyes that I could only interpret as a warrior finding himself faced with a new, interesting opponent. Then, Mother above, Nesta shifted her attention to Cassian, noticing that gleam- what it meant. She snarled softly. 'What are you looking at?' Cassian's brows rose- little amusement to be found now. 'Someone who let her younger sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing. Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall.' My face began heating, and I opened my mouth. To say what, I don't know. 'Your sister died- died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don't expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make- and insult my people in the process.' Nesta didn't bat an eyelash as she studied the handsome features, the muscled torso. Then turned to me. Dismissing him entirely. Cassian's face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe... only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
As a bonus, Rand agreed to design a personal calling card for Jobs. He came up with a colorful type treatment, which Jobs liked, but they ended up having a lengthy and heated disagreement about the placement of the period after the “P” in Steven P. Jobs. Rand had placed the period to the right of the “P.”, as it would appear if set in lead type. Steve preferred the period to be nudged to the left, under the curve of the “P.”, as is possible with digital typography. “It was a fairly large argument about something relatively small,” Susan Kare recalled. On this one Jobs prevailed. In
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Ed Tronick, a pioneer in developmental psychology, teaches us, interpersonal rupture and repair is good for building resilience. These ruptures are perfect doses of moderate, controllable stress. Conversation, for example, promotes resilience; discussions and arguments over family dinners and mildly heated conversations with friends are—as long as there is repair—resilience-building and empathy-growing experiences. We shouldn’t be walking away from a conversation in a rage; we should regulate ourselves. Repair the ruptures. Reconnect and grow. When you walk away, everybody loses. We all need to get better at listening, regulating, reflecting.
Bruce D. Perry (What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing)
The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree; yet in advancing farther, the mind observes not always the same rule; but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous, it rather the more readily admits of such a fact, upon account of that very circumstance, which ought to destroy all its authority. The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events, from which it is derived. And this goes so far, that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately, nor can believe those miraculous events, of which they are informed, yet love to partake of the satisfaction at secondhand or by rebound, and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others. 17 With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travelers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; and human testimony, in these circumstances, loses all pretensions to authority. A religionist may be an enthusiast, and imagine he sees what has no reality: He may know his narrative to be false, and yet persevere in it, with the best intentions in the world, for the sake of promoting so holy a cause: Or even where this delusion has not place, vanity, excited by so strong a temptation, operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances; and self-interest with equal force. His auditors may not have, and commonly have not, sufficient judgment to canvass his evidence: What judgment they have, they renounce by principle, in these sublime and mysterious subjects: Or if they were ever so willing to employ it, passion and a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations. Their credulity increases his impudence: And his impudence overpowers their credulity.
Christopher Hitchens (The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever)
Suppose he really is in love. What about her? She never has anything good to say about him.” “Yet she blushes whenever he enters a room. And she stares at him a good deal. Or hadn’t you noticed that, either?” “As a matter of fact, I have.” Gazing up at him, she softened her tone. “But I do not want her hurt, Isaac. I must be sure she is desired for herself and not her fortune. Her siblings had a chance of not gaining their inheritance unless the others married, so I always knew that their mates loved them, but she…” She shook her head. “I had to find a way to remove her fortune from the equation.” “I still say you’re taking a big risk.” He glanced beyond her to where Celia was talking to the duke. “Do yo really think she’d be better off with Lyons?” But she doesn’t love him…If you’d just give her a chance- “I do not know,” Hetty said with a sigh. “I do not know anything anymore.” “Then you shouldn’t meddle. Because there’s another outcome you haven’t considered. If you try to manipulate matters to your satisfaction, she may balk entirely. Then you’ll find yourself in the sticky position of having to choose between disinheriting them all or backing down on your ultimatum. Personally, I think you should have given up that nonsense long ago, but I know only too well how stubborn you can be when you’ve got the bit between your teeth.” “Oh?” she said archly. “Have I been stubborn with you?” He gazed down at her. “You haven’t agreed to marry me yet.” Her heart flipped over in her chest. It was not the first time he had mentioned marriage, but she had refused to take him seriously. Until now. It was clear he would not be put off any longer. He looked solemnly in earnest. “Isaac…” “Are you worried that I am a fortune hunter?” “Do not be absurd.” “Because I’ve already told you that I’ll sign any marriage settlement you have your solicitor draw up. I don’t want your brewery or your vast fortune. I know it’s going to your grandchildren. I only want you.” The tender words made her sigh like a foolish girl. “I realize that. But why not merely continue as we have been?” His voice lowered. “Because I want to make you mine in every way.” A sweet shiver swept along her spine. “We do not need to marry for that.” “So all you want from me is an affair?” “No! But-“ “I want more than that. I want to go to sleep with you in my arms and wake with you in my bed. I want the right to be with you whenever I please, night or day.” His tone deepened. “I love you, Hetty. And when a man loves a woman, he wants to spend his life with her.” “But at our age, people will say-“ “Our age is an argument for marriage. We might not have much time left. Why not live it to the fullest, together, while we’re still in good health? Who cares about what people say? Life is too short to let other people dictate one’s choices.” She leaned heavily on his arm as they reached the steps leading up to the dais at the front of the ballroom. He did have a point. She had been balking at marrying him because she was sure people would think her a silly old fool. But then, she had always been out of step with everyone else. Why should this be any different? “I shall think about it,” she murmured as they headed to the center of the dais, where the family was gathering. “I suppose I’ll have to settle for that. For now.” He cast her a heated glance. “But later this evening, once we have the chance to be alone, I shall try more effective methods to persuade you. Because I’m not giving up on this. I can be as stubborn as you, my dear.” She bit back a smile. Thank God for that.
