Highly Favoured Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Highly Favoured. Here they are! All 100 of them:

She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.--Gratitude not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not exactly be defined.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Respect cannot be inherited, respect is the result of right actions.
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
I know my rightful place as a child of God; I am blessed and highly favoured. I am protected and delivered from every evil. I am redeem and set free from all bondages in Jesus Name.
Lailah Gifty Akita (Think Great: Be Great! (Beautiful Quotes, #1))
Just as if I was one of those true knights you love so well, yes. What do you think a knight is for, girl? You think it's all taking favours from ladies and looking fine in gold plate? Knights are for killing...I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like bladders with their honours, yes, and women and children too - they're all meat, and I'm the butcher. Let them have their lands and their gods and their gold. Let them have their sers.' Sandor Clegane spat at her feet to show what he thought of that. 'So long as I have this,' he said, lifting the sword from her throat, 'there's no man on earth I need fear.
George R.R. Martin (A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2))
I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they're creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. We can lead good, ethical lives, but some bad phraseology in a Tweet can overwhelm it all - even though we know that's not how we should define our fellow humans. What's true about our fellow humans is that we are clever and stupid. We are grey areas. And so ... when you see an unfair or an ambiguous shaming unfold, speak up on behalf of the shamed person. A babble of opposing voices - that's democracy. The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people. Let's not turn it into a world where the smartest way to survive is to go back to being voiceless.
Jon Ronson (So You've Been Publicly Shamed)
I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.
Patrick of Ireland (The Confession of Saint Patrick)
Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in exercise. Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying.
John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism)
When a drop draws help from the ocean, it is an ocean in itself, and a little seed, through the outpouring of rain, the favour of the sun and soul-refreshing breeze, will become a tree with the utmost freshness, full of leaves, blossoms and fruits. Therefore do not consider thy capacity and merit, but rely upon the infinite Bounty and trust to His Highness the Almighty.
Bahá'u'lláh
I am perplexed when I come upon people who are seemingly highly educated and trained to make best use if their minds--but when confronted by matters of religion, they prefer to abandon their education in favour of a silence that makes it seem as if Islam opposes logic and the intelect.
Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin (Islam in Malaysia: Perceptions & Facts)
Maybe there are two types of people in the world: those who favour humans over ideology, and those who favour ideology over humans. I favour humans over ideology, but right now the ideologues are winning, and they’re creating a stage for constant artificial high dramas, where everyone is either a magnificent hero or a sickening villain.
Jon Ronson (So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Picador Collection Book 11))
We teach our children to study hard, to strive to succeed but do we teach them that it's okay to fail? That life is about accepting yourself? That there is no stigma in seeking help? Our Indian culture is based on worshipping our parents. We grow up listening to words like respect, obedience and tradition. Can we not add the words communication, unconditional love and support to this list? I look at the WHO research. The highest rate of suicide in India is among the age group of 15 to 29. Do we even talk to our teens about this? That evening, I am standing in the balcony, sipping some coffee and looking at the sunset. The children have taken the dogs and gone down to play on the beach. I spot my son. He is standing on the sand, right at the edge of the ocean and is flying a blue kite. The kite goes high and then swings low till it almost seems to fall into the water and all I want to say to him is that soon he will see that life is just like flying a kite. Sometimes you have to leave it loose, sometimes you have to hold on tight, sometimes your kite will fly effortlessly, sometimes you will not be able to control it and even when you are struggling to keep it afloat and the string is cutting into your hand, don't let go. The wind will change in your favour once again, my son. Just don't let go..
Twinkle Khanna (Mrs Funnybones)
There was no question now who sat at the right hand of the King. It was the Queen, who walked through the great hall wearing deepest crimson and gold with her head high and a little smile on her lips. She did not flaunt her return to favour. She took it as she had taken her eclipse: as the nature of royal marriage. Now that her star was risen again she walked as proudly as she had ever done when in shadow.
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
His mind had been working away behind his high forehead. Unimaginative himself he could recognize imagination in her: he had come upon one whose whole nature was the contradiction of his own. He knew that behind her simplicity was something he could never have. Something he despised as impractical. Something which would never carry her to power or riches, but would retard her progress and keep her apart in a world of her own make-believe. To win her favour he must talk in her own language.
Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1))
By the Grace of God, we are highly favoured. His Grace is bigger than what our minds, can ever comprehend.
Gift Gugu Mona (Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration)
It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.
Samuel Beckett (Molloy / Malone Dies / The Unnamable)
Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? It is also plausible that early success heightened their motivation, or that both success and motivation are due to their special aptitude for language learning or the favourable context in which they were learning.
Patsy M. Lightbown (How Languages are Learned)
Both died, ignored by most; they neither sought nor found public favour, for high roads never lead there. Laurent and Gerhardt never left such roads, were never tempted to peruse those easy successes which, for strongly marked characters, offer neither allure nor gain. Their passion was for the search for truth; and, preferring their independence to their advancement, their convictions to their interests, they placed their love for science above that of their worldly goods; indeed above that for life itself, for death was the reward for their pains. Rare example of abnegation, sublime poverty that deserves the name nobility, glorious death that France must not forget!
Charles-Adolphe Wurtz
I really did not expect any Grace to answer, for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstances of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachination; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid. However, the event showed me I was a fool for entertaining a sense even of surprise.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim, She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides: And showed such pride as, while her luck betides, A sultan's favoured slave may show to him. When it lets off its lively, crackling sound, This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone, Gives me an ecstasy I've only known Where league of sound and luster can be found. She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed, Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease. My love was deep and gentle as the seas And rose to her as to a cliff the tide. My own approval of each dreamy pose, Like a tamed tiger, cunningly she sighted: And candour, with lubricity united, Gave piquancy to every one she chose. Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres, Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene, Swanned themselves, undulating in their sheen; Her breasts and belly, of my vine and clusters, Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting, To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown, And to disturb her from the crystal throne Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting. So swerved her pelvis that, in one design, Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft. The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine. The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within, The hearth alone lit up the darkened air, And every time it sighed a crimson flare It drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin
Charles Baudelaire
Not so fast, baby – let us pause and examine that idea. Why would he want to take you out? Why do they ever want to take us out? As a compliment to us, say they. To show us a good time, to prove the high regard they have for us. They’re a pack of goddam liars. In addition to being dirty bastards, and very dumb clucks, they are also goddam liars. There’s practically nothing can be said in favour of them, except they’re the only ones we’ve got.
James M. Cain (Mildred Pierce)
One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
When the Most High God favours you, great things will happen to you. You will find yourself on top, even if people had thought you were a flop.
Gift Gugu Mona (Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration)
Not all that Mrs. Bennet, however, with the assistance of her five daughters, could ask on the subject, was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Bingley. They attacked him in various ways—with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all, and they were at last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour, Lady Lucas. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and, to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively hopes of Mr. Bingley's heart were entertained.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
The coming of Caesarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon, democracy. After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers 'Capitalism,' then we may designate as Socialism the will to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law. The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront money is left but this one. Money is overthrown and abolished only by blood. Life is alpha and omega, the cosmic stream in microcosmic form. It is the fact of facts within the world-as-history. Before the irresistible rhythm of the generation-sequence, everything built up by the waking-consciousness in its intellectual world vanishes at the last. Ever in History it is life and life only race-quality, the triumph of the will-to-power and not the victory of truths, discoveries, or money that signifies. World-history is the world court, and it has ever decided in favour of the stronger, fuller, and more self-assured life decreed to it, namely, the right to exist, regardless of whether its right would hold before a tribunal of waking-consciousness.
Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West)
There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour.
Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
Don’t underestimate the power of a celebrity lawyer, especially if she had been a public prosecutor or advocate general in the past. She can barge into the court of any senior judge and obtain a stay on the arrest of a person. She can force a Supreme Court or a High Court bench to meet at midnight to hear her case. And Indrani is notorious for trying to bribe judges for getting favourable judgements. Of course, all these are backroom manoeuvres and no one gets to know them.
Hariharan Iyer (Surpanakha)
His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself.
Jane Austen (The Complete Novels)
He was, after all, like other high officials. I wondered why I thought he would be different. These men, who depended on the President's favour for everything, were bundles of nerves. The great power they excercised went with a constant fear of being destroyed.
