“
Elevate your inside game. A negative attitude is below the horizon...a place for lonesome hearts.
”
”
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
Neil should let it go, but he needed to understand. "Why not?" "Because you're too stupid to tell me no," Andrew said. "And you don't want me to tell you yes?" "This isn't yes. This is a nervous breakdown. I know the difference even if you don't." Andrew dug his thumb into his lower lip like he could erase the weight of Neil's mouth and fixed his stare on the horizon. "I won't be like them. I won't let you let me be." Neil opened his mouth, closed it, and tried again. "The next time one of them says you're soulless I might have to fight them." "Ninety-two percent," Andrew said, "going on ninety-three.
”
”
Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
“
Featherweight by Suzy Kassem
One evening,
I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny.
I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others,
Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock,
The smaller in size I became.
I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller.
I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all –
To show us the way, not to make us feel lost,
Up against the odds,
In a devilish game partitioned by
An invisible wall.
Then the next morning,
A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun began
Spreading its yolk over the horizon.
It remained perched for a long time,
Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming.
Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind,
Telling me:
'The world you are in –
Is the true hell.
The journey to Truth itself
Is what quickens the heart to become lighter.
The lighter the heart, the purer it is.
The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.
And the heavier the heart,
The more chained to this hell
It will remain.'
And just like that, it flew off towards the sun,
Leaving behind a tiny feather.
So I picked it up,
And fastened it to a toothpick,
To dip into ink
And write my name.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a see of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses as rainbows.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
It’s an open horizon before us, as far as the eye can see: no angst and no games, just mutual delight. So simple, but so rich. Like chocolate. Not a gold-dusted truffle or a foofy pastry tower teetering on a crystal platter, but a plain, honest bar of the best chocolate in the world.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Night of Cake & Puppets (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1.5))
“
[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.
”
”
Terry Eagleton
“
That afternoon the sky was scattered with black clouds galloping in from the sea and clustering over the city. Flashes of lightening echoed on the horizon and a charged warm wind smelling of dust announced a powerful summer storm. When I reached the station I noticed the first few drops, shiny and heavy, like coins falling from heaven...Night seemed to fall suddenly, interrupted only by the lightning now bursting over the city, leaving a trail of noise and fury.
”
”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2))
“
I was captain of my own ship, yes. But I still had to answer to the sea, the weather, the storm on the horizon.
”
”
Brenna Aubrey (At Any Price (Gaming the System, #1))
“
Follow your heart and what it's saying,
after you die, an when you live.
What he/ she lives is what she/he is giving to you .
Enjoy it and you'll be happy.
Love isn't a game ,love is a portrait, of a beautiful butterfly flapping it's wings to the horizon.
”
”
Avis
“
Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the as**sembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow.
”
”
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
“
A moody child and wildly wise
Pursued the game with joyful eyes,
Which chose, like meteors, their way,
And rived the dark with private ray:
They overleapt the horizon's edge,
Searched with Apollo's privilege;
Through man, and woman, and sea, and star,
Saw the dance of nature forward far;
Through worlds, and races, and terms, and times,
Saw musical order, and pairing rhymes.
Olympian bards who sung
Divine ideas below,
Which always find us young,
And always keep us so.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Poet)
“
A vision had seized hold of me, like the demented fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the hunter gives up trying to calm him. It was the vision of a large steamship scaling a hill under its own steam, working its way up a steep slope in the jungle, while above this natural landscape, which shatters the weak and the strong with equal ferocity, soars the voice of Caruso, silencing all the pain and all the voices of the primeval forest and drowning out all birdsong. To be more precise: bird cries, for in this setting, left unfinished and abandoned by God in wrath, the birds do not sing; they shriek in pain, and confused trees tangle with one another like battling Titans, from horizon to horizon, in a steaming creation still being formed. Fog-panting and exhausted they stand in this unreal misery - and I, like a stanza in a poem written in an unknown foreign tongue, am shaken to the core.
”
”
Werner Herzog (Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo)
“
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
”
”
Vannevar Bush (Endless Horizons)
“
Storytellers do not convert their listeners; they do not move them into the territory of a superior truth. Ignoring the issue of truth and falsehood altogether, they offer only vision. Storytelling is therefore not combative; it does not succeed or fail. A story cannot be obeyed. Instead of placing one body of knowledge against another, storytellers invite us to return from knowledge to thinking, from a bounded way of looking to an horizonal way of seeing.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility)
“
Being swayed by people playing a different game can also throw off how you think you’re supposed to spend your money. So much consumer spending, particularly in developed countries, is socially driven: subtly influenced by people you admire, and done because you subtly want people to admire you. But while we can see how much money other people spend on cars, homes, clothes, and vacations, we don’t get to see their goals, worries, and aspirations. A young lawyer aiming to be a partner at a prestigious law firm might need to maintain an appearance that I, a writer who can work in sweatpants, have no need for. But when his purchases set my own expectations, I’m wandering down a path of potential disappointment because I’m spending the money without the career boost he’s getting. We might not even have different styles. We’re just playing a different game. It took me years to figure this out. A takeaway here is that few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are.
”
”
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
“
Somewhere, a trucker reads alien letters carved into the bathroom stall walls of a truck stop. He cannot look away. Pathogens in the grammar open an event horizon in his head. He spreads the scrawl in every stop on his route, carving it into the stalls. he itches and he scratches. Others see the letters. They itch. They scratch. He scratches his face, draws the runes in red with his box knife. His head blossoms into a bouquet of writhing lampreys.
”
”
Joshua Alan Doetsch
“
Percy rests his chin on top of my head, his hands on my shoulders as we too turn our faces to the shore. 'Did you know—' he says.
'Oh, are we playing the did you know game?'
'Did you know this year is not going to be a disaster?'
'I don’t believe it.'
'It is not going to be a disaster,' he repeats overtop of me, 'because it is you and I and the Continent and not even Lockwood or your father can wreck it completely. I promise.'
He nudges the side of my head with his nose until I consent to look up at him, then does that tipped-head smile again, and I swear to God it's so adorable I forget my own damn name.
'France on the horizon, Captain,' I say.
'Steel thyself, mate,' he replies.
”
”
Mackenzi Lee (The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue (Montague Siblings, #1))
“
Man sets his hand to games of power and influence, he quests for far horizons and wealth beyond imagining. He thinks to own what cannot be possessed. He hews the ancient trees to broaden his grazing lands; he mines the deep caves and topples the standing stones. He embraces a new faith with fervor and, perhaps, with sincerity. But he grows ever further from the old things. He can no longer hear the heartbeat of the earth, his mother. He cannot smell the change in the air; he cannot see what lies beyond the veil of shadows. Even his new god is formed in his own image, for do they not call him the son of man? By his own choice he is cut adrift from the ancient cycles of sun and moon, the ordered passing of the seasons. And without him, the Fair Folk dwindle and are nothing. They retreat and hide themselves, and are reduced to the clurichaun with his little ale jug; the brownie who steals the cow's milk at Samhain; the half-heard wailing of the banshee. They become no more than a memory in the mind of a frail old man; a tale told by a crazy old woman.
”
”
Juliet Marillier (Child of the Prophecy (Sevenwaters, #3))
“
Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"—As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why! is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he emigrated?—the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Back-wards, sideways, forewards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!"—Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said, "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling,—it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star,—and yet they have done it!"—It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem æternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
I was born to be a warrior, and I was born to be with her. Tell me how to reconcile the two, because I cannot!"
Magnus made no answer. He was looking at Edmund and remembering when he had drunkenly thought of the Shadowhunter as a lovely ship, that might sail straight out to sea or wreck itself upon the rocks. He could see the rocks now, dark and jagged on the horizon. He saw Edmund's future without Shadowhunting, how he would yearn for the danger and the risk. How he would find it at the gaming tables. How fragile he would always be once his sense of purpose was gone.