Sabrina Jeffries (A Lady Never Surrenders (Hellions of Halstead Hall, #5))
But I love [America] the way you love a wife of many years: not because you have a sentimental notion of her perfection, but because you know her thoroughly, from the courage of the maternity room to the pettiness of her morning moods; from seeing her sit for weeks by her dying mother's bedside, to watching her worry about which shoes to wear to a cocktail party given by a person she does not like. You know she has the capacity to get up at five in the morning and make you pancakes before you set off on a particularly arduous business trip, and you know she also has the capacity to say things, in the heat of an argument, that she should not say, to sneak the last piece of chocolate cake, to lose track of time and keep the rest of the family waiting for an hour, at the beach, on a burning hot afternoon. You know everything from what flavor lip gloss she likes to what books she would bring with her to the proverbial desert island and what she believes the meaning of life to be. And then, always, there is a part of her you do not know.
Roland Merullo
He was romantic about Islam. He told me, and probably was right, that I didn’t understand. Though he once wrote me a letter saying that he wanted to join the Mississippi civil-rights marchers, he had no sympathy whatever with Zionism. After the war of 1967 he cried out, “You have no business in Arab lands, you Jews!” In the heat of argument he then said many rash things. Of course few people do understand the complexities of Arab history, and it made Marshall frantic when he saw a pattern of Western political ideas being imposed ignorantly on the Middle East. But he knew as little about Jews as I did about Arabs. Nation-states have seldom if ever been created without violence and injustice. Hodgson believed that the Jews had behaved as though the Arabs were an inferior, colonial sort of people and not the heirs of a great civilization. Of course the Arabs had themselves come as conquerors, many centuries ago. But one didn’t present such arguments to Marshall. The Arabs were his people. He failed to understand what Israel meant to the Jews. It wasn’t that the Jews didn’t matter—he was a Quaker and a liberal, a man of humane sentiments—but that he didn’t know quite how they mattered. Some years ago, Hodgson went out to jog on a boiling Chicago afternoon and died of heart failure.
Saul Bellow (To Jerusalem and Back)
When Sam told this story to Sadie, she laughed, though she barely seemed to be listening. He had framed the story in a humorous way, smoothed off some of the edges of his hostility toward the woman in the park. But as he told it, he could feel himself back in that dog park. He could feel the dry California heat and the murderous pounding of his heart. Without warning, an anecdote he had meant to be amusing did not feel amusing. Anyone, who had truly looked at Tuesday could not have possibly seen a coyote. But the woman had not truly looked, and the injustice of this hit him. Why was is it acceptable for apparently well-meaning people to see the world in such a general way? Sam was put off by Sadie's laughter. He asked her what was funny. She was confused for a moment---hadn't he wanted her to laugh?---and then she said, annoyed, "You get that this a story about you, right? That's why you lost your mind at a dog park. You're Tuesday. You're the incredibly special dog that no one can classify." It was not long after their huge argument, and things were quite strained between them. Sam told her that she was being reductive, and that her interpretation was insulting to both him and the dog. "It's a story about Tuesday," he insisted. "Maybe it's a story about L.A., too. Maybe it's a story about the kind of people that go to the dog park in Silver Lake. But it's mainly a story about Tuesday." "The text," she said, "perhaps.
Gabrielle Zevin (Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow)
Missy and I became best friends, and soon after our first year together I decided to propose to her. It was a bit of a silly proposal. It was shortly before Christmas Day 1988, and I bought her a potted plant for her present. I know, I know, but let me finish. The plan was to put her engagement ring in the dirt (which I did) and make her dig to find it (which I forced her to do). I was then going to give a speech saying, “Sometimes in life you have to get your hands dirty and work hard to achieve something that grows to be wonderful.” I got the idea from Matthew 13, where Jesus gave the Parable of the Sower. I don’t know if it was the digging through the dirt to find the ring or my speech, but she looked dazed and confused. So I sort of popped the question: “You’re going to marry me, aren’t you?” She eventually said yes (whew!), and I thought everything was great. A few days later, she asked me if I’d asked her dad for his blessing. I was not familiar with this custom or tradition, which led to a pretty heated argument about people who are raised in a barn or down on a riverbank. She finally convinced me that it was a formality that was a prerequisite for our marriage, so I decided to go along with it. I arrived one night at her dad’s house and asked if I could talk with him. I told him about the potted plant and the proposal to his daughter, and he pretty much had the same bewildered look on his face that she’d had. He answered quite politely by saying no. “I think you should wait a bit, like maybe a couple of years,” he said. I wasn’t prepared for that response. I didn’t handle it well. I don’t remember all the details of what was said next because I was uncomfortable and angry. I do remember saying, “Well, you are a preacher so I am going to give you some scripture.” I quoted 1 Corinthians 7:9, which says: “It is better to marry than to burn with passion.” That didn’t go over very well. I informed him that I’d treated his daughter with respect and he still wouldn’t budge. I then told him we were going to get married with him or without him, and I left in a huff. Over the next few days, I did a lot of soul-searching and Missy did a lot of crying. I finally decided that it was time for me to become a man. Genesis 2:24 says: “For this reason [creation of a woman] a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God is the architect of marriage, and I’d decided that my family would have God as its foundation. It was time for me to leave and cleave, as they say. My dad told me once that my mom would cuddle us when we were in his nest, but there would be a day when it would be his job to kick me out. He didn’t have to kick me out, nor did he have to ask me, “Who’s a man?” Through prayer and patience, Missy’s parents eventually came around, and we were more than ready to make our own nest.