V.S. Naipaul (A Bend in the River)
The Priceless Job of Motherhood God of Heaven I am here on Earth To follow a Divine mandate Of being a loving Mother I know I have no strength To do this on my own I pray for your wisdom To perform this task Without a fright As I raise these children Please help me remember I was never hired for this role But highly favoured To find myself in it Hence, I acknowledge this privilege Of being a parent to them Lord, I lift my hands And bow to Your majestic Name I say at top of my voice Thank you, Father For the priceless job of Motherhood!
Gift Gugu Mona (From My Mother's Classroom: A Badge of Honour for a Remarkable Woman)
Homer's Hymn to the Moon Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818. Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth, From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, Far light is scattered—boundless glory springs; Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings The lampless air glows round her golden crown. But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone Under the sea, her beams within abide, Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide, Clothing her form in garments glittering far, And having yoked to her immortal car The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky A western Crescent, borne impetuously. Then is made full the circle of her light, And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then, A wonder and a sign to mortal men. The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power Mingled in love and sleep—to whom she bore Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are. Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee My song beginning, by its music sweet Shall make immortal many a glorious feat Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone
Cordelia Fine (Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society)
His pride," said Miss Lucas, "does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud." "That
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
dance with him.” “His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
may it please your highness to give him leave that, with your permission, approbation, and consent, he may come and carry out his wishes, which are, as he says and I believe, to serve your exalted loftiness and beauty; and if you give it, your ladyship will do a thing which will redound to your honour, and he will receive a most distinguished favour and happiness.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
And therefore we judged it a salutary measure, and one highly consonant to right reason, that no man should be denied leave of attaching himself to the rites of the Christians, or to whatever other religion his mind directed him, that thus the supreme Divinity, to whose worship we freely devote ourselves, might continue to vouchsafe His favour and beneficence to us.
Constantine the Great
Although Galileo was a devout Catholic, it was his conflict with the Vatican, sadly mismanaged on both sides, that lay at the basis of the running battle between science and religion, a tragic and confusing schism which persists unresolved. More than ever today, religion finds its revelatory truths threatened by scientific theory, and retreats into a defensive corner, while scientists go into the attack insisting that rational argument is the only valid criterion for an understanding of the workings of the universe. Maybe both sides have misunderstood the nature of their respective roles. Scientists are equipped to answer the mechanical question of how the universe and everything in it, including life, came about. But since their modes of thought are dictated by purely rational, materialistic criteria, physicists cannot claim to answer the questions of why the universe exists, and why we human beings are here to observe it, any more than molecular biologists can satisfactorily explain why – if our actions are determined by the workings of a selfish genetic coding – we occasionally listen to the voice of conscience and behave with altruism, compassion and generosity. Even these human qualities have come under attack from evolutionary psychologists who have ascribed altruism to a crude genetic theory by which familial cooperation is said to favour the survival of the species. Likewise the spiritual sophistication of musical, artistic and poetic activity is regarded as just a highly advanced function of primitive origins.
Jane Hawking (Travelling to Infinity: My Life With Stephen)
His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.” “That is very true,” replied Elizabeth, “and I could easily forgive hispride, if he had not mortified mine.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
Cardan had grown up in the palace, a wild thing to be cosseted by courtiers and scowled at by the High King. No one much liked him, and he told himself he cared little for anyone else. And if he sometimes thought about how he might do something to win his father's favour, something to make the Court respect him and love him, he kept that to himself. He certainly asked no one to tell him stories, and yet he found it was nice to be told one. He kept that to himself, too.
Holly Black (How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air, #3.5))
In the Name of Allah—the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful Allah’s Favours: 1) Speech 1. The Most Compassionate 2. taught the Quran, 3. created humanity, 4. ˹and˺ taught them speech. Favour 2) The Universe 5. The sun and the moon ˹travel˺ with precision. 6. The stars and the trees bow down ˹in submission˺.[1146] 7. As for the sky, He raised it ˹high˺, and set the balance ˹of justice˺ 8. so that you do not defraud the scales. 9. Weigh with justice, and do not give short measure.
Anonymous (The Clear Quran: A Thematic English Translation)
Darwin didn’t consider himself a quick or highly analytical thinker. His memory was poor, and he couldn’t follow long mathematical arguments. Nevertheless, Darwin felt that he made up for those shortcomings with a crucial strength: his urge to figure out how reality worked. Ever since he could remember, he had been driven to make sense of the world around him. He followed what he called a “golden rule” to fight against motivated reasoning: . . . whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones. Therefore, even though the peacock’s tail made him anxious, Darwin couldn’t stop puzzling over it. How could it possibly be consistent with natural selection? Within a few years, he had figured out the beginnings of a compelling answer.
Julia Galef (The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't)
My reasons for believing it are briefly these: It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
seemed to her that such a one abdicated all claim to enjoy the fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children’s benefit, for my great-aunt had actually ceased to ‘see’ the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a ‘Highness’ and had thereby stepped down — in her eyes — from the respectable position of a lawyer’s son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn their favours.
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7])
Wilbury, my dear,” Caroline said, “would you mind taking the children and keeping them occupied for a bit?” "Twould be the high point of my golden years, my lady,” he replied with frigid politeness. “The culmination of a lifelong dream I had nearly abandoned in favour of waiting peacefully for the Grim Reaper to come and relieve me of my earthly duties.” Immune to his sarcasm, Caroline beamed fondly at him. “Thank you, Wilbury. I thought that’s what you would say.” Shuffling toward the hearth, the butler muttered under his breath, “I just love children, you know. I simply dote upon the overindulged little darlings with their grasping little hands and their sticky little fingers that foul up every freshly polished surface in the house”. As he leaned toward the hearth, the twins paused in play to gape at him. Baring his pointed yellowing teeth in a grimace of a smile, he rasped, “Come now, lads. I’ll take you to the kitchen for some nice hot chocolate.” Eyes widening in terror, the two boys leapt to their feet and ran shrieking from the room. Wilbury straightened as much as his hunched back would allow, rolling his eyes. “Wilbuwy!” Eloisa crowed, scrambling from her mother’s lap and toddling across the room. Wrapping her arms around one of the butler’s scrawny legs, she looked up and batted her long eyelashes at him. “Me want cocoa!” With a long-suffering sigh, he scooped the plump child into his arms, every one of his ancient bones creaking in protest. She joyfully tugged at his misshapen ears as he carried her toward the door. His curdled expression never varied, but as he passed Portia he gave her a nearly imperceptible wink.
Teresa Medeiros (The Vampire Who Loved Me (Cabot, #2))
No politician or party favours waste and inefficiency, and every government tries to reduce both--but tax cuts on the promise of ending the gravy train almost never find enough gravy. Of course efficiency matters, waste must be attacked, and of course it matters how both taxes and spending are organized, but despite the highly publicized incidents of misspending that seem to dominate the pages of our mainstream media and disproportionately shape our perceptions, the numbers about waste never add up, and the consequences of tax cuts on public goods and services are always worse than promised.
Alex Himelfarb (Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word: A Different Take on Taxes in Canada (Canadian Commentaries, 3))
Will you tell me how you came to be living...' He stops, as if trying to find the words. 'As you were.' I remember the care I'd given that he not know. How could I explain the way time seemed to slip from my fingers, the way I became incrementally more detached, more unable to reach out a hand to take something I wanted? I will not allow him to pity me any more than he does. 'You could have come to see me,' he says. 'If you need something.' I laugh at that. 'You?' He frowns down at me with his amber eyes. 'Why not?' The enormity of the reasons catches in my mouth. He's a prince of Elfhame, and I am the disgraced child of traitors. He befriends everyone, from the troll guard at the entrance to all those Tiernan mentioned back in the High Court, while I have spent years alone in the woods. But most of all, because he could have asked his sister to allow me to stay on the Shifting Isles and didn't. 'Perhaps I wanted to save that favour you still owe me,' I say. He laughs at that. Oak liking me is as silly as the sun liking a storm, but that doesn't stop my desire for it. Me, with my sharp teeth and chilly skin. It's absurd. It's grotesque. And yet, the way he looks at me, it almost seems possible.