And then there was Linette, who had fallen in love with a golden Shadowhunter, an avenging angel. What would she think of him when he was just another Welsh farmer, all his glory stripped away?
Yet love was not something to be thrown aside lightly. It came so rarely, only a few times in a mortal life. Sometimes it came but once. Magnus could not say Edmund Herondale was wrong to seize love when he had found it.
He could think Nephilim Law was wrong for making him choose.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
There is, after all, always something wonderful and touchingly beautiful about a young man, for the first time released from the bonds of schooling, making his first ventures toward the infinite horizon of the mind. At this point he has not yet seen any of his illusions dissipated, or doubted either his own capacity for endless dedication or the boundlessness of the world of thought.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)
“
there was nothing to believe but that one colored in the room is fine, two is twenty, and three means close up shop and everybody go home; all living the New York dream in the Cause Houses, within sight of the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic copper reminder that this city was a grinding factory that diced the poor man’s dreams worse than any cotton gin or sugarcane field from the old country. And now heroin was here to make their children slaves again, to a useless white powder. She looked them over, the friends of her life, staring at her. They saw what she saw, she realized. She read it in their faces. They would never win. The game was fixed. The villains would succeed. The heroes would die. The sight of Beanie’s mother howling at her son’s coffin would haunt them all in the next few days. Next week, or next month some time, some other mother would take her place, howling her grief. And another after that. They saw the future, too, she could tell. It would continue forever. It was all so very grim. But then, she thought, every once in a while there’s a glimmer of hope. Just a blip on the horizon, a whack on the nose of the giant that set him back on his heels or to the canvas,
”
”
James McBride (Deacon King Kong)
“
Haven't you heard of that madman who in the bright
morning lit a lantern and ran around the marketplace crying incessantly,
'I'm looking for God! l'm looking for God!' Since many of those who
did not believe in God were standing around together just then, he
caused great laughter. Has he been lost, then? asked one. Did he lose his
way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has
he gone to sea? Emigrated? - Thus they shouted and laughed, one
interrupting the other. The madman jumped into their midst and
pierced them with his eyes. 'Where is God?' he cried; 'I'll tel1 you! We
have kil/ed him - you and I! Wc are all his murderers. But how did wc do
this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the spange to
wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained
this earth from its sun? Where is it moving to now? Where are we
moving to? Away from all suns? Are wc not continually falling? And
backwards, sidewards, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an up and
a down? Aren't we straying as though through an infinite nothing? Isn't
empty space breathing at us? Hasn't it got colder? Isn't night and more
night coming again and again? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the
morning? Do we still hear nothing of the noise of the grave-diggers who
are burying God? Do we still smell nothing of the divine decomposition?
- Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we
have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of all
murderers. The holiest and the mightiest thing the world has ever
possessed has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood
from us? With what water could we clean ourselves? What festivals of
atonement, what holy games will we have to invent for ourselves? Is the
magnitude of this deed not too great for us? Do we not ourselves have to
become gods merely to appear worthy of it?
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
A written cause works like a compass. And with a compass in hand, each succession of leaders, their gaze looking beyond the horizon, can more easily navigate the technologies, politics and cultural norms of the day without the founder present.
”
”
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
It is not the role of metaphor to draw our sight to what is there, but to draw our vision toward what is not there and, indeed, cannot be anywhere. Metaphor is horizonal, reminding us that it is one's vision that is limited, and not what one is viewing.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility)
“
Oh, you're right. I'm just a human with thick skin, purple eyes, and hard bones. Which means you can go home. Tell Galen I said hi."
Toraf opens and shuts his mouth twice. Both times it seems like he wants to say something, but his expression tells me his brain isn't cooperating. When his mouth snaps shut a third time, I splash water in his face. "Are you going to say something, or are you trying to catch wind and sail?
A grin the size of the horizon spreads across his face. "He likes that, you know. Your temper."
Yeahfreakingright. Galen's a classic type A personality-and type A's hate smartass-ism. Just ask my mom. "No offense, but you're not exactly an expert at judging people's emotions."
"I'm not sure what you mean by that."
"Sure you do."
"If you're talking about Rayna, then you're wrong. She loves me. She just won't admit it."
I roll my eyes. "Right. She's playing hard to get, is that it? Bashing your head with a rock, splitting your lip, calling you squid breath all the time."
"What does that mean? Hard to get?"
"It means she's trying to make you think she doesn't like you, so that you end up liking her more. So you work harder to get her attention."
He nods. "Exactly. That's exactly what she's doing."
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I say, "I don't think so. As we speak, she's getting your mating seal dissolved. That's not playing hard to get. That's playing impossible to get."
"Even if she does get it dissolved, it's not because she doesn't care about me. She just likes to play games."
The pain in Toraf's voice guts me like the catch of the day. She might like playing games, but his feelings are real. And can't I relate to that? "There's only one way to find out," I say softly.
"Find out?"
"If all she wants is games."
"How?"
"You play hard to get. You know how they say. 'If you love someone, set them free. If they return to you, it was meant to be?'"
"I've never heard that."
"Right. No, you wouldn't have." I sigh. "Basically, what I'm trying to say is, you need to stop giving Rayna attention. Push her away. Treat her like she treats you."
He shakes his head. "I don't think I can do that."
"You'll get your answer that way," I say, shrugging. "But it sounds like you don't really want to know."
"I do want to know. But what if the answer isn't good?" His face scrunches as if the words taste like lemon juice.
"You've got to be ready to deal with it, no matter what."
Toraf nods, his jaw tight. The choices he has to consider will make this night long enough for him. I decide not to intrude on his time anymore. "I'm pretty tired, so I'm heading back. I'll meet you at Galen's in the morning. Maybe I can break thirty minutes tomorrow, huh?" I nudge his shoulder with my fist, but a weak smile is all I get in return.
I'm surprised when he grabs my hand and starts pulling me through the water. At least it's better than dragging me by the ankle. I can't but think how Galen could have done the same thing. Why does he wrap his arms around me instead?
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
“
Then, sometimes a game of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching, head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying high, Nelson on his column surveying the horizon, and the world our ship.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Jacob's Room)
“
Now give me some advice about how to take full advantage of this city. I’m always looking to improve my odds.”
“Just what I’d expect from a horny actuary.”
“I’m serious.”
Carlos reflected for a moment on the problem at hand. He actually had never needed or tried to take full advantage of the city in order to meet women, but he thought about all of his friends who regularly did. His face lit up as he thought of some helpful advice: “Get into the arts.”
“The arts?”
“Yeah.”
“But I’m not artistic.”
“It doesn’t matter. Many women are into the arts. Theater. Painting. Dance. They love that stuff.”
“You want me to get into dance? Earthquakes have better rhythm than me…And can you really picture me in those tights?”
“Take an art history class. Learn photography. Get involved in a play or an independent film production. Get artsy, Sammy. I’m telling you, the senoritas dig that stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You need to sign up for a bunch of artistic activities. But you can’t let on that it’s all just a pretext to meet women. You have to take a real interest in the subject or they’ll quickly sniff out your game.”
“I don’t know…It’s all so foreign to me…I don’t know the first thing about being artistic.”
“Heeb, this is the time to expand your horizons. And you’re in the perfect city to do it. New York is all about reinventing yourself. Get out of your comfort zones. Become more of a Renaissance man. That’s much more interesting to women.
”
”
Zack Love (Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC (Back When Phones Weren't So Smart))
“
They say love makes the world go round, and that tiny world we had formed went around us and at our center, at that axis—love. My heart pressed against his. The world dimmed as the sun sank below the horizon, but neither of us seemed aware. The ocean continued to pound its endless rhythm, but it was nothing compared to our hearts thumping against each other. When he pulled his
”
”
Brenna Aubrey (Played: A Gaming The System Box Set (Gaming the System #1-3))
“
There is, after all, always something wonderful and touchingly beautiful about a young man, for the first time released from the bonds of schooling, making his first ventures toward the infinite horizons of the mind. At this point he has not yet seen any of his illusions dissipated, or doubted either his own capacity for endless dedication or the boundlessness of the world of thought.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (The Glass Bead Game)
“
I draw myself up next to her and look at her profile, making no effort to disguise my attention, here, where there is only Puck to see me. The evening sun loves her throat and her cheekbones. Her hair the color of cliff grass rises and falls over her face in the breeze. Her expression is less ferocious than usual, less guarded.