Jase Robertson (Good Call: Reflections on Faith, Family, and Fowl)
Will you be there waiting for me every night, in our cottage?" he murmured. She nodded, leaning against him. McKenna's bristly black lashes lowered until they cast shadows on his cheeks. "And you'll scrub my back when I'm tired and dusty from the field?" Aline pictured his large, powerful body lowering into a wooden tub... his pleasured sigh at the heat of the water... his bronzed back shining in the firelight. "Yes," she breathed. "And then you can soak while I hang the stew pot over the fire, and I'll tell you about the argument I had with the miller, who didn't give me enough flour because his scale was weighted." McKenna laughed softly while his fingertip skimmed lightly along her throat. "The cheat," he murmured, his eyes sparkling. "I'll speak with him tomorrow- no one tries to fleece my wife and gets away with it. In the meantime, let's go to bed. I want to hold you all night long." The thought of being tucked in a cozy bed with him, their naked bodies entwined, made Aline tremble with longing. "You'll probably fall asleep as soon as your head touches the pillow," she said. "Farming is hard work- you're exhausted." "Never too tired to love you." His arms slid around her, and he hunched over to nuzzle the curve of her cheek. His lips were like hot velvet as he whispered against her skin. "I'm going to kiss you from your head to your toes. And I won't stop until you're crying for me, and then I'll pleasure you until you're weak from my loving.
Lisa Kleypas (Again the Magic (Wallflowers, #0))
Emotions get our attention As the television advertisement opens, we see two men talking in a car. They are having a mildly heated discussion about one of them overusing the word “like” in conversation. As the argument continues, we notice out the passenger window another car barreling toward the men. It smashes into them. There are screams, sounds of shattering glass, quick-cut shots showing the men bouncing in the car, twisted metal. The final shot shows the men standing, in disbelief, outside their wrecked Volkswagen Passat. In a twist on a well-known expletive, these words flash on the screen: “Safe Happens.” The spot ends with a picture of another Passat, this one intact and complete with its five-star side-crash safety rating. It is a memorable, even disturbing, 30-second spot. That’s because it’s charged with emotion. Emotionally charged events are better remembered—for longer, and with more accuracy—than neutral events. While this idea may seem intuitively obvious, it’s frustrating to demonstrate scientifically because the research community is still debating exactly what an emotion is. What we can say for sure is that when your brain detects an emotionally charged event, your amygdala (a part of your brain that helps create and maintain emotions) releases the chemical dopamine into your system. Dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing. You can think of it like a Post-it note that reads “Remember this!” Getting one’s brain to put a chemical Post-it note on a given piece of information means that information is going to be more robustly processed. It is what every teacher, parent, and ad executive wants.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
The Dark One didn’t cut it in the first place,” Tairn responds. “Stop calling him that.” My knee collapses, and I throw my arms out to steady my balance, cursing my joints as I reach Tairn’s shoulder. After an hour in the saddle at these temperatures, a pissed-off knee is nothing; I’m lucky my hips still rotate. “Stop denying the truth.” Tairn enunciates every word of the damning order as I avoid a patch of ice and prepare to dismount. “His soul is no longer his own.” “That’s a little dramatic.” I’m not getting into this argument again. “His eyes are back to normal—” “That kind of power is addictive. You know it, or you wouldn’t be pretending to sleep at night.” He twists his neck in a way that reminds me of a snake and levels a golden glare on me. “I’m sleeping.” It’s not entirely a lie, but definitely time to change the subject. “Did you make me repair my saddle to teach me a lesson?” My ass protests every scale on Tairn’s leg as I slide, then land in a fresh foot of snow. “Or because you don’t trust Xaden with my gear anymore?” “Yes.” Tairn lifts his head far over mine and blasts a torrent of fire along his wing, melting off the residual ice, and I turn away from the surge of heat that painfully contrasts my body temperature. “Tairn…” I struggle for words and look up at him. “I need to know where you stand before this meeting. With or without Empyrean approval, I can’t do any of this without you.” “Meaning, will I support the myriad of ways you plan to court death in the name of curing one who is beyond redemption?” He swivels his head in my direction again. Tension crackles along Andarna’s bond. “He’s not—” I cut off that particular argument, since the rest is sound. “Basically, yes.” He grumbles deep within his chest. “I fly without warming my wings in preparation for carrying heavier weight for longer distances. Does that not answer your question?” Meaning Andarna. Relief gusts through my lips on a swift exhale. “Thank you.” Steam rolls in billowing clouds from his nostrils. “But do not mistake my unflinching support of you, my mate, and Andarna for any form of faith in him.” Tairn lifts his head, cueing the end of the conversation.