Holly Black (The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1))
Nothing demonstrates so clearly as the unfolding of our conflict with Russia how essential it is that the Head of a State must be capable of swift, decisive action on his own responsibility, when a war seems to him to be inevitable. In a letter which we found on Stalin's son written by a friend, stands the following phrase : "I hope to be able to see my Anuschka once more before the promenade to Berlin." If, in accordance with their plan, the Russians had been able to foresee our actions, it is, probable that nothing would have been able to stop their armoured units, for the highly developed road system of central Europe would greatly have favoured their advance. In any case, I take credit for the fact that we succeeded in making the Russians hold off right up to the moment when we launched our attack, and that we did so by entering into agreements which were favourable to their interests. Suppose for example that, when the Russians marched into Rumania, we had not been able to limit their conquests to Bessarabia, they would in one swoop have grabbed all the oilfields of the country, and we should have found ourselves, from the spring of that very year, completely frustrated as regards our supplies of petrol.
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
The emotion of love is an affective emotion, directly reacting to goodness, rather than an aggressive one, reacting to challenge. Not only our so-called natural ability to grow and propagate exemplify natural love, but every faculty has a built-in affinity for what accords with its nature. By passion we mean some result of being acted on: either a form induced by the agent (like weight) or a movement consequent on the form (like falling to the ground). Whatever we desire acts on us in this way, first arousing an emotional attachment to itself and making itself agreeable, and then drawing us to seek it. The first change the object produces in our appetite is a feeling of its agreeableness: we call this love (weight can be thought of as a sort of natural love); then desire moves us to seek the object and pleasure comes to rest in it. Clearly then, as a change induced in us by an agent, love is a passion: the affective emotion strictly so, the will to love by stretching of the term. Love unites by making what is loved as agreeable to the lover as if it were himself or a part of himself. Though love is not itself a movement of the appetite towards an object, it is a change the appetite undergoes rendering an object agreeable. Favour is a freely chosen and willing love, open only to reasoning creatures; and charity―literally, holding dear―is a perfect form of love in which what is loved is highly prized. To love, as Aristotle says, is to want someone’s good; so its object is twofold: the good we want, loved with a love of desire, and the someone we want it for (ourselves or someone else), loved with a love of friendship. And just as what exist in the primary sense are subjects of existence, and properties exist only in a secondary sense, as modes in which subjects exist; so too what we love in the primary sense is the someone whose good we will, and only in a secondary sense do we love the good so willed. Friendship based on convenience or pleasure is friendship inasmuch as we want our friend’s good; but because this is subordinated to our own profit or pleasure such friendship is subordinated to love of desire and falls short of true friendship.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation)
But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or two bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise—and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators’ House of Call had sprung up from a beer shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like reasons were not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation stared it out of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.
Charles Dickens (Dombey and Son)
A gambler must think of three main quantities, stake, odds, and prize. If the prize is very large, a gambler is prepared to risk a big stake. A gambler who risks his all on a single throw stands to gain a great deal. He also stands to lose a great deal, but on average high-stake gamblers are no better and no worse off than other players who play for low winnings with low stakes. An analogous comparison is that between speculative and safe investors on the stock market. In some ways the stock market is a better analogy than a casino, because casinos are deliberately rigged in the bank's favour (which means, strictly, the high-stakes players will on average end up poorer than low-stake players; and low-stake players poorer than those who don't gamble at all.
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene)
Independently of romantic rubbish, however, that old garden had its charms. On summer mornings I used to rise early, to enjoy them alone; on summer evenings, to linger solitary, to keep tryste with the rising moon, or taste one kiss of the evening breeze, or fancy rather than feel the freshness of dew descending. The turf was verdant, the gravelled walks were white; sun-bright nasturtiums clustered beautiful about the roots of the doddered orchard giants. There was a large berceau, above which spread the shade of an acacia; there was a smaller, more sequestered bower, nestled in the vines which ran all along a high and grey wall, and gathered their tendrils in a knot of beauty, and hung their clusters in loving profusion about the favoured spot where jasmine and ivy met and married them.
Charlotte Brontë (Charlotte Brontë Collection (Jane Eyre, Villette, Shirley) (Classic Collections Book 4))
Albert wrote to his ‘dearest cousin’ on 26 June to offer his 'sincerest felicitations on that great change which had taken place in your life’. It was a difficult letter to compose. Now that she was 'Queen of the mightiest land of Europe’, he went on, 'the happiness of millions’ lay in her hands, and he trusted that Heaven would assist her in 'that high but difficult task.” He hoped for a long and happy - and glorious - reign, in which she would achieve the 'thankfulness and love’ of her subjects. He wished neither to be indiscreet nor to 'abuse’ her time, but, he closed, 'May I pray you to think likewise sometimes of your cousins in Bonn, and to continue to them that kindness you favoured them with till now.’ And he signed it as 'your Majesty’s most obedient and faithful servant, Albert’.
Stanley Weintraub (Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert)
It is frequently urged that it is necessary to create a public feeling in favour of the full and unchecked mental development of women. Such an argument overlooks the fact that 'emancipation,' the 'woman question,' 'women's rights movements,' are no new things in history, but have always been with us, although with varying prominence at different times in history. It also largely exaggerates the difficulties men place in the way of the mental development of women, especially at the present time. Furthermore it neglects the fact that at the present time it is not the true woman who clamours for emancipation, but only the masculine type of woman, who misconstrues her own character and the motives that actuate her when she formulates her demands in the name of woman. As has been the case with every other movement in history, so also it has been with the contemporary woman's movement. Its originators were convinced that it was being put forward for the first time, and that such a thing had never been thought of before. They maintained that women had hitherto been held in bondage and enveloped in darkness by man, and that it was high time for her to assert herself and claim her natural rights. But the prototype of this movement, as of other movements, occurred in the earliest times. Ancient history and medieval times alike give us instances of women who, in social relations and intellectual matters, fought for such emancipation, and of male and female apologists of the female sex. It is totally erroneous to suggest that hitherto women have had no opportunity for the undisturbed development of their mental powers.
Otto Weininger (Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles)
Scientists have provided the imperial project with practical knowledge, ideological justification and technological gadgets. Without this contribution it is highly questionable whether Europeans could have conquered the world. The conquerors returned the favour by providing scientists with information and protection, supporting all kinds of strange and fascinating projects and spreading the scientific way of thinking to the far corners of the earth. Without imperial support, it is doubtful whether modern science would have progressed very far. There are very few scientific disciplines that did not begin their lives as servants to imperial growth and that do not owe a large proportion of their discoveries, collections, buildings and scholarships to the generous help of army officers, navy captains and imperial governors.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
But people are most likely to think that they can do wrong without paying the penalty if they are good speakers or men of affairs or have wide experience of litigation, or if they have many friends, or if they are rich. Their confidence is greatest if they fall into one of these categories themselves, but otherwise if they count these types among their friends, supporters, or accomplices. For these are the factors that enable them to carry out their crimes, avoid detection, and remain unpunished. Their confidence is also high if they are on good terms with the victims of their wrongdoing or with the judges. For friends take no precautions against being wronged by friends and would rather make up with them than prosecute; and judges are biased in favour of their friends, and either let them off scot-free or give them an exiguous penalty.
Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric)
Rodney Stark confirms the point, saying, For far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285–337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax.… Constantine’s “favor” was his decision to divert to the Christians the massive state funding on which the pagan temples had always depended. Overnight, Christianity became “the most-favoured recipient of the near limitless resources of imperial favors.” A faith that had been meeting in humble structures was suddenly housed in magnificent public buildings—the new church of Saint Peter in Rome was modeled on the basilican form used for imperial throne halls.