I say, “Are you afraid?”
Her eyes are far away on the horizon line, out to the west where the sun has gone but the glow remains. Somewhere out there are my capaill uisce, George Holly’s America, every gallon of water that every ship rides on.
Puck doesn’t look away from the orange glow at the end of the world. “Tell me what it’s like. The race.”
What it’s like is a battle. A mess of horses and men and blood. The fastest and strongest of what is left from two weeks of preparation on the sand. It’s the surf in your face, the deadly magic of November on your skin, the Scorpio drums in the place of your heartbeat. It’s speed, if you’re lucky. It’s life and it’s death or it’s both and there’s nothing like it. Once upon a time, this moment — this last light of evening the day before the race — was the best moment of the year for me. The anticipation of the game to come. But that was when all I had to lose was my life.
“There’s no one braver than you on that beach.”
Her voice is dismissive. “That doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I meant what I said at the festival. This island cares nothing for love but it favors the brave.”
Now she looks at me. She’s fierce and red, indestructible and changeable, everything that makes Thisby what it is. She asks, “Do you feel brave?”
The mare goddess had told me to make another wish. It feels thin as a thread to me now, that gift of a wish. I remember the years when it felt like a promise. “I don’t know what I feel, Puck.”
Puck unfolds her arms just enough to keep her balance as she leans to me, and when we kiss, she closes her eyes.
She draws back and looks into my face. I have not moved, and she barely has, but the world feels strange beneath me.
“Tell me what to wish for,” I say. “Tell me what to ask the sea for.”
“To be happy. Happiness.”
I close my eyes. My mind is full of Corr, of the ocean, of Puck Connolly’s lips on mine. “I don’t think such a thing is had on Thisby. And if it is, I don’t know how you would keep it.”
The breeze blows across my closed eyelids, scented with brine and rain and winter. I can hear the ocean rocking against the island, a constant lullaby.
Puck’s voice is in my ear; her breath warms my neck inside my jacket collar. “You whisper to it. What it needs to hear. Isn’t that what you said?”
I tilt my head so that her mouth is on my skin. The kiss is cold where the wind blows across my cheek. Her forehead rests against my hair.
I open my eyes, and the sun has gone. I feel as if the ocean is inside me, wild and uncertain. “That’s what I said. What do I need to hear?”
Puck whispers, “That tomorrow we’ll rule the Scorpio Races as king and queen of Skarmouth and I’ll save the house and you’ll have your stallion. Dove will eat golden oats for the rest of her days and you will terrorize the races each year and people will come from every island in the world to find out how it is you get horses to listen to you. The piebald will carry Mutt Malvern into the sea and Gabriel will decide to stay on the island. I will have a farm and you will bring me bread for dinner.”
I say, “That is what I needed to hear.”
“Do you know what to wish for now?”
I swallow. I have no wishing-shell to throw into the sea when I say it, but I know that the ocean hears me nonetheless. “To get what I need.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races)
“
And this love between Henry and Fora . . . at first, it was a small, uncertain thing, like the glow of the morning sunos the horizon. And then it was its own wild animal, bucking against the world and anything that threatened it, so hot it could burn and sometimes did. And then it was quiet, as quiet as a snowfall, covering everything, certain of its place, even as it was certain it could not last forever.
”
”
Martha Brockenbrough (The Game of Love and Death)
“
Adarlan could take their freedom, it could destroy their lives and beat and break and whip them, it could force them into ridiculous contests, but, criminal or not, they were still human. Dying—rather than playing in the king’s game—was the only choice left to him. Still staring at his outstretched hand, forever pointing toward an unreachable horizon, Celaena said a silent prayer for the dead Champion, and wished him well.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
“
The rise of the western crews may have shocked eastern fans, but it delighted newspaper editors across the country in the 1930s. The story fit in with a larger sports narrative that had fueled newspaper and newsreel sales since the rivalry between two boxers—a poor, part-Cherokee Coloradoan named Jack Dempsey and an easterner and ex-Marine named Gene Tunney—had riveted the nation’s attention in the 1920s. The East versus West rivalry carried over to football with the annual East-West Shrine Game and added interest every January to the Rose Bowl—then the nearest thing to a national collegiate football championship. And it was about to have additional life breathed into it when an oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit would appear on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.
”
”
Daniel James Brown (The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics)
“
I suddenly remember an old game I used to play when I was nine or ten, and I was allowed to ride my bike until it got dark. I used to make little bets with myself as I watched the sun getting lower and lower on the horizon: If I hold my breath to twenty seconds, the night won't come. If I don't blink. If I stand so still a fly lands on my cheek. Now, I find myself doing the same thing, bargaining to keep Kate, even though that isn't the way it works.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)
“
Yet Abraham believed, and believed for this life. Yea, if his faith had been only for a future life, he surely would have cast everything away in order to hasten out of this world to which he did not belong. But Abraham's faith was not of this sort, if there be such a faith; for really this is not faith but the furthest possibility of faith which has a presentiment of its object at the extremest limit of the horizon, yet is separated from it by a yawning abyss within which despair carries on its game. But Abraham believed precisely for this life, that he was to grow old in the land, honored by the people, blessed in his generation, remembered forever in Isaac, his dearest thing in life, whom he embraced with a love for which it would be a poor expression to say that he loyally fulfilled the father's duty of loving the son, as indeed is evinced in the words of the summons, "the son whom thou lovest.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling)
“
The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name?
In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings.
To drown in the offing.
Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.
”
”
R.J. Arkhipov
“
Having to remind your partner to do something doesn’t take that something off your list. It adds to it. And what’s more, reminding is often unfairly characterized as nagging. (Almost every man interviewed in connection with this project said nagging is what they hate most about being married, but they also admit that they wait for their wives to tell them what to do at home.) It’s not a partnership if only one of you is running the show, which means making the important distinction between delegating tasks and handing off ownership of a task. Ownership belongs to the person who first off remembers to plan, then plans, and then follows through on every aspect of executing the plan and completing the task without reminders. A survey conducted by Bright Horizons—an on-site corporate childcare provider—found that 86 percent of working mothers say they handle the majority of family and household responsibilities, “not just making appointments, but also driving to them and mentally calendaring who needs to be where, and when.” In order to save us from big-time burnout, we need our partners to be more than helpers who carry out instructions that we’ve taken time and energy to think through (and then who blame us when things fall through the cracks). We need our partners to take the lead by consistently picking up a task, or “card”—week after week—and completely taking it off our mental to-do list by doing every aspect of what the card requires. Otherwise we still worry about whether the task is being done as we would do it, or done fully, or done at all—which leaves us still shouldering the mental and emotional load for the “help” or the “favor” we had to ask for. But how do we get our partners to take that initiative and own every aspect of a household or childcare responsibility without being (nudge, nudge) told what to do? Or, to simply figure it out?
”
”
Eve Rodsky (Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (And More Life to Live))
“
The warmth of your heart is tauntingly near, but you reserve it as you shut me out in the blizzard of your doubt. Is it because you don't understand the freakish assembly of my soul, a soul that was once broken? In some ways I guess I don't blame you. if I had the opportunity to avoid the vague horizon of my future, I would. But these are the cards I've been dealt and I still don't know all the rules of the game. My burden is heavy and becomes harder to bear each day. I know I have the ability to endure it alone if I really persevere, but I prefer a steady hand to help guide me along the way and maybe even hold me in times of uncertainty.
”
”
Shykia Bell (CAMILEON: Beyond The Veil)
“
and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament.- I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes! - Well, well here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others.- damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick; Or, The Whale)
“
Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow.
”
”
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
“
Camera
You want this instant:
nearly spring, both of us walking,
wind blowing
walking
sunlight knitting the leaves before our eyes
the wind empty as Sunday
rain drying
in the wormy sidewalk puddles
the vestiges of night on our
lightscratched eyelids, our breezy fingers
you want to have it and so
you arrange us:
in front of a church, for perspective,
you make me stop walking
and compose me on the lawn;
you insist
that the clouds stop moving
the wind stop swaying the church
on its boggy foundations
the sun hold still in the sky
for your organized instant.
Camera man
how can I love your glass eye?
Wherever you partly are
now, look again
at your souvenir,
your glossy square of paper
before it dissolves completely:
it is the last of autumn
the leaves have unravelled
the pile of muddy rubble
in the foreground, is the church
the clothes I wore
are scattered over the lawn
my coat flaps in a bare tree
there has been a hurricane
that small black speck
travelling towards the horizon
at almost the speed of light
is me
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Circle Game)
“
Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow.
”
”
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
“
Henry had taught Eddie how to play basketball in the playground near the apartment building where they lived--this was in a cement suburb where the towers of Manhattan stood against the horizon like a dream and the welfare check was king. Eddie was eight years younger than Henry and much smaller, but he was also much faster. He had a natural feel for the game; once he got on the cracked, hilly cement of the court with the ball in his hands, the moves seemed to sizzle in his nerve-endings. He was faster, but that was no big deal. The big deal was this: he was BETTER than Henry. If he hadn't known it from the results of the pick-up games in which they sometimes played, he would have known it from Henry's thunderous looks and the hard punches to the upper arm Henry often dealt out on their way home afterwards. These punches were supposedly Henry's little jokes--"Two for flinching!" Henry would cry cheerily, and then whap-whap into Eddie's bicep with one knuckle extended--but they didn't FEEL like jokes. They felt like warnings. They felt like Henry's way of saying You better not fake me out and make me look stupid when you drive for the basket; you better remember that I'm Watching Out for You.
The same was true with reading...baseball...Ring-a-Levio...math...even jump-rope, which was a girl's game. That he was better at these tings, or COULD be better, was a secret that had to be kept at all costs. Because Eddie was the younger brother. Because Henry was Watching Out for him. But the most important part of the underneath reason was also the simplest: these things had to be kept secret because Henry was Eddie's big brother, and Eddie adored him.
”
”
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
“
The ownership of land is not natural. The American savage, ranging through forests who game and timber are the common benefits of all his kind, fails to comprehend it. The nomad traversing the desert does not ask to whom belong the shifting sands that extend around him as far as the horizon. The Caledonian shepherd leads his flock to graze wherever a patch of nutritious greenness shows amidst the heather. All of these recognise authority. They are not anarchists. They have chieftains and overlords to whom they are as romantically devoted as any European subject might be to a monarch. Nor do they hold as the first Christians did, that all land should be held in common. Rather, they do not consider it as a thing that can be parceled out.
“We are not so innocent. When humanity first understood that a man’s strength could create good to be marketed, that a woman’s beauty was itself a commodity for trade, then slavery was born. So since Adam learnt to force the earth to feed him, fertile ground has become too profitable to be left in peace.
“This vital stuff that lives beneath our feet is a treasury of all times. The past: it is packed with metals and sparkling stones, riches made by the work of aeons. The future: it contains seeds and eggs: tight-packed promises which will unfurl into wonders more fantastical than ever jeweller dreamed of -- the scuttling centipede, the many-branched tree whose roots, fumbling down into darkness, are as large and cunningly shaped as the boughs that toss in light. The present: it teems. At barely a spade’s depth the mouldy-warp travels beneath my feet: who can imagine what may live a fathom down? We cannot know for certain that the fables of serpents curving around roots of mighty trees, or of dragons guarding treasure in perpetual darkness, are without factual reality.
“How can any man own a thing so volatile and so rich? Yet we followers of Cain have made of our world a great carpet, whose pieces can be lopped off and traded as though it were inert as tufted wool.
”
”
Lucy Hughes-Hallett (Peculiar Ground)
“
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" --As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lost his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?--Thus they yelled and laughed.
The madman jumped into their minds and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions. Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as though an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Had it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves. the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under out knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us--for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightening and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars--and yet they have done it themselves"
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said to always have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not tombs and sepulchers of God?
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)
“
Using the castle to transition between lands was a visual trick Walt called a weenie. According to Disney historian Jim Korkis, during the development of Disneyland, Walt would come home late at night and usually enter his house through the kitchen, which was closer to the garage. He would walk into the kitchen and grab two uncooked hot dogs, or wieners, one for himself and one for his dog. Korkis said, "By wiggling the treat, Walt could get his dog to go from side to side, around in a circle, jump up and more. Both Walt and the dog loved the game and she was finally rewarded with the tasty and satisfying treat."
"Each of the gateways into the lands offered weenies. The spinning carousel through the portal leading through Sleeping Beauty Castle called guests into Fantasyland. The stockade gates, the steam bellowing from the Mark Twain stern-wheeler, and the seeming infinite horizon beckoned guests to visit Frontierland. Over in Tomorrowland was the clock of the World and the TWA Moonliner ready for launch. Only Adventureland lacked a weenie. It was thought that if guests knew too much, it would not be much of an adventure.
”
”
Sam Gennawey (Disneyland Story: The Unofficial Guide to the Evolution of Walt Disney's Dream (Unofficial Guides))
“
On this second trip, Jung had something like a mystical or metaphysical experience. He suddenly understood the meaning of self-consciousness, in an otherwise apparently oblivious universe. It was through our awareness of existence, Jung understood, that it gains meaning. On a game preserve on the Athai Plains, Jung saw huge herds of animals: antelopes, zebras, gazelles stretched endlessly to the horizon. He felt he witnessed “the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world.” Jung separated from his companions until they were out of sight and imagined he was utterly alone. He was trying to re-create the first moment of self-consciousness, when consciousness first recognized the distinction between itself and the world, when it could first regard the world objectively, detached from it, as an observer. “In an invisible act of creation,” man had “put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence.
”
”
Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
REACHING GAMES To encourage your baby to reach and to expand her horizons, try holding attractive toys just out of her reach: above her head, in front of her, to the sides. See how close you have to get the toy before she makes her move. Remember, the object here is not to tease or torture the baby, it’s to have fun. You can add another layer of complexity by putting the out-of-reach object on a blanket or towel. Then slowly pull the blanket and show her how it gets closer. Will she try that herself? TOUCHING GAMES Try this: let your baby play with a small toy without letting her see it (you could do this in the dark or with her hands in a paper bag). Then put that toy together with several other toys she’s never played with. Many babies this age will pick up the familiar toy. Although this may sound fairly easy, it isn’t. You’re asking your baby to use two senses—touch and vision—at the same time, and to recognize by sight something she’s touched but not seen. If your baby isn’t ready for this one, don’t worry. Just try it again in a few weeks. It’s a concept that can take a while to develop. IF … THEN … GAMES There are thousands of things you can do to reinforce cause-and-effect thinking. Rattles, banging games, rolling a ball back and forth, and splashing in the pool are excellent. So is blowing up your cheeks and having the baby “pop” them with her hands. Baby gyms—especially the kind that make a lot of noise when smacked—are also good, but be sure to pack them up the moment your baby starts trying to use the gym to pull herself up; they’re meant to be used while sitting or lying down and aren’t sturdy enough to support much weight. OBJECT PERMANENCE GAMES When your baby is about six or seven months old, the all-important idea that objects can exist even when they’re out of sight finally starts sinking in. • Object permanence develops in stages. If you’re interested in seeing how, try this: Show your baby a toy. Then, while she’s watching, “hide” it under a pillow. If you ask her where the toy is, she’ll probably push the pillow out of the way and “find” it. But if you quickly move the toy to another hiding place when she’s not looking, she’ll continue to look for it in the first hiding place. • Peek-a-boo and other games that involve hiding and finding things are great for developing object permanence. Peek-a-boo in particular teaches your baby an excellent lesson: when you go away, you always come back. This doesn’t sound like much, but making this connection now lets her know she can count on you to be there when she needs you and will help her better cope with separation anxiety (see page 222).
”
”
Armin A. Brott (The New Father: A Dad's Guide to the First Year (New Father Series Book 2))
“
Are you ever a dick?” I asked.
His eyebrows furrowed. “I…um, I’m pretty sure it happens on occasion. Why?”
“Because it’s going to be really annoying if you’re this great all the time. I’m warning you. I’ve been known to get a tad bitchy sometimes, and it’s going to be no fun at all to take it out on you if you always say the right thing.”
A Tanner Reese masterpiece split his mouth. “I will definitely keep that in mind and do everything I can to step up my dick game.” He paused, twisting his lips. “Wow, that did not come out right at all.
”
”
Aly Martinez (Across the Horizon)
“
Why Maine extends northward almost to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, and it's upper border is perhaps a 100 miles north of Quebec. And another thing I have conveniently forgotten was how incredibly huge America is. As I drive north through the little towns and the increasing forest rolling away to the horizon, the season changed quickly and out of all proportion. Perhaps it was my getting away from the steadying hand of the sea and also perhaps I was getting very far north. The houses had a snow-beaten look and many were crushed and deserted, driven to earth by the winters. Except in the towns there was evidence of a population which had once lived here and farmed and had its being and had then been driven out. The forests were marching back and where farm wagons once had been only the big logging trucks rumbled along. And the game had come back too; deer strayed on the roads and there were marks of bear.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)
“
It fitted Baskul and Delhi and London, war making and empire building, consulates and trade concessions and dinner parties at Government House; there was a reek of dissolution over all that recollected world, and Barnard’s cropper had only, perhaps, been better dramatized than his own. The whole game was doubtless going to pieces, but fortunately the players were not as a rule put on trial for the pieces they had failed to save. In that respect financiers were unlucky.
”
”
James Hilton (Lost Horizon)
“
Time moves through the pages of your thoughts like a history lesson posed for a self portrait in the mirror of the affected past. The pretentious showers that you washed your conscience in have now become dirty pools that you are fighting not to drown in. You installed them yourself with little understanding of the guidelines of consequence that now have you examining the small print. The distant fields look blurry in the static of your horizon where east and west toss your ego back and forth in a game of keep away.
”
”
Calvin W. Allison (The Sunset of Science and the Risen Son of Truth)
“
To extend your horizons, try some of the popular internet games we used to play as kids,
l
”
”
Hobi Games
“
Kurzweilians and Russellians alike promulgate a technocentric view of the world that both simplifies views of people—in particular, with deflationary views of intelligence as computation—and expands views of technology, by promoting futurism about AI as science and not myth.
Focusing on bat suits instead of Bruce Wayne has gotten us into a lot of trouble. We see unlimited possibilities for machines, but a restricted horizon for ourselves. In fact, the future intelligence of machines is a scientific question, not a mythological one. If AI keeps following the same pattern of overperforming in the fake world of games or ad placement, we might end up, at the limit, with fantastically intrusive and dangerous idiot savants.
”
”
Erik J. Larson (The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do)
“
Spotify had learned its lesson. Deploying a powerful capability in the domain of your allies is a recipe for crisis. Sustaining a coalition requires disciplining your own urges and direction of growth. A corollary, however, is that deploying that same capability in a domain where you do not depend on critical allies can be a powerful growth accelerator. For Spotify, being forced to look beyond music clarified the potential of a new horizon in podcasts—audio shows in the spirit of early radio, covering an enormous variety of topics and themes. Within a year of dropping the upload service in the music arena, Spotify would spend over $1 billion acquiring exclusive content and content aggregators in the podcast arena,
”
”
Ron Adner (Winning the Right Game: How to Disrupt, Defend, and Deliver in a Changing World (Management on the Cutting Edge))
“
A takeaway here is that few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the actions and behaviors of people playing different games than you are.
”
”
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
“
Nietzsche’s madman in The Gay Science is the epitome of someone who recognizes what it means to reject God consistently and face the consequences. To the self-appointed “anti-Christ” and the one who did his philosophy “with a hammer,” the idea that God is dead was no yawning matter. The insane man jumped into their midst, and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you. We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? “Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction?—For even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife,—who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event,—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!”42 Nietzsche saw himself as a “born riddle-reader,” standing watch on the mountains “posted ’twixt today and tomorrow,” who could see what most people could not see yet. There was always a gap between the lightning and the thunder, though the storm was on its way. But while ordinary people could not be expected to have seen the arrival of this great event, he reserved his most withering scorn for thinkers who saw what he saw, but were unmoved and went on as before. They may have believed that God had “died” in European society, but it made no difference to them. Life would go on as it had. Such people, Nietzsche wrote, thinking of English writers such as George Eliot, were “odious windbags of progressive optimism.” If God is dead, everything that once depended on God would in the end go too. Did even science-based naturalism, he wondered, come from “a fear and an evasion of pessimism? A refined means of self-defense against—the truth?”43
”
”
Os Guinness (Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion)
“
Life sure can hit you hard! Suddenly, when you least expect it, WHAM; life has a knack for challenging you in ways that you don’t feel prepared for. I feel like life sometimes tests and shapes you in a manner in which you feel least equipped. It seems you don’t get to choose the exercise equipment God challenges and builds your strength with. When this is happening, it’s easy to drop into a victim mindset. It’s easy to feel stuck, defeated, and like you are a losing player in the game of life. This victim mindset argues (very loudly) that we have lost; that nothing good is on the horizon. Never forget that the volume of an argument does not reflect the validity of the argument. Just because the victim mentality argues that we are losing, doesn’t mean that it’s true. In fact, I have come to realize that during the times in my life where I thought I was losing, I was actually winning.
”
”
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
“
Every move an infinite player makes is toward the horizon.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Each person whose horizon is affected by the Renaissance affects the horizon of the Renaissance in turn.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Using category reinvention, you can upgrade the emotional feel of an entire aisle or department. The coffee aisle, for example, can be redesigned to give it a café ambiance. Remember, the goal is to make your winners win bigger. This will be more easily done with large displays that you can dominate—appropriate to your vital few. And now on the near and far horizon, digital media, even interactive, is a tool of greatest value to you as the brand owner. This means that you can win even in good retailers. Great retailers will expect and appreciate your cooperation with game-changed retailing!
”
”
Herb Sorensen (Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing)
“
Sexuality is not a bounded phenomenon but a horizonal phenomenon for infinite players. One can never say, therefore, that an infinite player is homosexual, or heterosexual, or celibate, or adulterous, or faithful-because each of these definitions has to do with boundaries, with circumscribed areas and styles of play. Infinite players do not play within sexual boundaries, but with sexual boundaries. They are concerned not with power but with vision.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility)
“
It’s easy to feel stuck, defeated, and like you are a losing player in the game of life. This victim mindset argues (very loudly) that we have lost; that nothing good is on the horizon. Never forget that the volume of an argument does not reflect the validity of the argument. Just because the victim mentality argues that we are losing, doesn’t mean that it’s true. In fact, I have come to realize that during the times in my life where I thought I was losing, I was actually winning.
”
”
Bryant McGill (Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life)
“
Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself-that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary-it is inherently evil.
”
”
James P. Carse
“
The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.
”
”
James P. Carse
“
As Bosteels argues, to invoke the communist horizon is to produce "a complete shift in perspective or a radical ideologi cal turnabout, as a result of which capitalism no longer appears as the only game in town and we no longer have to be ashamed to set our expecting and desiring eyes here and now on a different organization of social relationships
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”
Anonymous
“
It is nine o'clock, and London has breakfasted. Some unconsidered tens of thousands have, it is true, already enjoyed with what appetite they might their pre-prandial meal; the upper fifty thousand, again, have not yet left their luxurious couches, and will not breakfast till ten, eleven o'clock, noon; nay, there shall be sundry listless, languid members of fast military clubs, dwellers among the tents of Jermyn Street, and the high-priced second floors of Little Ryder Street, St. James's, upon whom one, two, and three o'clock in the afternoon shall be but as dawn, and whose broiled bones and devilled kidneys shall scarcely be laid on the damask breakfast-cloth before Sol is red in the western horizon.
I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jackets, that some M'Culloch or Caird would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky ; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny haddocks and the Yarmouth bloaters, that grace our morning repast. Say, too, Crosse and Blackwell, what multitudinous demands are matutinally made on thee for pots of anchovy paste and preserved tongue, covered with that circular layer - abominable disc! - of oleaginous nastiness, apparently composed of rancid pomatum, but technically known as clarified butter, and yet not so nasty as that adipose horror that surrounds the truffle bedecked pate de foie gras. Say, Elizabeth Lazenby, how many hundred bottles of thy sauce (none of which are genuine unless signed by thee) are in request to give a relish to cold meat, game, and fish. Mysteries upon mysteries are there connected with nine o'clock breakfasts.
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George Augustus Sala (Twice Round the Clock, or the Hours of the Day and Night in London (Classic Reprint))
“
Someone who finally wasn’t afraid to say what everyone else was thinking: why the fuck were we out here, playing cat and mouse games, theoretically protecting a country of people who didn’t even fucking want us here?
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Callie Hart (Between Here and the Horizon)
“
What does it mean to truly be yourself? Around this time, in the mid-1900s, the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor began thinking about how people throughout history had dealt with this question of individual identity. In the past, there was no such thing. You were born into a well-defined position, locked along a hierarchy, and you accepted that this was the natural order of things. With the dissolution of feudal, old-world bonds, new possibilities of economic and social mobility emerged, and this transience infected the soul. People began to wonder whether we possessed some innate essence that might be discovered by peeling away layers of our surface. Or maybe there was nothing innate, and we were always in the process of self discovery, self creation, and revision. For some, this manifested as a kind of endless drifting and searching; others found the possibility of claiming one's own identity empowering. But we were all in search of the same thing, that quality that made you yourself.
Taylor called this authenticity, and it became the unreachable horizon of modern life. It's a concept that makes sense only in its absence; we recognize inauthenticity, phoniness, when someone's clearly being a poseur. Yet the struggle to feel authentic -- this is very real, even if we know better. In Taylor's telling, everyone becomes a kind of artist, creatively wrestling with the parameters of our own being. He described the outlook as one where 'being true to myself is being true to my own originality, and that is something that only I can articulate and discover. In articulating it, I am defining it'. Even though all this sounds very navel-gazing, being true to yourself cannot happen in a vacuum. Constructing your personality is a game, one that requires you to joust with the expectations of others. Authenticity, Taylor explained, presumes dialogue, and it is born out of engaging with those around us. We seek recognition, even if what you want to hear from a close friend is that you're a one-of-a-kind weirdo that they'll never truly understand.
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”
Hua Hsu (Stay True)
“
Pale crimson fingers fanned out to the east as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon. The western sky was a deep purple, speckled with stars.
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George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
As the sun was coming up over the horizon, Willy shook himself awake. He had slept safely between his parents in the middle of their pod, where all the little ones slept. He wanted to swim and stretch and jump out of the water like he had seen the adult whales jump. Willy bumped into the other whales around him as he stretched. Some of them were young ones and when they awoke, they shook and stretched, bumping against the adults. Eventually, the entire pod awoke and began moving around for the day. They would soon be moving toward food. Willy joined with three young whales as they swam to the top for air. They blew out the cold air through their blowholes and took in deep breaths before submersing again. But this time, each of them went down deep, then turned around and raced for the surface. As they broke through the surface, their bodies kept climbing toward the big blue sky. Willy was still small, so he was able to jump higher than the adult whales.
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”
Uncle Amon (Willy the Whale: Short Stories, Games, and Jokes!)
“
Titles: [Forerunner of the New World], [Bloodline Patriarch], [Holder of a Primordial’s True Blessing], [Dungeoneer VIII], [Dungeon Pioneer VI], [Legendary Prodigy], [Prodigious Slayer of the Mighty], [Kingslayer], [Nobility: Earl], [Progenitor of the 93rd Universe], [Prodigious Arcanist], [Perfect Evolution (D-grade)], [Premier Treasure Hunter], [Myth Originator], [Progenitor of Myriad Paths] Class Skills: [Basic Shadow Vault of Umbra (Uncommon)], [Traditional Hunter’s Tracking (Rare)], [Arcane Stealth (Rare)], [Superior Stealth Attack (Rare)], [Enhanced Splitting Arrow (Rare)], [Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter (Epic)], [Arcane Powershot (Epic)], [Big Game Arcane Hunter (Epic)], [Arcane Hunter’s Arrows (Epic)], [Archery of Expanding Horizons (Epic)], [Descending Dark Arcane Fang (Epic)], [Fangs of Man (Ancient)], [Mark of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Ancient)], [Moment of the Primal Hunter (Legendary)], [Gaze of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)], [Steady Focus of the Apex Hunter (Legendary)], [Arcane Awakening (Legendary)], [One Step, Thousand Miles (Legendary)], [Relentless Hunt of the Avaricious Arcane Hunter (Legendary)] Profession Skills: [Path of the Heretic-Chosen (Unique)], [Herbology (Common)], [Brew Potion (Common)], [Alchemist’s Purification (Common)], [Alchemical Flame (Uncommon)], [Craft Elixir (Uncommon)], [Toxicology (Uncommon)], [Cultivate Toxin (Uncommon)], [Concoct Poison (Rare)], [Malefic Viper’s Poison (Epic)], [Soul Ritualism of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Ancient)], [Advanced Core Manipulation (Ancient)], [Blood of the Malefic Viper (Ancient)], [Sagacity of the Malefic Viper (Ancient)], [Sense of the Malefic Viper (Ancient)], [Wings of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Touch of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Legacy Teachings of the Heretic-Chosen Alchemist (Legendary)], [Palate of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Pride of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Scales of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Fangs of the Malefic Viper (Legendary)], [Anomalous Soul of the Heretic-Chosen (Legendary)] Blessing: [True Blessing of the Malefic Viper (Blessing - True)] Race Skills: [Endless Tongues of the Myriad Races (Unique)], [Legacy of Man (Unique)], [Identify (Common)], [Serene Soul Meditation (Epic)], [Shroud of the Primordial (Divine)] Bloodline: [Bloodline of the Primal Hunter (Bloodline Ability - Unique)]
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”
Zogarth (The Primal Hunter 8 (The Primal Hunter #8))
“
Here’s how to get a million bells easily: Forget about paying off the loan on your house for now. Put all your money into the bank. It can be a lot or just a few thousand bells. (Personally, we started this process with 45,000 Bells). Save and exit your game by pressing the (-) symbol and closing the software. Change your system clock to the year 2000. Month and date doesn’t matter but we liked keeping it the same to avoid extra variables. Start the game so that Tom Nook thinks it’s the year 2000. Read all your mail. (You may already have a letter from the bank saying there’s interest from doing this time jump BUT interest is never deposited into your bank for going back in time so don’t celebrate yet). Save and exit your game by pressing the (-) symbol and closing the software. Change your system clock to the year 2060. Start the game so that Tom Nook thinks you’re in 2060. Read all your mail. Note: Sometimes you will get 2 letters, each for 99,999 bells but you’ll notice only 99,9999 bells will actually be deposited into your account. The max amount of interest you can earn is 99,999 Check your bank! We recommend checking your bank account each time you do this to make sure you’re doing it correctly! Depending on how much money you have in the bank, it may take a while to get the max interest and a while to find the minimum amount of years you need to jump in order to get the max interest. So experiment a bit with how much you’re changing your clock because jumping ahead repeatedly is easier than jumping back, then ahead, then back ahead. Once we had 900,000 Bells in our savings we only had to jump 2 years ahead to get that 99,999 bells interest. REMEMBER you only gain interest when you’re moving forward in time. Repeat this time jumping process until you get 1,000,00 Bells! Go for more if you’d like. You can likely do this later in the game too but you’ll risk weeds growing and Residents leaving. They may not leave immediately but could start leaving suddenly once you get back into your daily routine. Playing
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Kizikay Dunham (Animal Crossing New Horizons: The Best Full Guide: Tips and Tricks Guide to Master Animal Crossing Horizon)
“
Three caveats: (1) The Kelly Criterion may lead to wide swings in the total wealth, so most users choose to bet some lesser fraction, typically one-half Kelly or less; (2) for investors with short time horizons or who are averse to risk, other approaches may be better; (3) an exact application of Kelly requires exact probabilities of payoffs such as those in most casino games; to the extent these are uncertain, which is generally the case in the investment world, the Kelly bet should be based on a conservative estimate of the outcome.
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Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
“
Monte Carlo trees tend to explore a few promising branches deeper based on evaluations from previous experience, whereas minimax trees explore all unpruned branches in a roughly similar way. The human approach to chess is similar to the former, wherein humans evaluate a small number of promising directions of play rather than exhaustively considering all possibilities. The result is that the style of chess from Monte Carlo tree search is more similar to humans than that from minimax trees. The programs resulting from Monte Carlo trees can often take more risks in game playing, if past experience has shown that such risks are warranted over the longer term. On the other hand, minimax trees tend to discourage any risks beyond the horizon of tree exploration, especially since the evaluations at leaf levels are imperfect.
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Charu C. Aggarwal (Artificial Intelligence: A Textbook)
“
This is why patriotism—that is, the desire to protect the power in a society by way of increasing the power of a society—is inherently belligerent. Since there can be no prizes without a society, no society without opponents, patriots must create enemies before we can require protection from them. Patriots can flourish only where boundaries are well-defined, hostile, and dangerous. The spirit of patriotism is therefore characteristically associated with the military or other modes of international conflict. Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself—that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary—it is inherently evil.
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”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Infinite games have infinite time horizons. And because there is no finish line, no practical end to the game, there is no such thing as “winning” an infinite game.
”
”
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
A young lawyer aiming to be a partner at a prestigious law firm might need to maintain an appearance that I, a writer who can work in sweatpants, have no need for. But when his purchases set my own expectations, I’m wandering down a path of potential disappointment because I’m spending the money without the career boost he is getting. We might not even have different styles, we’re just playing a different game. It took me years to figure this out. A takeaway here is that few things matter more with money than understanding your own time horizon and not being persuaded by the behaviours and actions of people playing different games than you are.
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”
Morgan Housel (The Psychology of Money)
“
In the field trails, there are certain fundamental requisites for the winner who is sufficiently outstanding to engrave his name upon the highest annals of fame. He must have the hunting instinct and the desire to go. He must have a faultless nose, as well as good judgement about likely places for game, so as not to waste a lot of valuable time in hunting out his ground. He must go as fast as his nose will let him and as wide as the country permits or occasion requires. He must have purpose in his running, as well as style and animation in all his movements, especially in his attitudes on game. Whether he be working in close, or far out on the line of the horizon, he must always respond to signals from his handler; and yet—delicate distinction—he must have a mind of his won and not depend too much upon his handler. In short, he must be independent and at the same time lend himself to control.
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”
Horace Lytle (Gun Dogs Afield)
“
Any end goal will just lead to another goal, lead to another goal. We just play games in life. When you grow up, you’re playing the school game, or you’re playing the social game. Then you’re playing the money game, and then you’re playing the status game. These games just have longer and longer and longer-lived horizons. At some point, at least I believe, these are all just games. These are games where the outcome really stops mattering once you see through the game.
”
”
Tim Ferriss (The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)
“
If you listen to financial TV, or read most market columnists, you’d think that investing is some kind of sport, or a war, or a struggle for survival in a hostile wilderness. But investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game. The challenge for the intelligent investor is not to find the stocks that will go up the most and down the least, but rather to prevent yourself from being your own worst enemy—from buying high just because Mr. Market says “Buy!” and from selling low just because Mr. Market says “Sell!” If your investment horizon is long—at least 25 or 30 years—there is only one sensible approach: Buy every month, automatically, and whenever else you can spare some money. The single best choice for this lifelong holding is a total stock-market index fund. Sell only when you need the cash
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”
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
traveling allows you to jump forwards and backwards in time in your game. This lets you move villagers in faster, skip days when a building is under construction, and check out past events. To do this, close the game and go to your Switch’s home screen. Open your settings and scroll down to system settings. Choose “Date and Time,” then go to the setting that says, “Synchronize clock via internet” and turn it off. From here, you can manually set your Switch to whenever you want (Lee, 2020, para. 3). When you
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Daniel Kualo (Official Companion Tips And Tricks Guide: Animal Crossing New Horizons 2.0 Game (Animal Crossing New Horizons Guides))
“
It can’t be a good thing when the captain of the ship, who is supposed to be on deck navigating toward the horizon, is now in the ship tinkering with the engine trying to make it go faster.
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Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
Over the past few millennia, we’ve co-opted brain circuits already in use to scan the world for food or danger, in a sense fooling ourselves into paying attention to the inert little symbols on the page. Brain scans have shown that areas once used exclusively for scanning the horizon—for recognizing animal tracks, ripe berries, and snakes in trees—became the region that allowed us to quickly recognize letters and words. We’ve trained our brain to read by modifying the structures we once used to sense danger and movement and odd shapes in the grass. Dehaene and other researchers have found that most of our letter shapes are actually transpositions of key shapes from nature to which we’ve learned pay attention: a “Y” resembles the crook of tree branches, a “T” (on its side) the shape formed whenever one object masks another—imagine a telephone pole breaking the line of the horizon. “T-detector” neurons help us determine which object is in front, Dehaene wrote. “We did not invent most of our letter shapes: they lay dormant in our brain for millions of years, and were merely rediscovered when our species invented writing and the alphabet.
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Greg Toppo (The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter)
“
After spotting a plume of smoke on the horizon, 'like a dragonfly flitting over a stream', Prien dived...
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Simon Parkin (A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II)
“
For this reason it can be said that where a society is defined by its boundaries, a culture is defined by its horizon. A boundary is a phenomenon of opposition. It is the meeting place of hostile forces. Where nothing opposes there can be no boundary. One cannot move beyond a boundary without being resisted. This is why patriotism—that is, the desire to protect the power in a society by way of increasing the power of a society—is inherently belligerent.
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James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Storytellers do not convert their listeners; they do not move them into the territory of a superior truth. Ignoring the issue of truth and falsehood altogether, they offer only vision. Storytelling is therefore not combative; it does not succeed or fail. A story cannot be obeyed. Instead of placing one body of knowledge against another, storytellers invite us to return from knowledge to thinking, from a bounded way of looking to an horizonal way of seeing.
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James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Organizations will also find themselves at a crossroads when their leaders start to believe their own myths—that the success the company enjoyed under their leadership was a result of their genius rather than the genius of their people, who were inspired by the Cause they were leading. These leaders too often fixate on advancing their own fame, fortunes, glory and legacies at the expense of the company and its Cause. Management becomes disconnected from the people and trust breaks down. And when performance necessarily starts to suffer as a result, these same leaders are quicker to blame others than to look at what set the company on the new path in the first place. In order to “fix” the problem, their faith in the people is replaced with faith in the process. The company becomes more rigid and decision-making powers are often taken away from the front lines. It can’t be a good thing when the captain of the ship, who is supposed to be on deck navigating toward the horizon, is now in the ship tinkering with the engine trying to make it go faster.
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Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
Time and time again Billy Collins takes a mundane situation and spirals it out into something that is by turns humorous and poignant as in his poem "Imperial Garden", one of my favorites in this new collection:
It was at the end of dinner,
the two of us in a red booth
maintaining our silence,
when I decided to compose a message
for the fortune cookie you were soon to receive.
Avoid mulishness when choosing
a position on the great board game of life
was my mean-spirited contribution
to the treasury of Confucian wisdom.
But while we waited for the cookies,
the slices of oranges,
and the inescapable pot of watery tea,
I realized that by mulishness
I meant your refusal to let me
have my own way every time I wanted it.
I watched you looking off to the side—
your mass of dark hair,
your profile softened by lamplight—
and then I made up a fortune for myself.
He who acts like a jerk
on an island of his own creation
will have only the horizon for a friend.
I seemed to be getting worse at this,
I seemed to be getting worse at this,
I thought, as the cookies arrived at the table
along with the orange slices
and a teapot painted with tigers
menacingly peering out from the undergrowth.
The restaurant was quiet then.
The waiter returned to looking out at the street,
a zither whimpered in the background,
and we turned to our cookies,
cracking the brittle shells,
then rolling into little balls
the tiny scrolls of our destinies
before dropping them, unread, into our cups of tea—
a little good-luck thing we’d been doing ever since we met.
”
”
Billy Collins (Whale Day: And Other Poems)
“
Why would you call for me to save you?" He led her out of the coffee shop. "Saving you would be Faroz's job."
"I don't know." She looked out over the bay, taking in the soft glow of the golden hour, that magical, romantic, fleeting moment between daylight and dusk when the sun began to dip below the horizon, enveloping everything in shimmering gold.
"I think it's maybe because you made me feel safe when Faroz was flashing his gun and telling us stories about being tortured. My subconscious must have figured you were my best bet for a happy Bollywood ending."
"You think I could protect you?"
He looked so bewildered that Layla had to laugh. "Of course I do. It's who you are. You might be trying to kick me out of the office, but you've been protecting me since the day we met.
”
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Sara Desai (The Marriage Game (Marriage Game, #1))
“
The radical illusion of the world cannot be dispelled. The illusion of dispelling it is the secondary illusion of the disavowal and transformation of the world. But perhaps, in going to its extreme, that movement gets caught up in its own game and ends up wiping out its own traces, leaving the field free for misappropriation, imperfection, the original crime? Perhaps there is a ruse of the world, just as there is a ruse of history, and rationality and perfection in general might merely be implementing its irrational decree? Sciences and technologies would then merely be an immense, ironic diversion on the horizon of its disappearance.
What within truth is merely truth falls foul of illusion. What within truth exceeds truth is of the order of a higher illusion. Only what exceeds reality can go beyond the illusion of reality.
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Jean Baudrillard (The Perfect Crime)
“
Since culture is horizonal it is not restricted by time or space.
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James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself—that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary—it is inherently evil.
”
”
James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
One never reaches a horizon. It is not a line; it has no place; it encloses no field; its location is always relative to the view. To move toward a horizon is simply to have a new horizon.
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James P. Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)
“
The distant fields look blurry in the static of your horizon where east and west toss your ego back and forth in a game of keep away.
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Calvin W. Allison (The Sunset of Science and the Risen Son of Truth)
“
My friend, it is all a game. Would you care to narrow the horizon of your question?
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R.A. Salvatore (Boundless (Generations, #2; The Legend of Drizzt, #35))
“
One of the common expectations about hearing from God is that we will be able to get direct guidance for decisions we need to make. I may want to know which car to buy so I do not get a lemon, or which job to take, or whom to marry. We often think of God's will as a particular set of right and wrong choices we can make, in which case we would want to get a clear direction from Him as to what to do. Any time there is a seminar on how to know the will of God for your life, the place is usually packed out. While seeking guidance from God is important, this particular emphasis and approach to finding God's will is somewhat misguided.[27] First, God's will involves much more than choosing “A” or “B.” Thinking about God's will only in this way can severely limit the quality of our connection with Him. Second, people sometimes seek these kinds of answers as a way of avoiding the work of deciding or taking responsibility for making decisions. Third, getting the right answer without going through the process of getting there can sidestep the learning that may be available in that choice. As noted above, Jesus often preferred teaching over giving short answers to questions, choosing to help people see a given situation through the eyes of heaven rather than telling them what to do. Asking God what we need to see in order to make better choices is something that we can have confidence He will help us with. Generally speaking, our perspective on life needs to come from God, but it is up to us to intentionally choose what is good based on what He shows us. And yes, sometimes God does have something specific in mind that He wants us to know. If that is the case, we can be fairly certain He will not play a guessing game with us, leaving vague clues around for us to pick up on. Whenever we ask for direction and find that clarity is not on the horizon, we might want to consider asking God what else He wants us to know about the issue and seek to become learners in the process. Of course, you will not receive anything that runs contrary to Scripture.
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David Takle (Forming: A Work of Grace)
“
ease. He walked under a bright summer sky, over sunlit fields and through little groves that danced and whispered in the wind. The houses of men were scattered here and there, the houses which practically took care of themselves; over beyond the horizon was one of the giant, almost automatic food factories; a few self-piloting carplanes went quietly overhead. Humans were in sight, sun-browned men and their women and children going about their various errands with loose bright garments floating in the breeze. A few seemed to be at work, there was a colorist experimenting with a new chromatic harmony, a composer sitting on his verandah striking notes out of an omniplayer, a group of engineers in a transparent-walled laboratory testing some mechanisms. But with the standard work period what it was these days, most were engaged in recreation. A picnic, a dance under trees, a concert, a pair of lovers, a group of children in one of the immemorially ancient games of their age-group, an old man happily en-hammocked with a book and a bottle of beer— the human race was taking it easy.
”
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Christopher Broschell (Legends of Science Fiction: Robot Edition (Giants of Sci-Fi Collection Book 12))
“
Sergeant Dix told me that at Fort Bragg they found that two to three days of constant tension was what it took to figure out if a soldier was going to break. Most who made it to the Special Forces Qualification Course could take anything the Army cared to throw at them for forty-eight hours. But by day three, with reserves depleted and nothing but misery on the horizon, a soldier’s core became exposed. His baseline ability. His essence. Superficially, this was evidenced by the decision to quit or continue, a temptation the drill sergeants dangled every time they spoke. The real game, of course, was mental. Beating the Q boiled down to a soldier’s ability to disassociate his body from his mind, his being from his circumstance. This was relatively easy during the mindless procedures — the hikes, runs, and repetitive drills that form the backbone of military training. Disassociation became much tougher, however, when the physical activity was paired with judgment calls and problem solving. If a soldier could engage his higher-order thinking while simultaneously ignoring the pain and willing his body to continue beyond fatigue, then he had a chance at making it to the end. If he couldn’t, then the strength of his back, heart, and lungs didn’t matter. Dix had concluded that the Q-Course was as much about self-discovery as a prestigious shoulder patch. Katya was in that discovery phase now. The big question was what we’d do if she decided to quit. She broke the silence after a few miles. “Do you ever get used to it?” “The killing?” “Yes.” “We’re all used to killing — just not people. We kill when we spray for bugs, or squash a spider, or buy a leather bag, or order a hamburger. I don’t think of the individuals I’ve killed as people any more than you thought of the last steak you ate as Bessie.
”
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Tim Tigner (Pushing Brilliance (Kyle Achilles, #1))