Rebecca Yarros (Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3))
On many occasions in our nearly thirty years of marriage my wife and I have had a disagreement—sometimes a deep disagreement. Our unity appeared to be broken, at some unknowably profound level, and we were not able to easily resolve the rupture by talking. We became trapped, instead, in emotional, angry and anxious argument. We agreed that when such circumstances arose we would separate, briefly: she to one room, me to another. This was often quite difficult, because it is hard to disengage in the heat of an argument, when anger generates the desire to defeat and win. But it seemed better than risking the consequences of a dispute that threatened to spiral out of control. Alone, trying to calm down, we would each ask ourselves the same single question: What had we each done to contribute to the situation we were arguing about? However small, however distant…we had each made some error. Then we would reunite, and share the results of our questioning: Here’s how I was wrong…. The problem with asking yourself such a question is that you must truly want the answer. And the problem with doing that is that you won’t like the answer. When you are arguing with someone, you want to be right, and you want the other person to be wrong. Then it’s them that has to sacrifice something and change, not you, and that’s much preferable. If it’s you that’s wrong and you that must change, then you have to reconsider yourself—your memories of the past, your manner of being in the present, and your plans for the future. Then you must resolve to improve and figure out how to do that. Then you actually have to do it. That’s exhausting. It takes repeated practice, to instantiate the new perceptions and make the new actions habitual. It’s much easier just not to realize, admit and engage. It’s much easier to turn your attention away from the truth and remain wilfully blind. But it’s at such a point that you must decide whether you want to be right or you want to have peace.216 You must decide whether to insist upon the absolute correctness of your view, or to listen and negotiate. You don’t get peace by being right. You just get to be right, while your partner gets to be wrong—defeated and wrong. Do that ten thousand times and your marriage will be over (or you will wish it was). To choose the alternative—to seek peace—you have to decide that you want the answer, more than you want to be right. That’s the way out of the prison of your stubborn preconceptions. That’s the prerequisite for negotiation. That’s to truly abide by the principle of Rule 2 (Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping).
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
Yes, he admitted, if gravity is always attractive, and never repulsive, then the stars in the universe might be unstable. But there was a loophole in this argument. Assume that the universe is, on average, totally uniform and infinite in all directions. In such a static universe, all the forces of gravity cancel one another out, and the universe becomes stable once again. Given any star, the forces of gravity acting on it from all the distant stars in different directions eventually sum to zero, and hence the universe does not collapse. Although this was a clever solution to this problem, Newton realized there was still a potential flaw to his solution. The universe might be uniform on average, but it cannot be exactly uniform at all points, so there must be tiny deviations. Like a house of cards, it appears to be stable, but the tiniest flaw will cause the entire structure to collapse. So Newton was clever enough to realize that a uniform infinite universe was indeed stable but was always teetering on the edge of collapse. In other words, the cancellation of infinite forces must be infinitely precise or else the universe will either collapse or be ripped apart. Thus, Newton’s final conclusion was that the universe was infinite and uniform on average, but occasionally God has to tweak the stars in the universe, so they do not collapse under gravity. Why Is the Night Sky Black? But this raised another problem. If we start with a universe that is infinite and uniform, then everywhere we look into space our gaze will eventually hit a star. But since there are an infinite number of stars, there must be an infinite amount of light entering our eyes from all directions. The night sky should be white, not black. This is called Olbers’ paradox. Some of the greatest minds in history have tried to tackle this sticky question. Kepler, for example, dismissed the paradox by claiming that the universe was finite, and hence there is no paradox. Others have theorized that dust clouds have obscured starlight. (But this cannot explain the paradox, because, in an infinite amount of time, the dust clouds begin to heat up and then emit blackbody radiation, similar to a star. So the universe becomes white again.) The final answer was actually given by Edgar Allan Poe in 1848. Being an amateur astronomer, he was fascinated by the paradox and said that the night sky is black because, if we travel back in time far enough, we eventually encounter a cutoff—that is, a beginning to the universe. In other words, the night sky is black because the universe has a finite age. We do not receive light from the infinite past, which would make the night sky white, because the universe never had an infinite past. This means that telescopes peering at the farthest stars will eventually reach the blackness of the Big Bang itself. So it is truly amazing that by pure thought, without doing any experiments whatsoever, one can conclude that the universe must have had a beginning.