Frank Viola (Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity)
Hymn to Mercury : Continued 11. ... Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, He in his sacred crib deposited The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain's head, Revolving in his mind some subtle feat Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might Devise in the lone season of dun night. 12. Lo! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has Driven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, Where the immortal oxen of the God Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows, And safely stalled in a remote abode.— The archer Argicide, elate and proud, Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. 13. He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way, But, being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with withy twigs. 14. And on his feet he tied these sandals light, The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight, Like a man hastening on some distant way, He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight; But an old man perceived the infant pass Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass. 15. The old man stood dressing his sunny vine: 'Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder! You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine Methinks even you must grow a little older: Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder— Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and— If you have understanding—understand.' 16. So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed; Till the black night divine, which favouring fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to climb. 17. Now to Alpheus he had driven all The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun; They came unwearied to the lofty stall And to the water-troughs which ever run Through the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall, Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one Had pastured been, the great God made them move Towards the stall in a collected drove. 18. A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, And having soon conceived the mystery Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped And the divine child saw delightedly.— Mercury first found out for human weal Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel. 19. And fine dry logs and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon the ground— And kindled them—and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around: And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud, Close to the fire—such might was in the God. 20. And on the earth upon their backs he threw The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er, And bored their lives out. Without more ado He cut up fat and flesh, and down before The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two, Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley)
From the woods that surrounded the burgh came a mass of men. Some rode, others ran. All carried weapons, mainly axes or spears. A few wore mail shirts and cloaks, but most just leather aketons. Among them were a handful of men clad in the short tunics favoured by Highlanders. These men were bare from thigh to foot, an alarming sight to Ormesby, who had only heard rumour of these wild men of the north. As they came, they roared a multitude of battle cries. Ormesby caught one name in the din, issuing from a group of mailed riders who followed a burly man on a finely caparisoned horse. ‘For Douglas!’ they howled. ‘For Douglas!’ Below, the townsfolk were scattering. The English soldiers had formed a tight knot outside the hall, blades drawn, but even as Ormesby watched, the forlorn group of beggars he had seen threw off their ragged skins and furs, revealing thickly muscled warriors. They fell upon the soldiers with savage cries, daggers thrusting. Footsteps sounded on the hall stairs. The door burst open and two soldiers appeared. ‘We must go, sir!’ The clerks and officials were already hastening across the chamber. Donald was running with them. Ormesby remained rooted. ‘Who are they?’ he demanded, his voice high as he turned back to the window, seeing the horde rushing into the town. His eyes fixed on a giant of a man running, almost loping in the front lines. Taller than all those around him, agile in the stride, he wore a simple dark blue tunic and wide-brimmed kettle hat. The other men seemed to be running in unruly formation around him. But it was the blade in the man’s hands that Ormesby’s eyes were drawn to. He had never seen such a sword, so broad and long the giant had to grasp it in both hands as he came. Another name now became audible in the roar of the mob. ‘Wallace! Wallace!
Robyn Young (Insurrection (The Insurrection Trilogy, #1))
There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men’s lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour.
Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue; in the later stages the incidence of taxation increases while the aggregate revenue falls off. Now where taxes and imposts are light, private individuals are encouraged to engage actively in business; enterprise develops, because business men feel it worth their while, in view of the small share of their profits which they have to give up in the form of taxation. And as business prospers the number of taxes increases and the total yield of taxation grows. As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favour of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow.... owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects -farmers, peasants, and others subject to taxation; sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield; and impose sales taxes and octrois, as we shall describe later. These increases grow with the spread of luxurious habits in the state, and the consequent growth in needs and public expenditure, until taxation burdens the subjects and deprives them of their gains. People get accustomed to this high level of taxation, because the increases have come about gradually, without anyone’s being aware of who exactly it was who raised the rates of the old taxes or imposed the new ones. But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes, and between their output and their net profits. Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation. The rulers may, mistakenly, try to remedy this decrease in the yield of taxation by raising the rate of the taxes; hence taxes and imposts reach a level which leaves no profits to business men, owing to high costs of production, heavy burden of taxation, and inadequate net profits. This process of higher tax rates and lower yields (caused by the government’s belief that higher rates result in higher returns) may go on until production begins to decline owing to the despair of business men, and to affect population. The main injury of this process is felt by the state, just as the main benefit of better business conditions is enjoyed by it. From this you must understand that the most important factor making for business prosperity is to lighten as much as possible the burden of taxation on business men, in order to encourage enterprise by giving assurance of greater profits.
Ibn Khaldun
SECTION XI.--The Strength of Simplicity. The soul in the state of abandonment knows how to see God even in the proud who oppose His action. All creatures, good or evil, reveal Him to it. __________________________________________________________________ The whole practice of the simple soul is in the accomplishment of the will of God. This it respects even in those unruly actions by which the proud attempt to depreciate it. The proud soul despises one in whose sight it is as nothing, who beholds only God in it, and in all its actions. Often it imagines that the modesty of the simple soul is a mark of appreciation for itself; when, all the time, it is only a sign of that loving fear of God and of His holy will as shown to it in the person of the proud. No, poor fool, the simple soul fears you not at all. You excite its compassion; it is answering God when you think it is speaking to you: it is with Him that it believes it has to do; it regards you only as one of His slaves, or rather as a mask with which He disguises Himself. Therefore the more you take a high tone, the lower you become in its estimation; and when you think to take it by surprise, it surprises you. Your wiles and violence are just favours from Heaven. The proud soul cannot comprehend itself, but the simple soul, with the light of faith, can very clearly see through it. The finding of the divine action in all that occurs at each moment, in and around us, is true science, a continuous revelation of truth, and an unceasingly renewed intercourse with God. It is a rejoicing with the Spouse, not in secret, nor by stealth, in the cellar, or the vineyard, but openly, and in public, without any human respect. It is a fund of peace, of joy, of love, and of satisfaction with God who is seen, known, or rather, believed in, living and operating in the most perfect manner in everything that happens. It is the beginning of eternal happiness not yet perfectly realised and tasted, except in an incomplete and hidden manner. The Holy Spirit, who arranges all the pieces on the board of life, will, by this fruitful and continual presence of His action, say at the hour of death, "fiat lux," "let there be light" (Gen. i, 14), and then will be seen the treasures which faith hides in this abyss of peace and contentment with God, and which will be found in those things that have been every moment done, or suffered for Him. When God gives Himself thus, all that is common becomes wonderful; and it is on this account that nothing seems to be so, because this way is, in itself, extraordinary. Consequently it is unnecessary to make it full of strange and unsuitable marvels. It is, in itself, a miracle, a revelation, a constant joy even with the prevalence of minor faults. But it is a miracle which, while rendering all common and sensible things wonderful, has nothing in itself that is sensibly marvellous.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade (Abandonment to Divine Providence)
Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’. But the Gallipoli Campaign was a serious matter: vital resources had been drawn away from where it really mattered. The Turks were all but helpless if left on their own. They had tried to launch an ambitious attack across the Sinai Desert on the Suez Canal but had been easily thwarted. Gallipoli achieved nothing but to provide the Turks with the opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favour. Meanwhile, back on the Western Front, was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns and munitions were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first ‘great push’ at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At sea Jellicoe was facing the High Seas Fleet which could pick its moment to contest the ultimate control of the seas. This was the real war – Gallipoli was nothing but a foolish sideshow.
Peter Hart (The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War)
There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day towards this end, affect nevertheless—even to themselves—a high tone of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth, or rather—for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the bearing of a man—that ever crawled and crept through life by its dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour. Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood and trickery of such men’s lives, or whether they really hope to cheat Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this—not to question how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time and labour. Ralph Nickleby was not a man of this stamp. Stern, unyielding, dogged, and impenetrable, Ralph cared for nothing in life, or beyond it, save the gratification of two passions, avarice, the first and predominant appetite of his nature, and hatred, the second.
Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
Admonished by his ear, and straight was known The Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seven Who in God’s presence, nearest to his throne, Stand ready at command, and are his eyes That run through all the Heavens, or down to the Earth Bear his swift errands over moist and dry, O’er sea and land: him Satan thus accosts. “Uriel, for thou of those seven Spirits that stand In sight of God’s high throne, gloriously bright, The first art wont his great authentic will Interpreter through highest Heaven to bring, Where all his sons thy embassy attend; And here art likeliest by supreme decree Like honour to obtain, and as his eye To visit oft this new creation round; Unspeakable desire to see, and know All these his wonderous works, but chiefly Man, His chief delight and favour, him for whom All these his works so wonderous he ordained, Hath brought me from the quires of Cherubim Alone thus wandering. Brightest Seraph, tell In which of all these shining orbs hath Man His fixed seat, or fixed seat hath none, But all these shining orbs his choice to dwell; That I may find him, and with secret gaze Or open admiration him behold, On whom the great Creator hath bestowed Worlds, and on whom hath all these graces poured; That both in him and all things, as is meet, The universal Maker we may praise; Who justly hath driven out his rebel foes To deepest Hell, and, to repair that loss, Created this new happy race of Men To serve him better: Wise are all his ways.” So spake the false dissembler unperceived; For neither Man nor Angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone,
John Milton (Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained (Collins Classics))
It’s a soulful Sunday, somehow I found myself pulling out my journal and started writing a letter to Sensuality. And it goes like this: Sensuality... You’ve opened me up to a world of possibilities and set me on an adventure that has never ceased to amaze me. You have led me through unfounded territories. Through the highest highs and lowest lows I’ve felt your current, sometimes raging like an angry sea and at times blowing as gentle as a cool summer breeze. You’ve filled me with such an insatiable desire, which has been both a curse and a blessing. You’ve sensitized my soul, made it to feel even the most gentle touch of the lightest feather. You daily seduce me into your deep waters, waters so deep I find myself drowning, yet not losing my breath. Sensuality... I love how you soothe me when I’m hurting. I love how you comfort and put me back together when I’m feeling broken. I love how you whisper in my ear and say ‘do not despair, I’m here.’ You uncover my deepest desires and set my soul on fire. You light me up and make me shine like the brightest star on a clear summer night. There’s never a dull moment with you. Just when I think there can’t possibly be more, you show me again and again that there’s always another level... another layer... another blessing. Your mysteries never run out. I’ve come know you like God’s very own presence. Indeed, you are His very own favour to my soul. His divine beauty, passion and wisdom have I come to know through you. Through you I’ve learned how to stand in my worthiness rather than in my shame. That’s why I love you and will forever hold you close... very close... to my heart. Xoxo.
Lebo Grand
The belief in oneself, pride in oneself, a fundamental hostility and irony against “selflessness” belong to noble morality, just as much as an easy contempt and caution before feelings of pity and the “warm heart.” Powerful men are the ones who understand how to honour; that is their art, their realm of invention. The profound reverence for age and for ancestral tradition — all justice stands on this double reverence — the belief and the prejudice favouring forefathers and working against newcomers are typical in the morality of the powerful, and when, by contrast, the men of “modern ideas” believe almost instinctively in “progress” and the “future” and increasingly lack any respect for age, then in that attitude the ignoble origin of these “ideas” already reveals itself well enough. However, a morality of the rulers is most alien and embarrassing to present taste because of the severity of its basic principle that man has duties only with respect to those like him, that man should act towards those beings of lower rank, towards everything foreign, at his own discretion, or “as his heart dictates,” and, in any case, “beyond good and evil.” Here pity and things like that may belong. The capacity for and obligation to a long gratitude and a long revenge — both only within the circle of one’s peers — the sophistication in paying back again, the refined idea in friendship, a certain necessity to have enemies (as, so to speak, drainage ditches for the feelings of envy, quarrelsomeness, and high spirits — basically in order to be capable of being a good friend): all those are typical characteristics of a noble morality, which, as indicated, is not the morality of “modern ideas” and which is thus nowadays difficult to sympathize with, as well as difficult to dig up and expose.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable to the happiness of all. He must not be satisfied with indolent benevolence, nor fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world. That he may call forth the whole vigour of his soul, and strain every nerve, in order to produce those ends which it is the purpose of his being to advance, Nature has taught him, that neither himself nor mankind can be fully satisfied with his conduct, nor bestow upon it the full measure of applause, unless he has actually produced them. He is made to know, that the praise of good intentions, without the merit of good offices, will be but of little avail to excite either the loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self-applause. The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and deportment express the justest, the noblest, and most generous sentiments, can be entitled to demand no very high reward, even though his inutility should be owing to nothing but the want of an opportunity to serve. We can still refuse it him without blame. We can still ask him, What have you done? What actual service can you produce, to entitle you to so great a recompense? We esteem you, and love you; but we owe you nothing. To reward indeed that latent virtue which has been useless only for want of an opportunity to serve, to bestow upon it those honours and preferments, which, though in some measure it may be said to deserve them, it could not with propriety have insisted upon, is the effect of the most divine benevolence. To punish, on the contrary, for the affections of the heart only, where no crime has been committed, is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny.
Adam Smith (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)
Refined cruelty as virtue. Here is a morality which rests entirely on the drive to distinction do not think too highly of it! For what kind of a drive is that and what thought lies behind it? We want to make the sight of us painful to another and to awaken in him the feeling of envy and of his own impotence and degradation; by dropping on to his tongue a drop of our honey, and while doing him this supposed favour looking him keenly and mockingly in the eyes, we want to make him savour the bitterness of his fate. This person has become humble and is now perfect in his humility seek for those whom he has for long wished to torture with it! you will find them soon enough! That person is kind to animals and is admired on account of it but there are certain people on whom he wants to vent his cruelty by this means. There stands a great artist: the pleasure he anticipated in the envy of his defeated rivals allowed his powers no rest until he had become great how many bitter moments has his becoming great not cost the souls of others! The chastity of the nun: with what punitive eyes it looks into the faces of women who live otherwise! how much joy in revenge there is in these eyes! The theme is brief, the variations that might be played upon it might be endless but hardly tedious for it is still a far too paradoxical and almost paininducing novelty that the morality of distinction is in its ultimate foundation pleasure in refined cruelty. In its ultimate foundation in this case that means: in its first generation. For when the habit of some distinguishing action is inherited, the thought that lies behind it is not inherited with it (thoughts are not hereditary, only feelings): and provided it is not again reproduced by education, even the second generation fails to experience any pleasure in cruelty in connection with it, but only pleasure in the habit as such. This pleasure, however, is the first stage of the 'good'.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality)
This is not to say that he was not qualified, though he concealed his beginnings as a scullion, to lend a hand like anyone else. It required some exceptional circumstance nevertheless to induce him one day to carve the turkeys himself. I was out, but I heard afterwards that he carved them with a sacerdotal majesty, surrounded, at a respectful distance from the service-table, by a ring of waiters who, endeavouring thereby not so much to learn the art as to curry favour with him, stood gaping in open-mouthed admiration. The manager, however, as he plunged his knife with solemn deliberation into the flanks of his victims, from which he no more deflected his eyes, filled with a sense of his high function, than if he were expecting to read some augury therein, was totally oblivious of their presence. The hierophant was not even conscious of my absence. When he heard of it, he was distressed: “What, you didn’t see me carving the turkeys myself?” I replied that having failed, so far, to see Rome, Venice, Siena, the Prado, the Dresden gallery, the Indies, Sarah in Phèdre, I had learned to resign myself, and that I would add his carving of turkeys to my list. The comparison with the dramatic art (Sarah in Phèdre) was the only one that he seemed to understand, for he had learned through me that on days of gala performances the elder Coquelin had accepted beginners’ roles, even those of characters who had only a single line or none at all. “All the same, I’m sorry for your sake. When shall I be carving again? It will need some great event, it will need a war.” (It needed the armistice, in fact.) From that day onwards, the calendar was changed, and time was reckoned thus: “That was the day after the day I carved the turkeys myself.” “It was exactly a week after the manager carved the turkeys himself.” And so this prosectomy furnished, like the Nativity of Christ or the Hegira, the starting point for a calendar different from the rest, but neither so extensively adopted nor so long observed.
Marcel Proust (Sodom and Gomorrah)
Broaching is a precise machining process in metalworking domain which uses a toothed tool called broach to cut materials into a predetermined shape. Broaching works best for odd shapes where precision machining is needed and hence finds wide application in a number of industry in India and worldwide. Broach resembles a saw to certain extent but unlike a saw, its teeth become larger in size across its length. A broach gives shapes by roughing or removing the material, semi finishing and then by imparting the ultimate finishing. Round or odd shapes, for both internal and external surfaces, can be conveniently formed by broaching. This multi edge tool can shape any metal or metallic alloy but works best on softer materials like plastic, wood, bronze, aluminum, etc. Resharpening of the tool The broach that imparts shape to many work pieces can work properly only when the size and shape of its teeth are perfect. With time and usage, the teeth tend to lose its sharpness and become blunt. Using a dull broach may lead to permanent damage of its teeth. To enhance the broach life and minimize the tooling expense, it needs to be re-sharpened on time. When to opt for resharpening When broaching produce roughly shaped work pieces, it is definitely time for re-sharpening. However, with a little bit of watchfulness, one can even get it sharpened before it delivers poor finish or tearing. Some of the other conditions when this toothed tool will require re-sharpening are: • Excessive hydraulic press pressure required to run the broach • Nicks and scratches on the teeth making it dull • Broach starts drifting • Cutting edges show signs of wear • Chattering occurs while broaching Re-sharpening requires high precision. Removing excessive material from the teeth will adversely affect its longevity. Only proper sharpening will ensure time efficiency and high quality output. Teeth welding, grinding of gullets and teeth crest, reshaping teeth to proper taper are some of the methods used in re-sharpening. Broaching, once used for machining only internal keyways, is now used for machining a plethora of shapes and surfaces for high quantity of work pieces. Broaching requires less tools than most of the other machining process and saves considerable amount of output time and hence favoured for high volume production irrespective of its high cost. In India, broaching finds wide application in the automobile industry. Therefore, a large number of players are foraying into the broach manufacturing industry on a regular basis.