Michio Kaku (The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything)
I hate like hell to go, especially with things still so up in the air between us.” Liv was watching him from the bed. “Nothing’s up in the air. You’re determined to keep me and I’m determined to go.” His face darkened. “You’re not so damn determined when I have you in the bathing pool.” Liv felt a heated blush creep into her cheeks but she refused to back down. “Be that as it may, what I say or do in the, uh, in the heat of passion doesn’t change how I feel.” A look that was almost despair crossed over his chiseled features. “Damn it, Olivia, can’t you admit to yourself that you feel for me what I feel for you? Can’t you just try to imagine having a life here with me on the ship?” “I could…if I didn’t already have a life waiting for me back on Earth.” She sighed. “Look, let’s not fight about this right now. You have to go, fine. I’ll manage okay on my own here.” To be honest she was looking forward to a reprieve from the constant lust she felt while being cooped up with him in close quarters. He frowned. “I shouldn’t be leavin’ you alone during our claiming period. If I hadn’t had a direct order from my CO—” “It’s okay, really. I’ll find something to keep me occupied. I’ll try the translator and read one of your books. And I can work the wave well enough to make my own lunch without burning a finger off now.” “All right, fine.” He looked slightly mollified. “But whatever you do, stay in the suite. Don’t leave for any reason.” “Yes, sir!” She gave him a mocking salute. “To hear is to obey, oh my lord and master.” “Lilenta…” He sighed. “This is for your safety. I’m not trying to order you around for the hell of it.” “No, you just want to make my decisions for me. Stay here, don’t go there. Live the rest of your life on the ship instead of ever seeing your loved ones on Earth again. Why should this be any different?” Liv knew an edge of bitterness had crept into her voice but she couldn’t seem to help it. Baird scowled. “In time you’ll see that this is best. The only way I can protect you is to keep you close to me.” “Funny how much being protected feels like being owned.” “I thought you didn’t want to fight.” “You started it.” Liv knew it sounded childish but she didn’t care. He ran a hand through his hair. “Damn it, Olivia…” Then he shook his head, as though sensing the futility of any argument. He pointed a finger at her instead. “I’m going but I’ll be back tonight in time for the start of our tasting week.” “You…I’m surprised you want to…to do anything at all.” Liv worked hard to keep the tremble out of her voice but didn’t quite succeed. He raised an eyebrow. “You mean with you trying to pick a fight at every opportunity and generally resisting me every step of the way? I have news for you, Lilenta, none of that affects the way I feel for you—the way I need you—one bit.” He walked over to the bed where she was sitting on the edge and pulled her to her feet. “I still want you more than any other woman I’ve ever seen. Still need to be inside you, bonding you to me, making you mine,” he growled softly, pulling her close. “Baird, stop it!” She wanted to beat against his broad chest in protest but she somehow found herself melting against him instead. “Don’t you want to give me a kiss goodbye?” There was a flicker of bitter amusement in his golden eyes. “No, I guess you don’t. Too bad.” Leaning down, he took her lips in a rough yet tender kiss that took Liv’s breath away.
Evangeline Anderson (Claimed (Brides of the Kindred, #1))
The Sun King had dinner each night alone. He chose from forty dishes, served on gold and silver plate. It took a staggering 498 people to prepare each meal. He was rich because he consumed the work of other people, mainly in the form of their services. He was rich because other people did things for him. At that time, the average French family would have prepared and consumed its own meals as well as paid tax to support his servants in the palace. So it is not hard to conclude that Louis XIV was rich because others were poor. But what about today? Consider that you are an average person, say a woman of 35, living in, for the sake of argument, Paris and earning the median wage, with a working husband and two children. You are far from poor, but in relative terms, you are immeasurably poorer than Louis was. Where he was the richest of the rich in the world’s richest city, you have no servants, no palace, no carriage, no kingdom. As you toil home from work on the crowded Metro, stopping at the shop on the way to buy a ready meal for four, you might be thinking that Louis XIV’s dining arrangements were way beyond your reach. And yet consider this. The cornucopia that greets you as you enter the supermarket dwarfs anything that Louis XIV ever experienced (and it is probably less likely to contain salmonella). You can buy a fresh, frozen, tinned, smoked or pre-prepared meal made with beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, prawns, scallops, eggs, potatoes, beans, carrots, cabbage, aubergine, kumquats, celeriac, okra, seven kinds of lettuce, cooked in olive, walnut, sunflower or peanut oil and flavoured with cilantro, turmeric, basil or rosemary ... You may have no chefs, but you can decide on a whim to choose between scores of nearby bistros, or Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian restaurants, in each of which a team of skilled chefs is waiting to serve your family at less than an hour’s notice. Think of this: never before this generation has the average person been able to afford to have somebody else prepare his meals. You employ no tailor, but you can browse the internet and instantly order from an almost infinite range of excellent, affordable clothes of cotton, silk, linen, wool and nylon made up for you in factories all over Asia. You have no carriage, but you can buy a ticket which will summon the services of a skilled pilot of a budget airline to fly you to one of hundreds of destinations that Louis never dreamed of seeing. You have no woodcutters to bring you logs for the fire, but the operators of gas rigs in Russia are clamouring to bring you clean central heating. You have no wick-trimming footman, but your light switch gives you the instant and brilliant produce of hardworking people at a grid of distant nuclear power stations. You have no runner to send messages, but even now a repairman is climbing a mobile-phone mast somewhere in the world to make sure it is working properly just in case you need to call that cell. You have no private apothecary, but your local pharmacy supplies you with the handiwork of many thousands of chemists, engineers and logistics experts. You have no government ministers, but diligent reporters are even now standing ready to tell you about a film star’s divorce if you will only switch to their channel or log on to their blogs. My point is that you have far, far more than 498 servants at your immediate beck and call. Of course, unlike the Sun King’s servants, these people work for many other people too, but from your perspective what is the difference? That is the magic that exchange and specialisation have wrought for the human species.
Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves)
I am in a two-stoplight town in the Alabama hill country, in the heart of the Bible Belt and Crimson Tide football mania, listening to an old-fashioned, heated argument between Cubans like the ones I've heard in Little Havana in Miami, but the moment very quickly loses its sense of strangeness and cultural dissonance. This is what America is like now-- North America, I mean, the United States. The craziness of cubanos and mexicanos and guatemaltecos can find you just about anywhere
Héctor Tobar (Translation Nation: Defining a New American Identity in the Spanish-Speaking United States)
As she walked slowly down the hall, she could hear them arguing - nothing violent, nothing impassioned. But then, she'd not have expected that. Cavendish tempers ran cold, and they were far more likely to attack with a frozen barb than a heated cry.
Julia Quinn (The Lost Duke of Wyndham (Two Dukes of Wyndham, #1))
There was already a small queue for the tap in the corner of the field. Harry, Ron and Hermione joined it, right behind a pair of men who were having a heated argument. One of them was a very old wizard who was wearing a long flowery nightgown. The other was clearly a Ministry wizard; he was holding out a pair of pinstriped trousers and almost crying with exasperation. ‘Just put them on, Archie, there’s a good chap, you can’t walk around like that, the Muggle on the gate’s already getting suspicious –’ ‘I bought this in a Muggle shop,’ said the old wizard stubbornly. ‘Muggles wear them.’ ‘Muggle women wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear these,’ said the Ministry wizard, and he brandished the pinstriped trousers. ‘I’m not putting them on,’ said old Archie in indignation. ‘I like a healthy breeze round my privates, thanks.
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, #4))
The fact that a statement is true may sometimes help to explain why it appears to us as self-evident. This is the case with ‘2 + 2 = 4’, or with the sentence ‘the sun radiates light as well as heat’. But the opposite is clearly not the case. The fact that a sentence appears to some or even to all of us to be ‘self-evident’, that is to say, the fact that some or even all of us believe firmly in its truth and cannot conceive of its falsity, is no reason why it should be true. (The fact that we are unable to conceive of the falsity of a statement is in many cases only a reason for suspecting that our power of imagination is deficient or undeveloped.) It is one of the gravest mistakes if a philosophy ever offers self-evidence as an argument in favour of the truth of a sentence; yet this is done by practically all idealist philosophies. It shows that idealist philosophies are often systems of apologetics for some dogmatic beliefs.
Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies)
After the Accident Before we run out of pages, I want to tell you a little of what happened to my family after the accident. My mother moved to a small house in Western Shore. Her first concern was finding a way to support herself and Ricky. Being an ex-dancer, motorcycle rider, and treasure-hunter was not likely to open any doors, so she decided to go back to school. She enrolled in a business course in Bridgewater and began her first studies since she was 12 years old. Soon she earned a diploma in typing, shorthand, and accounting, and was hired to work in a medical clinic. Ricky had been on the island from age nine to 14, mostly in the company of adults--family members and visiting tourists--but hardly ever with anyone his own age. Life on the mainland, with the give and take and bumps and bruises of high-school life was a challenge. But he survived. In time he became a carpenter, and is alive and well and living in Ottawa. My mother made a new life for herself. She remained fiercely independent, but between a job she loved and her neighbors, she formed friendships that were deep and lasting. Of course, she missed Dad and Bobby terribly. My mother and dad had been a perfect match, and my mother and brother had always shared a special bond. Bobby’s death was especially hard on her. My mother felt responsible. One day, before the accident, Bobby had taken all he could of Oak Island. After a heated argument with Dad, Bobby packed up and left. My mother had gone after him and convinced him to return--his dad needed him. She rarely spoke of it, but that weighed heavily on her for the rest of her years. My mother never left the east coast. She was 90 years old when she died. For the last 38 years of her life, she lived in a small house on a hill, in the community of Western Shore, where, from her living room window, she could look out and see Oak Island.
Lee Lamb (Oak Island Family: The Restall Hunt for Buried Treasure)
He and Ben Wallace got into a pretty heated argument.” “Not for the first time. See, Dominic controls the actual money, but Kendra controls the asset money—you know, the historical stuff in the documents room. Both of them want it all.
Karin Kaufman (At Death's Door (Juniper Grove, #3))
There was definitely a problem at the foot of the ship’s gangway. Although I was too far away to actually hear what was being said, it was easy to tell that there was a heated argument between the crewmembers and the Ship’s Officers. I could see that some of the crewmembers were disembarking the ship, carrying their sea bags. For a while, I thought things would come to blows, when, amidst a lot of gesturing, one of the crew walked back and got into the duty officer’s face. Being inquisitive and wanting to get closer, I walked down the steep cobblestone street alongside the park from where I had been looking, and then crossed River Street to the pier. No one stopped me or even noticed my presence, as I approached one of the frustrated officers. “What's going on?” I asked, as he stood next to the gangway wearing a typical khaki working uniform. “What do you think? The crew is striking! What are you here for, a job?” he asked with a decided guttural accent. “Well, yes,” I replied instinctively, not even knowing what kind of jobs were being offered. “Who do I have to see?” I asked. His abrupt answer was more like a command, than an informative reply. “Get some black pants, black socks, black shoes, white shirt, and a black bow tie and then get back here. Chop, Chop!” What was “Chop, Chop” all about? I took it to mean that I had the job if I could move fast enough, and get back with these things before the ship sailed. At the time I didn’t think of myself as a strike breaker, but of course that is what I was….
Hank Bracker
argument na moją obronę, myślę: 'This is why I say McEnroe’s an idiot. I hesitate because it’s possible he was just trying to say something interesting – an unfashionable impulse, these days, and one to be treasured. You don’t want to slap down everyone who says something stupid in the heat of the moment, while trying to spice up a broadcast or interview, lest we hurtle even faster towards an entirely empty and monotonous public discourse'.
The Guardian
painting, she was engaged in a heated argument with Zoila Rivers. The two women were squared off, facing each other, Norma with her hands on her hips, Zoila waving a piece of paper in Norma's face. Snatches of angry words drifted up and, although Claire couldn't make out exactly what the words were,
Leighann Dobbs (A Zen for Murder (Mooseamuck Island, #1))
Being accused of microaggression can be a harrowing experience. Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald relates in City Journal how an incident got out of hand at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2013. Professor Emeritus Val Rust taught a dissertation preparation seminar in which arguments often erupted among students, such as over which victim ideologies deserved precedence. In one such discussion, white feminists were criticized for making "testimonial-style" claims of oppression to which Chicana feminists felt they were not entitled. In another, arguments over the political implications of word capitalization got out of hand. In a paper he returned to a student, Rust had changed the capitalization of "indigenous" to lowercase as called for in the Chicago Manual Style. The student felt this showed disrespect for her point of view. During the heated discussion that followed, Professor Rust leaned over and touched an agitated student's arm in a manner, Rust claims, that was meant to reassure and calm him down. It ignited a firestorm instead. The student, Kenjus Watston, jerked his arm away from Rust as if highly offended. Later, he and other "students of color", accompanied by reporters and photographers from UCLA's campus newspaper, made a surprise visit to Rust's classroom and confronted him with a "collective statement of Resistance by Graduate Students of Color". Then the college administration got involved. Dean Marcelo Suarez-Orozco sent out an e-mail citing "a series of troubling racial climate incidents" on campus, "most recently associated with [Rust's class]". Administrative justice was swift. Professor Rust was forced to teach the remainder of his class with three other professors, signaling that he was no longer trusted to teach "students of color". When Rust tried to smooth things over with another student who had criticized him for not apologizing to Watson, he reached out and touched him in a gesture of reconciliation. Again it backfired. That student filed criminal charges against Rust, who was suspended for the remainder of the academic year. As if to punctuate the students' victory and seal the professor's humiliation, UCLA appointed Watson as a "student researcher" to the committee investigating the incident. Watson turned the publicity from these events into a career, going on to codirect the Intergroup Dialogue Program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. As for the committee report, it recommended that UCLA create a new associate dean for equity and enhance the faculty's diversity training program. It was a total victory for the few students who had acted like bullies and the humiliating end of a career for a highly respected professor. It happened because the university could not appear to be unsympathetic to students who were, in the administration's worldview, merely following the university's official policies of diversity and multiculturalism.
Kim R. Holmes (The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left)
Reasonable behavior was the last thing you wanted. You felt as if the resolution of human problems demanded passion and brute unreason, some spitting and shouting. This absence of recrimination, of accusation and counter-accusation, the lack of long-term unspoken resentments and grudges suddenly unearthed and exposed in the heat of argument, disturbed her.
William Boyd (Brazzaville Beach)
From that moment on, I never had another heated argument or conversation about my sexuality because my mother could not understand how anyone could turn their back on their child, regardless of the choices they made. Grateful for that intrinsic belief deep in her heart and soul, I realized the suffering of that lesbian couple she witnessed changed something in my mother’s heart that day.
Charles Benedict (My Life In and Out: One Man’s Journey into Roman Catholic Priesthood and Out of the Closet)
Did God make evil? One day a young man went to his college class, and the professor asked if the young man believed that God made everything. The young man said, ‘Yes, He did.’ The old professor puffed up and said, ‘Then if God made everything, that means He made evil. Who has need for a God that would make evil?’ The young man was silent for he had no answer to this question. As the professor started on with the lesson, a second young man spoke up and said, ‘May I ask you a question, Sir?’ The professor assented, and the young man began, ‘Sir, is there such a thing as cold?’ ‘Of course,’ the professor replied, ‘Haven’t you ever been cold?’ ‘Actually,’ the young man replied, ‘cold does not exist. It is simply a term that we have constructed to mean a state of being without heat.’ The old professor didn’t say anything, so the young man continued. ‘Is there such a thing as dark?’ “‘Well, certainly,’ replied the professor. ‘We’ve all seen the dark.’ ‘On the contrary,’ the young man said. ‘Darkness does not exist. It is only the way we have come to explain an absence of light. The absence of something does not exist except to define when what does exist is not present. So, I ask you then, does evil exist?’ ‘Of course it does. Look around there are murders and rapes and robberies.’ ‘Actually, Sir, evil does not exist. Evil is only the absence of God.’ When he sat down, the professor had no more argument.