Ankur sood
Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things; finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a higher level of awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning spirituality. But this "wearisome condition of humanity" is the indispensable prerequisite of enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate selfhood; he must do battle with the lower self in older that he may become identified with that higher Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works "are not and cannot be a proximate means of union with God." The proximate means is "intellect," in the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favourable to its own transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself. We see, then, that as a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride and madness, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End (as so many religious people have done and still do), or if, denying the existence of an eternal End, we regard it as at once the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, moral evil and social disaster. At no period in history has cleverness been so highly valued or, in certain directions, so widely and efficiently trained as at the present time. And at no time have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End to which they are proximate means less widely and less earnestly sought for. Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)
Opinions as to the appearance of the Baloches have varied as much as those regarding their origin. Pottinger compared them to the Turkomans, 1 while Khanikoff detected a strong resemblance to the Kirghiz, probably to one of the least Mongolian in appearance of the tribes included under this name. Pottinger denied all resemblance to the Arabs, while, on the other hand, many travellers speak of their Arab features. Sir T. Holdich, who advocated their Arab origin in a paper on the ' Arabs of the North-West Frontier,' read before the Anthropological Society in 1899, considers the resemblance both in character and appearance very strong. Sir E. Burton, who knew the Baloches well and had an almost unrivalled acquaintance with the Arabs, did not favour this view. He says : 2 ' His appearance bears little resemblance to that of Ismail's descendants. The eye is the full, black, expressive Persian, not the small, restless, fiery Arab organ ; the other features are peculiarly high, regular, and Iranian; and the beard, unerring indicator of high physical development, is long and lustrous, thick and flowing.
Anonymous
Therfore when any favour'd of high Jove, Chances to pass through this adventrous glade, Swift as the Sparkle of a glancing Star, [ 80 ] I shoot from Heav'n to give him safe convoy, As now I do: But first I must put off These my skie robes spun out of Iris Wooff, And take the Weeds and likenes of a Swain, That to the service of this house belongs, [ 85 ] Who with his soft Pipe, and smooth-dittied Song, Well knows to still the wilde winds when they roar, And hush the waving Woods, nor of lesse faith, And in this office of his Mountain watch, Likeliest, and neerest to the present ayd [ 90 ] Of this occasion. But I hear the tread Of hatefull steps, I must be viewless now.
Milton
But it is the personal synthesis of elements taken from a wide variety of historical styles and periods that most strongly links the church music with Vaughan Williams’s output as a whole. This can be observed anywhere but is perhaps best illustrated by the Mass, a work whose neo-Tudor associations have obscured awareness of a wider eclecticism. Techniques favoured by sixteenth-century English church musicians – false relations, fauxbourdon-like textures, contrasts between soloist(s) and the full choir – are indeed present, but they are combined with others – canon and points of imitation, sectional division of the text (articulated by textural contrasts), emphasis on the church modes – that were the lingua franca of the period, common to English and continental music alike. Even these Renaissance techniques are but a ‘starting-point’32 for what is clearly a highly personal essay, however.
Alain Frogley (The Cambridge Companion to Vaughan Williams (Cambridge Companions to Music))
This is a classic example of the type of literary blind that Crowley loved to utilize when he wished to publish, in a public medium, sensitive or secret information that had heretofore been reserved for high initiates while, at the same time, shocking and outraging the public at large. Today the sexual connotations are obvious to all but the most mentally or emotionally disadvantaged. For such unfortunates we advise they read the last sentence of this chapter first: "You are likely to get into trouble over this chapter unless you truly comprehend its meaning. " OF THE BLOODY SACRIFICE: AND MATTERS COGNATE by The Master Therion Aleister Crowley It is necessary for us to consider carefully the problems connected with the bloody sacrifice, for this question is indeed traditionally important in Magick. Nigh all ancient Magick revolves around this matter. In particular all the Osirian religions-the rites of the Dying God-refer to this. The slaying of Osiris and Adonis the mutilation of Attis; the cults of Mexico and Peru; the story of Hercules or Melcarth; the legends of Dionysus and of Mithra, are all connected with this one idea. In the Hebrew religion we find the same thing inculcated. The first ethical lesson in the Bible is that the only sacrifice pleasing to the Lord is the sacrifice of blood; Abel, who made this, finding favour with the Lord, while Cain, who offered cabbages, was
Christopher S. Hyatt (Taboo: Sex, Religion & Magick)
The thoughtless, the ignorant, and the indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of luck, of fortune, and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, "How lucky he is!" Observing another become intellectual, they exclaim, "How highly favoured he is!" And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, "How chance aids him at every turn!" They do not see the trials and failures and struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck". They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it chance.
Anonymous
Celebrating your event with style and creativity Everyone works on a budget. Not all of us have the resources and time to hire wedding planners and party organizers to celebrate important days of your lives. You don’t have to skimp on an anniversary, birthday, engagement or any other special days just because you are on a budget. There are several DIY party ideas and accessories available on the internet that will help you celebrate that special occasion with much gusto and style. Celebrating a special day- be it your own wedding, engagement, throwing the best birthday bash, or a theme party, it is rather a challenging and exciting time, that churns up your creative juices that can leave one exhausted and confused. Especially when one desires to be innovative and wishes to throw a party that leaves the guests spell bounded and the-talk-of-the-town, there are several websites that provide amazing Party Loot Bags and accessories that are affordable and unique. Since we often think of the celebration as synonymous with splurging, these special occasions can feel challenged. After all, it's hard to enjoy yourself when all you can think about is the amount of money a party or wedding planner is charging you. This is your cue to be innovative as there are various fun and exciting DIY Party Accessories and Dessert buffets that can make your event memorable without spending too much of your hard earned money. With DIY ideas, you can enjoy 99 percent of excitement and 1 percent anxiety. There are a myriad of delightful Wedding Bomboniere ideas and items that can be easily procured through online stores. With ease and convenience, you can order Bomboniere Australia and party accessories from the comforts of your home and shop for the best quality products online. Web sites now cater for DIY items that style up any event- from weddings, engagements, christening, baby showers, birthdays, and much more. These companies offer a plethora of crazy, fun, unique and creative ideas and DIY items that are affordable, convenient, and highly accessible, promising a grand celebration of your special day. If you wish to have your rein on the planning and organizing of your wedding, you can explore some great ideas and accessories through these websites that are run by creative individuals assuring an enriching experience. Browse through great DIY Dessert Buffets and loot bags, and choose from hundreds of incredible ideas and accessories to celebrate your day with glamour, style, and charm. Make a lasting impression on your guests through DIY Party Accessories and buffet packages. There are many services on the internet that guide you through the entire event and help you plan your dream wedding in the most efficient and creative manner.
Style Party Love
I don't like to owe money or favours. I can pay the money back with money, but the favours and kindnesses I must pay back in kind—and you are apt to find these moral obligations mighty high priced at times. Moreover there is no statute of limitations.
Anonymous
Confiscations of estates from rich men who had fallen out of favour enriched the emperor’s personal holdings. There were rumours that less high-minded emperors than Hadrian had killed just to possess a pretty garden. By the reign of Claudius, the imperial treasury was synonymous with the treasury of Rome. Even so, there were emperors sufficiently profligate to eat into the reserves and to conceive desperate ways of refilling them; Caligula anticipated inheritances from wealthy knights by executing them.
Elizabeth Speller (Following Hadrian: A Second-Century Journey through the Roman Empire)
March 21 MORNING “Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.” — John 16:32 FEW had fellowship with the sorrows of Gethsemane. The majority of the disciples were not sufficiently advanced in grace to be admitted to behold the mysteries of “the agony.” Occupied with the passover feast at their own houses, they represent the many who live upon the letter, but are mere babes as to the spirit of the gospel. To twelve, nay, to eleven only was the privilege given to enter Gethsemane and see “this great sight.” Out of the eleven, eight were left at a distance; they had fellowship, but not of that intimate sort to which men greatly beloved are admitted. Only three highly favoured ones could approach the veil of our Lord’s mysterious sorrow: within that veil even these must not intrude; a stone’s-cast distance must be left between. He must tread the wine-press alone, and of the people there must be none with Him. Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, represent the few eminent, experienced saints, who may be written down as “Fathers;” these having done business on great waters, can in some degree measure the huge Atlantic waves of their Redeemer’s passion. To some selected spirits it is given, for the good of others, and to strengthen them for future, special, and tremendous conflict, to enter the inner circle and hear the pleadings of the suffering High Priest; they have fellowship with Him in His sufferings, and are made conformable unto His death. Yet even these cannot penetrate the secret places of the Saviour’s woe. “Thine unknown sufferings” is the remarkable expression of the Greek liturgy: there was an inner chamber in our Master’s grief, shut out from human knowledge and fellowship. There Jesus is “left alone.” Here Jesus was more than ever an “Unspeakable gift!” Is not Watts right when he sings — “And all the unknown joys he gives, Were bought with agonies unknown.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
February 19 MORNING “Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” — Ezekiel 36:37 PRAYER is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarcely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. You have found this true in your own personal experience. God has given you many an unsolicited favour, but still great prayer has always been the prelude of great mercy with you. When you first found peace through the blood of the cross, you had been praying much, and earnestly interceding with God that He would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. When at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your prayers. When you have had great deliverances out of sore troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, “I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Prayer is always the preface to blessing. It goes before the blessing as the blessing’s shadow. When the sunlight of God’s mercies rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. Or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, He Himself shines behind them, and He casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are much in prayer, our pleadings are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly. “Prayer makes the darken’d cloud withdraw; Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw; Gives exercise to faith and love; Brings every blessing from above.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening—Classic KJV Edition: A Devotional Classic for Daily Encouragement)
Complaining     “I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances” (Philippians 4:11).     God hates complaining. In the Old Testament, God rescued the Israelites from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. They had a miraculous escape through the Red Sea and were on their way to the Promised Land. Yet only two of the original group actually arrived at the final destination. The rest perished in the desert. Why? One contributing factor was their complaining.   First, they complained that they had no food so God graciously provided manna. This was food that miraculously appeared each morning for them to collect for their families for the day. However, it wasn’t long before they complained about the manna. They even went so far as to say that they preferred their lives of slavery in Egypt to another day of eating manna.   I’m disgusted by their ungratefulness. They were a complaining, grumbling bunch that couldn’t see how good they actually had it. They were constantly looking for the bad in their situation instead of focusing on how God had favoured them, heard their cries, saved them from slavery, and provided for them on their way to the Promised Land.   However, it’s easy for me to pass judgment on them as I read about their story in the Bible. It’s obvious to me what they did wrong. But I was recently convicted of my own behaviour. Some days I am no better than those complainers.   I can think specifically of a job I received. This job was a miracle from God in itself. My two co-workers had been waiting over three years to get this job – I had just applied a month before. It was only part-time hours so it allowed me to continue to pursue my other interests and hobbies. It was close to my home, within the hours that my children were at school and doing what I love to do – teach.   However, when I was first offered the job I complained about the topic I would be teaching – accounting. It was not my first love. I would have preferred to teach creative writing or marketing – something fun. But accounting? I balked. Then I complained about the cost of parking. Then I complained that I had to share an office. Then I complained that my mailbox was too high, the water was too cold, the photocopier was too far away, the computer was too slow – well, you get the point. Instead of focusing on the answer to prayer, I focused on the little irritants about which to complain.   Finally, I started to complain about the students – one particular student. She would come to class with a snarl and sit in the back of the classroom with her arms crossed, feet up and a scowl that would scare crows away. It seemed to me that she not only hated the topic I was teaching, but she also hated the teacher.   Each day, I returned home and complained to my husband about this particular student. Things didn’t improve. She became more and more despondent and even poisoned the entire class with her sickly attitude. I complained more. I complained to other teachers and my friends; anyone who dared to ask the question, “How do you enjoy teaching?”  
Kimberley Payne (Feed Your Spirit: A Collection of Devotionals on Prayer (Meeting Faith Book 2))
Pray one for another.” — James 5:16 As an encouragement cheerfully to offer intercessory prayer, remember that such prayer is the sweetest God ever hears, for the prayer of Christ is of this character. In all the incense which our Great High Priest now puts into the golden censer, there is not a single grain for himself. His intercession must be the most acceptable of all supplications—and the more like our prayer is to Christ’s, the sweeter it will be; thus while petitions for ourselves will be accepted, our pleadings for others, having in them more of the fruits of the Spirit, more love, more faith, more brotherly kindness, will be, through the precious merits of Jesus, the sweetest oblation that we can offer to God, the very fat of our sacrifice. Remember, again, that intercessory prayer is exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! The Word of God teems with its marvellous deeds. Believer, thou hast a mighty engine in thy hand, use it well, use it constantly, use it with faith, and thou shalt surely be a benefactor to thy brethren. When thou hast the King’s ear, speak to him for the suffering members of his body. When thou art favoured to draw very near to his throne, and the King saith to thee, “Ask, and I will give thee what thou wilt,” let thy petitions be, not for thyself alone, but for the many who need his aid. If thou hast grace at all, and art not an intercessor, that grace must be small as a grain of mustard seed. Thou hast just enough grace to float thy soul clear from the quicksand, but thou hast no deep floods of grace, or else thou wouldst carry in thy joyous bark a weighty cargo of the wants of others, and thou wouldst bring back from thy Lord, for them, rich blessings which but for thee they might not have obtained:— “Oh, let my hands forget their skill, My tongue be silent, cold, and still, This bounding heart forget to beat, If I forget the mercy-seat!
Anonymous
To reform a military system always demands reformers of ruthless will and high professional talent. Yet it demands even more – a favourable political climate.
Correlli Barnett (Leadership in War: From Lincoln to Churchill)
The Princess was anxious that her sons should also see something of the real world beyond boarding schools and palaces. As she said in a speech on Aids: ‘I am only too aware of the temptation of avoiding harsh reality; not just for myself but for my own children too. Am I doing them a favour if I hide suffering and unpleasantness from them until the last possible minute? The last minutes which I choose for them may be too late. I can only face them with a choice based on what I know. The rest is up to them.’ She felt this was especially important for William, the future King. As she once said: ‘Through learning what I do, and his father to a certain extent, he has got an insight into what’s coming his way. He’s not hidden upstairs with the governess.’ Over the years she has taken both boys on visits to hostels for the homeless and to see seriously ill people in hospital. When she took William on a secret visit to the Passage day centre for the homeless in Central London, accompanied by Cardinal Basil Hume, her pride was evident as she introduced him to what many would consider the flotsam and jetsam of society. ‘He loves it and that really rattles people,’ she proudly told friends. The Catholic Primate of All England was equally effusive. ‘What an extraordinary child,’ he told her. ‘He has such dignity at such a young age.’ This upbringing helped William cope when a group of mentally handicapped children joined fellow school pupils for a Christmas party. Diana watched with delight as the future King gallantly helped these deprived youngsters join in the fun. ‘I was so thrilled and proud. A lot of adults couldn’t handle it,’ she told friends. Again during one Ascot week, a time of Champagne, smoked salmon and fashionable frivolity for High society, the Princess took her boys to the Refuge night shelter for down-and-outs. William played chess while Harry joined in a card school. Two hours later the boys were on their way back to Kensington Palace, a little older and a little wiser. ‘They have a knowledge,’ she once said. ‘They may never use it, but the seed is there, and I hope it will grow because knowledge is power. I want them to have an understanding of people’s emotions, people’s insecurities, people’s distress and people’s hopes and dreams.’ Her quiet endeavors gradually won back many of the doubters who had come to see her as a threat to the monarchy, or as a talentless and embittered woman seeking to make trouble, especially by upstaging or embarrassing her husband and his family. The sight of the woman who was still then technically the future Queen, unadorned and virtually unaccompanied, mixing with society’s poorest and most distressed or most threatened, confounded many of her critics.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
I observe something. When the angel of the Lord appeared to Cornelius, he also appeared to Peter. The two parties involved. Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked. The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” Then the angel appeared to Peter... While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Simon, three men are looking for you. So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I have sent them.” Again, when the angel of the Lord appeared to Saul on his way to Damascus, he also appeared to Ananias As the angel of the Lord appeared to Saul, “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” Then the angel of the Lord also appeared to Ananias and told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” When the angel of the Lord appeared to Mary, the mother of Jesus, he also appeared to Joseph. And the angel said to her "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus." and the angel also told her about her cousin, saying "behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren" The angel then appeared to Joseph saying "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." Again, after the angel had told Mary about her cousin, the angel appeared to Zechariah, the husband of Mary's cousin saying: "Fear not, Zachariah: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John." Indeed God is not an author of confusion
OMOSOHWOFA CASEY
In the first pattern, the team becomes overly focused on winning the attention of the manager. The problem is, when people don’t know what the end game is, they are unclear about how to win, and as a result they make up their own game and their own rules as they vie for the manager’s favour. Instead of focusing their time and energies on making a high level of contribution, they put all their effort into games like attempting to look better than their peers, demonstrating their self-importance, and echoing their manager’s every idea or sentiment. These kinds of activities are not only non-essential but damaging and counterproductive.
Greg McKeown (Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less)
To the question ‘Would you envisage living with a Jewish partner?’, 8 per cent of the total questioned replied ‘No, I couldn’t envisage this for myself’, and Brenner notes that this response was given by 24 per cent of those of Maghrebian origin (a difference of 16 points). The figure for those individuals classified as ‘right-wing’ was 16 per cent (a difference of 8 points). If this does indeed confirm a more pronounced anti-Jewish prejudice among young people who class themselves as ‘right-wing’, for the question on the media the difference is less significant on the basis of our own ideological reading. Furthermore, the advantage here is more distinctly in favour of Brenner’s ethno-cultural hypothesis, which is not relativized by a high degree of equality on other questions (as above for the areas of politics and economics). This is why Brenner remarks that ‘the cleavage is most clearly marked by the question dealing with the personal sphere’, though we now have to correct this by making clear that only the personal sphere seems to mark such a ‘cleavage’, at least so far as validating his explanatory hypothesis is concerned. But the correction does not stop here. This would in fact mean forgetting that these figures do not offer any enlightenment at all as to the origin of this negative response on the part of young people of Maghrebian origin – at least, until we know how many of them would respond negatively to the broader question ‘Would you envisage living with anyone who is not Muslim (or not Maghrebian)?’ For it is only in so far as the percentage of young people of Maghrebian origin who would not envisage living with any non-Muslim (or non-Maghrebian) is clearly lower than the percentage of the same young people who would not envisage living with a Jewish person that the difference is significant. In other words, if 24 per cent of these same young people of Maghrebian origin would no more envisage living with any non-Maghrebian or non-Muslim, then the ‘cleavage’ would not be a sign of anti-Jewish prejudice, but simply the assertion of a Muslim or Maghrebian identity. Since this question was not asked, it is impossible to draw any conclusion.
Alain Badiou (Reflections On Anti-Semitism)
In New England, subsistence farming, collective reproduction (communal living) and mutual use of the skills of the highly qualified intellectual labour-force via the substitution of capital-intensive re-production (hospitals, microwave ovens) by labour-intensive reproduction techniques (macro-biotics, yoga, bio-genetics, meditation, massage, walks and fresh air) were favoured by the agricultural structure, the climate (which imposes a certain discipline), the vicinity of metropolitan areas and low real estate prices. This constellation allowed a certain refusal of full-time intellectual work and the loosening of capitalist control over it. Under this aspect, the retreat to the countryside and the alternative lifestyle are forms of struggle by intellectual workers against capital. Capital has always had problems in controlling its intellectual labour force mainly because the profit returns are indirect and slow, particularly for disciplines like philosophy, literature and art.
Anonymous
Sadly, this game would prove to be the high point of the whole trip and our morale seemed to dip with each day of cricket we played. One of the main reasons for the tension and irritation was the umpiring. It set the already unstable camp on edge because we felt it was in favour of the home side. Hang on, I’ve been too kind there. We were sure it was in favour of the home side.
Michael Holding (No Holding Back: The Autobiography)
CARDINAL WOLSEY So farewell to the little good you bear me. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride At length broke under me and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye: I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have: And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again
William Shakespeare
She had always reckoned herself such a gambler. No more audacious woman in the Union. Now she realised the games had always been rigged in her favour. She never had to gamble with her life before, and the stakes had risen suddenly far too high for her taste.
Joe Abercrombie (A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness, #1))
From the vantage point of creating something useful (to maintaining and developing civilization), beautiful or true, Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) artistic philosophy involved rejecting the idea that art should create beauty and a road to transcendence. His purpose was to challenge the accepted way of doing art and so challenge all that was established, including that which is useful. In so-doing, his art created a sense of shock, confusion, and meaninglessness and contributed to anarchy.34 The novels and stories of James Joyce (1882-1941) share much of this philosophy. The Dubliners, for example, horrified audiences with its detailed depictions of depraved behaviour and these actually occurring in real (named) streets and pubs. The stories take the reader into a world of nihilism and Finnegan’s Wake simply creates a sense of ‘profound’ confusion.35 As for Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), he shunned musical harmony and tradition in favour of a highly-structured but incomprehensible kind of music which most people find it actively-unpleasant to listen to . . . a world in which nothing makes sense, there is no meaning, there is negativity, there is the Void.
Edward Dutton (The Genius Famine: Why We Need Geniuses, Why They're Dying Out, Why We Must Rescue Them)
By the Grace of God we are highly favoured. His Grace is bigger than what our minds can ever comprehend.
Gift Gugu Mona (Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration)
When you are favoured by the most High God, great things will happen to you. You will find yourself on top, even if people had thought you were a flop.
Gift Gugu Mona (Daily Quotes about God: 365 Days of Heavenly Inspiration)
But, sad to say, Jefferson is not the only American statesman who has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then left his own children to die slaves.
William Wells Brown (Clotel: or, The President's Daughter)
Mountains played an important part in the religions of Israel’s neighbours. They were the points where heaven and earth were thought to meet and were therefore highly favoured as sites for altars and temples
Barry G. Webb (The Message of Isaiah (Bible Speaks Today Series))
ECT is still used – in much more limited circumstances, but on the most vulnerable patients. It is still highly controversial. Its opponents say it is a licensed way of producing brain damage. Its proponents claim it saves deeply depressed patients from suicide. Doctor-led follow-up studies report on it much more favourably than patient-led studies. There is now general acceptance that it leads to memory loss, that this may be permanent and may be severe.
Janet Frame (Faces In The Water)
Pursuing money, status and material possessions is not the Stoic way. The only thing worth chasing is virtue. Wisdom, justice, self-awareness, bravery – these are the goals you should be aiming for. After all, you could have all the money in the world and still be miserable. You could be highly educated with multiple doctorates yet be a deeply unpleasant person supporting an unjust system that favours the rich over the poor.
Jason Hemlock (Stoicism: How to Use Stoic Philosophy to Find Inner Peace and Happiness)
Over 70 per cent of the medium and heavy commercial vehicles on Indian roads are made by Telco. Telco is able to manufacture 99.8 per cent of its parts in India. A family of 1,500 ancillary suppliers furnish all kinds of components. About 50 per cent of the parts that go into the trucks are supplied by them. Over the years each supplier has been trained by Telco engineers to provide the high quality of components required. For several years such was the demand for Telco trucks that they commanded a premium price in the market but Telco held its price line. I once questioned then chairman and managing director of Telco, Mr Moolgaokar, why he did that. He replied: ‘Profits should come from productivity and not by raising prices in a favourable market. Our greatest asset is customer affection.
R.M. Lala (The Creation of wealth: The Tatas from the 19th to the 21st Century)