Staci Stallings (A Work in Progress (Faith, #1))
Cyra.” Akos’s voice was a comfort. So familiar, its rumble. What were the first words he had said to me? Oh, yes--they had been explaining his gift. I interrupt the current, he had said. No matter what it does. If my life was a different kind of current--and it was, in a certain sense, a flow of energy across space, brief and temporary--he had certainly interrupted it. And I was better for it. But now the question I had held in my mind ever since he first kissed me, about whether it was his fate tying him to me or not, felt more urgent than before. “That was my father,” I said, with something between a hiccup and a giggle. “Pleasant man,” he said. “A little too soft-spoken, though, don’t you think?” The joke eased me back into the present. When before everything had been quiet, now it was roaring with conversation. Teka was having a heated argument with Ettrek, which I knew because her finger was in his face, almost jabbing him in the nose when she gestured. Aza was with a few other grave-looking people, her face half-covered with her hand. “What happens now?” Akos said to me softly. “You think I know?” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t even know if you and I count as exiles. Or if Lazmet counts exiles as Shotet.” “Maybe we’re on our own, you and me.
Veronica Roth (The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2))
People hold a lot of false assumptions about hippies. For a start, they’re not the relaxed individuals people imagine them to be. If you were to leave two of them in a room for long enough, you could guarantee a heated and bitter argument. They all have remarkably entrenched ideas about how the world, the human body, and damn near everything else works. The only thing a lot of them have in common is a fevered certainty that the world would be a better place if everyone just listened to them.
C.K. McDonnell (The Stranger Times (The Stranger Times #1))
In a heated argument, you can always stop and ask, “What evidence would change your mind?” If the
Adam M. Grant (Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know)
To this [i.e., Hume's argument] I answer that if a man believed that in heat there was a will to melt ice, he would undoubtedly believe that there is in heat a real efficient power to produce that effect, though he were ignorant how or by what latent process the effect is produced. So, we knowing that certain effects depend on our will, impute to ourselves the power of producing them, though there may be some latent process between the volition and the production which we do not know. So a child may know that a bell is rung by pulling a certain peg, though he does not yet know how that operation is connected with the ringing of the bell, and when he can move that peg he has a perfect conviction that he has the power to ring the bell. Supposing we were unable to give any account how we first got the conception of power, this would be no good reason for denying that we have it. One might as well prove that he has no eyes in his head for this reason: that neither he nor any other person could tell how they came there.
Thomas Reid (Essays on The Active Powers of the Human Mind an Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principle of Common Sense)
What can I say to you? Now. What. Can I. I want to tell you about anger. Because it is not just something that passed through like a storm. It is something that forms the core of me. Like the earth has the heat of its origins deep in it's centre I do too. I have been told that my anger is not to be seen on my outside. That it is not seemly. It doesn't help. I have been told, even by other women, that it detracts from what I have tried to say. I have been told that it's distracting people from moving forward as they are too consumed by the guilt I am giving them. And that my hatred of the men whose very ills fuel this anger, detracts from my arguments. But you say we hate men as if we silence them, as if we beat and abuse them, rape them, as if we shame them from their desires, as if we restrict them from any kind of independence and agency. As if we hang them and drown them and stone them and burn them. I am 76 years old and I hold in me a muscle memory of every woman who came before me and I will send more for those that will come after. For Eve. For every Eve. I don't know if you can feel it. Do you? Do you feel it? Inside of you. You don't need to be a woman to know what is coming. Because why have our stories been ignored? For so long? Ask yourself why. Listen to us. Listen to every woman who came before you. Listen to every woman with you now. And listen when I say to you to take the fire as your own. That anger that you feel it is yours and you can use it. We want you to. We need you to. Look how far we've come already. Don't stop now. The house that has been built around you is not made of stone. The stakes we have been tied to will not survive if our flames burn bright. And if they try to burn you, may your fire be stronger than theirs so you can burn the whole fucking house down.
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Emilia (Oberon Modern Plays))
[Partisan politicians] seek to incite political support or raise money by pitting us against each other on issues . . . because they know that by igniting heated arguments, the issues are less likely to be solved and their careers are more likely to be secure. Every time you vote "against" someone rather than "for" someone the two-party system wins and America loses.
Glenn Beck (Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine)
But the engine for Judaism isn’t faith. It’s doubt. What keeps the vehicle moving isn’t the belief that it will but the heat generated from a thousand simultaneous disagreements. This might sound glib or pedantic but it’s evident in one of Judaism’s most foundational facts. Our most sacred text isn’t the Torah, the purported word of Hashem, but the Talmud, a multi-volume companion text that interprets, expands and comments. Essentially the Talmud is marginalia, a conversation. A beneath-the-line comments section. What Judaism essentially amounts to is a four-thousand-year-old argument.
Matt Greene (Jew[ish])
Rousseau’s legacy is vast. It includes Hallmark cards, Hollywood tearjerkers, heart-shaped emojis, and tell-all memoirs. If you’ve ever said, “I need a good cry,” you can thank Rousseau. If you’ve ever said, “Use your imagination,” you’re being Rousseauvian. If, in the heat of an argument, you’ve actually uttered the words “I don’t care if it makes no sense, it’s how I feel,” Rousseau is your man. If you’ve ever answered heartbreak with a long and angry walk, Rousseau. If your spouse has ever dragged you on a ten-mile trek on a damp, cold day, because “it will be good for you,” you can thank, or curse, Rousseau. Because of him, we think and feel differently, and we think about our feelings differently.
Eric Weiner (The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers)