Inherited Hate Quotes

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can't.

I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery—some things are too precious to gamble.

But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always a little love left, underneath. Yes. Horrible, isn't it?

When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side

I'm a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I'm no stranger to being hated

Now I remember why I hate eating sheep. Horrible, fluffy things that give me hair balls and indigestion. ( Saphira from the Eragon Series)

Love betrayed has an entirely different sound from hatred outright.

I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery-some things are too precious to gamble.

She’s delightfully Machiavellian, and she hates to lose.” Xander was absolutely unapologetic. “I like what that does to my odds.

The name, his true name, was weaker and more flawed than he would have liked, and he hated himself for that, but there was also much to admire within it, and the more he thought about it, the more he was able to accept the true nature of his self. He was not the best person in the world, but neither was he the worst.

You are determined to hate him [Snape], Harry,” said Lupin with a faint smile. “And I understand; with James as your father, with Sirius as your godfather, you have inherited an old prejudice. By all means tell Dumbledore what you have told Arthur and me, but do not expect him to share your view of the matter; do not even expect him to be surprised by what you tell him. It might have been on Dumbledore’s orders that Severus questioned Draco.

But this... us..." He swallowed. "It can't happen, Avery. I've seen the way Jameson looks at you.

You hated the idea of me.” “But not you. Never you.” “I wanted Eve to be different,” Grayson told me. “I wanted her to be you.” “Don’t say that,” I whispered. He looked at me one last time. “There are so many things that I will never say.

What if he hates me?" "No one could possibly hate you, Xander," I told him, my heart twisting. "Avery, people have hated me my whole life." There was something in his tone that made me think that very few people understood what it was like to be Xander Hawthorne. "Not anyone who knows you," I said fiercely. Xander smiled, and something about it made me want to cry. "Do you think it's okay," he said, sounding younger than I'd ever heard him, "that I loved playing those Saturday morning games? Loved growing up here? Loved the great and terrible Tobias Hawthorne?

Unlike the majority of people, he did not hate or fear the wilderness; as harsh as the empty lands were, they possessed a grace and a beauty that no artifice could compete with and that he found restorative.

I loved you,” he whispered, “when the world was pain and the only thing that made sense was your eyes. I loved you before I knew to hate myself, and I have loved you every day since.

You don't like me much, that's okay. I'm a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I'm no stranger to being hated.

So there was love, once. More than love. And now there is more than hate. Mortals have no words for what we gods feel. Gods have no words for such things. But love like that doesn't just disappear, does it? No matter how powerful the hate, there is always love left, underneath. Horrible, isn't it?

It is always thus. The monsters of the mind are far worse than those that actually exist. Fear, doubt, and hate have hamstrung more people than beasts ever have.

But mostly, I can’t hate him, Avery Kylie Grambs, because he brought me you.

Lonely. I hated that word more than any other in the dictionary.

I also knew I had inherited the name of the world's most famous philosopher. I hated that. Everyone expected something from me. Something I just couldn't give. So I renamed myself Ari. If I switched the letter, my name was Air. I thought it might be a great thing to be the air. I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

I hated being lied to. I hated even more believing those lies until the truth decided to come for me. Turned out, I was never an individual; I was a possession to trade. I was never unique; someone had lived my life many times before, never free, never whole. My life was never mine. My destiny was already written. My story began the night he came for me.

Hate me, if you can, for all the reasons I deserve it. But don't hate me for leaving while you sleep. I knew you wouldn't let me go, and I cannot bear to say good-bye.

Ignorance, fear, hate: these are our enemies. Deny them with all your might. -Oromis

It was never just the idea of you, Avery.” I tried not to feel like the ground was suddenly moving underneath my feet. “You hated the idea of me.” “But not you.” The words were just as sweet, just as painful. “Never you.

You don’t like me much,” Thea noted. “That’s okay. I’m a hypercompetitive, bisexual perfectionist who likes to win and looks like this. I’m no stranger to being hated.

I used to think this city I am to inherit was descending into one ruled by hatred,” the girl says into the cold wind. “I used to think that it was our doing, that the blood feud ruined all that was good.” She looks at her cousin. “But it has been hateful for a long time.

You’ve really never heard of this guy?” Thea asked. “He’s rich and powerful and hates your family’s guts, and you’ve never even heard his name?” “You know as well as I do,” Grayson replied, “that there are different kinds of rich.

I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you save because damn it, Avery - some things are too precious to gamble

My book was not written in hate for Christians or disdain for the principles often associated with Jesus Christ—instead it was inspired by the ignorance that faith and religion often breed in humanity; the type of ignorance that allows people to self-identify as Christians (or any other religion) without having first researched the Holy Scriptures themselves in order to properly evaluate the religion’s veracity or falsity.

After a moment, she felt Tornac pull her sleeve back down, and he said, "That... is a very impressive scar. You should be proud of it." Confused, she looked back at him. "Why? It's ugly, and I hate it." A faint smile played around the corners of his lips. "Because a scar means you survived. It means you're tough and hard to kill. It means you lived. A scar is something to admire.

A lot of people hated our grandfather. It was kind of his thing - that and painstakingly creating the perfect heirs even though he always intended to disinherit us. Those were really his two things.

Cynical? Thats my fascination. I do hateful things, for which people love me, And lovable things for which they hate me. I am a friend of enemies, the enemy of friends; I am admired for my detestability. I am both Poles and the Equator, with no Temperate Zones between.

He brought his hands to the side my face, then the back of my neck, and I felt his touch through every square inch of my body. "I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery - some things are too precious to gamble.

Aren't you supposed to hate me?" I asked. "I do hate you," Xander replied, happily devouring his third scone. "If you notice, I have kept the blueberry confections for myself and gave you"-he shuddered-"the lemon-flavored scones. Such is the depth of my loathing for you personally and principle.

the politicians have inherited the stone age syndrome of the tribal chieftains, who take for granted that they can rule their people only by making them hate and fight all other tribes,” Alfvén continued. “If we have the choice of being governed by problem generating trouble makers, or by problem solvers, every sensible man of course would prefer the latter.

We began to call ourselves Maroneh, which meant "those who weep for Maro" in the common language we once spoke. We named our daughters for sorrow and our sons for rage; we debated whether there was any point in trying to rebuild our race. We thanked Itempas for saving even the handful of us who remained, and we hated the Arameri for making that prayer necessary.

I was stolen by a Debt Inheritance. The First Debt Taught me Lust The Second Debt Brought me Love The Third Debt Shaped my Hate the Fourth Debt Escaped my Fate And the Finale Debt Made me Immortal...

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can’t.

I contain more than my share of years. The memories of hundreds are mine. Life piled upon life: Loves, hates, battles, victories, defeats, lessons learned, mistakes made--all lies within my mind, whispering their wisdom into my ears.

To begin with, we have to be more clear about what we mean by patriotic feelings. For a time when I was in high school, I cheered for the school athletic teams. That's a form of patriotism — group loyalty. It can take pernicious forms, but in itself it can be quite harmless, maybe even positive. At the national level, what "patriotism" means depends on how we view the society. Those with deep totalitarian commitments identify the state with the society, its people, and its culture. Therefore those who criticized the policies of the Kremlin under Stalin were condemned as "anti-Soviet" or "hating Russia". For their counterparts in the West, those who criticize the policies of the US government are "anti-American" and "hate America"; those are the standard terms used by intellectual opinion, including left-liberal segments, so deeply committed to their totalitarian instincts that they cannot even recognize them, let alone understand their disgraceful history, tracing to the origins of recorded history in interesting ways. For the totalitarian, "patriotism" means support for the state and its policies, perhaps with twitters of protest on grounds that they might fail or cost us too much. For those whose instincts are democratic rather than totalitarian, "patriotism" means commitment to the welfare and improvement of the society, its people, its culture. That's a natural sentiment and one that can be quite positive. It's one all serious activists share, I presume; otherwise why take the trouble to do what we do? But the kind of "patriotism" fostered by totalitarian societies and military dictatorships, and internalized as second nature by much of intellectual opinion in more free societies, is one of the worst maladies of human history, and will probably do us all in before too long. With regard to the US, I think we find a mix. Every effort is made by power and doctrinal systems to stir up the more dangerous and destructive forms of "patriotism"; every effort is made by people committed to peace and justice to organize and encourage the beneficial kinds. It's a constant struggle. When people are frightened, the more dangerous kinds tend to emerge, and people huddle under the wings of power. Whatever the reasons may be, by comparative standards the US has been a very frightened country for a long time, on many dimensions. Quite commonly in history, such fears have been fanned by unscrupulous leaders, seeking to implement their own agendas. These are commonly harmful to the general population, which has to be disciplined in some manner: the classic device is to stimulate fear of awesome enemies concocted for the purpose, usually with some shreds of realism, required even for the most vulgar forms of propaganda. Germany was the pride of Western civilization 70 years ago, but most Germans were whipped to presumably genuine fear of the Czech dagger pointed at the heart of Germany (is that crazier than the Nicaraguan or Grenadan dagger pointed at the heart of the US, conjured up by the people now playing the same game today?), the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy aimed at destroying the Aryan race and the civilization that Germany had inherited from Greece, etc. That's only the beginning. A lot is at stake.

From the first day I met his daughter, all I could think about was snuffling up under that sweet dimity like some bad old bear, just crawling up into that honeycomb, nose twitching, and never come out of there till early spring. Think that’s disgusting? Dammit, I do, too, but that’s the way male animals are made. Those peculiar delights were created to entrap us, and anybody who disapproves can take it up with God. In their wondrous capacity of knowing the Lord’s mind, churchly folks will tell you that He would purely hate to hear such dirty talk. My idea is, He wouldn’t mind it half so much as they would have us think, because even according to their own queer creed, we are God’s handiwork, created in His image, lust, piss, shit, and all. Without that magnificent Almighty lust that we mere mortals dare to call a sin, there wouldn’t be any more mortals, and God’s grand design for the human race, if He exists and if He ever had one, would turn to dust, and dust unto dust, forever and amen. Other creatures would step up and take over, realizing that man was too weak and foolish to properly reproduce himself. I nominate hogs to inherit the Earth, because hogs love to eat any old damned thing God sets in front of them, and they’re ever so grateful for God’s green earth even when it’s all rain and mud, and they just plain adore to feed and fuck and frolic and fulfill God’s holy plan. For all we know, it’s hogs which are created in God’s image, who’s to say?

He found that he no longer could hate the Bene Gesserit or the Emperor or even the Harkonnens. They were all caught up in the need of their race to renew its scattered inheritance, to cross and mingle and infuse their bloodlines in a great new pooling of genes. And the race knew only one sure way for this—the ancient way, the tried and certain way that rolled over everything in its path: jihad. Surely,

Hey. Remember what I said when Shigaraki made swiss cheese outta me? 'Stop trying to with this on your own.' But I had more to say. I needed to tell you that I got stabbed cuz my body moved on its own. You know, I always looked down on you cuz you were quirkless. You were s'posed to be beneath me... ...But I kept feeling like you were above me. I hated it. I couldn't bear to look at you. I couldn't accept you the way you were. So I kept you at arm's length and bullied you. I tried to act all superior by rejecting you... ...But I kept losing that fight. Ever since we got into U.A.... ...Nothing's worked out how I thought it would. Instead, this past year has forced me to understand your strength and my weakness. Now I don't expect this to change a thing between us, but I gotta speak... ...My truth. Izuku... I'm sorry for everything. There's nothing wrong with the path you've been walking down since inheriting One For All and following All Might's lead. But now... You're barely standing. And those ideals alone ain't enough to get you over the wall your facing. We're here to step in when you can't handle everything on your own. Because to live up to those ideals and surpass All Might... ...We gotta save you, the civilians at U.A., and the people on the streets. Because saving people is how we win. We get it." ~Katsuki Bakugo -aka- Great Explosion Murder God Dynamite

Time, That Is Pleased to Lengthen out the Day Time, that is pleased to lengthen out the day For grieving lovers parted or denied, And pleased to hurry the sweet hours away From such as lie enchanted side by side, Is not my kinsman; nay, my feudal foe Is he that in my childhood was the thief Of all my mother's beauty, and in woe My father bowed, and brought our house to grief. Thus, though he think to touch with hateful frost Your treasured curls, and your clear forehead line, And so persuade me from you, he has lost; Never shall he inherit what was mine. When Time and all his tricks have done their worst, Still will I hold you dear, and him accurst.

The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles.

Hating me.

hate housework. It's in my genes, a trait inherited from my mother who claimed that a tidy house was the sign of an empty life.

It is not safe to hate the Arameri. Instead we hate their weapons, because weapons do not care.

Hates is a strong word,” Xander hedged. “Thea just loves us in a somewhat negative and occasionally vitriolic way.

Jameson hated to see any similarity between himself and his spoiled, sometimes homicidal mother,

If I am to avoid becoming what I hate, then I have to leave.

I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery. Some things are too precious to gamble.

Aren't you supposed to hate me?" I asked. "I do hate you," Xander replied, happily devouring his third scone. "If you notice, I have kept the blueberry confections for myself and gave you"-he shuddered-"the

A town for men like him, who would never be accepted as white but refused to be treated like Negroes. A third place. His mother, rest her soul, had hated his lightness; when he was a boy, she’d shoved him under the sun, begging him to darken. Maybe that’s what made him first dream of the town. Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift. He’d married a mulatto even lighter than himself. She was pregnant then with their first child, and he imagined his children’s children’s children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream. A more perfect Negro. Each generation lighter than the one before.

Mortals are the sum of many things, Sieh. They are what circumstance has made them and what they wish to be. If you must hate them, hate them for the latter, not the former. At least they have some say over that part.

It is a great wonder How Almighty God in his magnificence Favors our race with rank and scope And the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide. Sometimes He allows the mind of a man Of distinguished birth to follow its bent, Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth And forts to command in his own country. He permits him to lord it in many lands Until the man in his unthinkingness Forgets that it will ever end for him. He indulges his desires; illness and old age Mean nothing to him; his mind is untroubled By envy or malice or thought of enemies With their hate-honed swords. The whole world Conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst Until an element of overweening Enters him and takes hold While the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses, Grown too distracted. A killer stalks him, An archer who draws a deadly bow. And then the man is hit in the heart, The arrow flies beneath his defenses, The devious promptings of the demon start. His old possessions seem paltry to him now. He covets and resents; dishonors custom And bestows no gold; and because of good things That the Heavenly powers gave him in the past He ignores the shape of things to come. Then finally the end arrives When the body he was lent collapses and falls Prey to its death; ancestral possessions And the goods he hoarded and inherited by another Who lets them go with a liberal hand. “O flower of warriors, beware of that trap. Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part, Eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloom But it fades quickly; and soon there will follow Illness or the sword to lay you low, Or a sudden fire or surge of water Or jabbing blade or javelin from the air Or repellent age. Your piercing eye Will dim and darken; and death will arrive, Dear warrior, to sweep you away.

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn’t deprive herself, but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it. I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit." It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, rotund stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. “How can anyone have a relationship to food?" He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been taught to grow out I have been taught to grow in you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much I learned to absorb I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters and I never meant to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house, skin itching, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again, Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her, And I don’t want to do either anymore but the burden of this house has followed me across the country I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry". I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza a circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

He is still uncertain if he likes being a god at all, let alone a god in this pantheon. He doesn’t hate it anymore, though, and that is something. He likes being alive, too. That feeling is new and altogether strange, and he knows it won’t last forever. Nothing good ever does. But perhaps…he can learn to like being happy. While it lasts.

We all die young. He was around your age then. I had just turned 18 and met Evelyn. We fell hard for each other. Any moment I could find, I was with her, which in turn led to her getting pregnant with Neal. My plan was for us to take my inheritance and live on some remote island somewhere. But, when my brother died, I had to step forward. I hated the life with a passion." "And now you can't let go." He was good at what he did. The stories of young Sedric were the things that nightmares were made of. "It's like a possession," he whispered. "It crawls into your soul and takes root. You have no control over it. You allow it to grow, because it helps. It's the reason you can let blood flow across the floor like fine wine and not flinch. It helps you become the monster you need to be. The only side effect is that it's always there. No amount of holy water can wash it off. So there's no letting go. I will forever be who I allowed myself to be, and the person I allowed myself to be enjoys the chaos." Truer words were never spoken.

But by raising him to the highest place in Heaven, God had vindicated Jesus, cleared him of all guilt, and in the process declared Roman law null and void and the Torah’s categories of purity and impurity no longer valid. As a result, gentiles, hitherto ritually unclean, could also inherit the blessings promised to Abraham without becoming subject to Jewish law.

It is not my habit to hand out secrets like candied nuts on winter solstice. Especially not when they belong to others.” He was silent for a few paces. Then: “When someone refuses to tell me a certain piece of information, it only makes me that much more determined to find out the truth. I hate being ignorant. For me, a question unanswered is like a thorn in my side that pains me

By what twisted sophistication of argument do you harry people with violence off your land and then think yourself entitled to make high-minded stipulations as to where they may go now you are rid of them and how they may provide for their future welfare? I am an Englishman who loves England, but do you suppose that it too is not a racist country? Do you know of any country whose recent history is not blackened by prejudice and hate against somebody? So what empowers racists in their own right to sniff out racism in others? Only from a world from which Jews believe they have nothing to fear will they consent to learn lessons in humanity. Until then, the Jewish state’s offer of safety to Jews the world over yes, Jews first – while it might not be equitable cannot sanely be constructed as racist. I can understand why a Palestinian might say it feels racist to him, though he too inherits a history of disdain for people of other persuasions to himself, but not you, madam, since you present yourself as a bleeding-heart, conscience-pricked representative of the very Gentile world from which Jews, through no fault of their own, have been fleeing for centuries...

The most precious inheritance parents can leave their children is their own happiness. Parents’ happiness is the most valuable gift they can give their children. Your children can use those lessons the whole of their lives. You may not be able to leave them money, houses, and land, but you can help them be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all.

Somehow many have convinced themselves that the man who pulled the United States back into some semblance of financial health, reduced unemployment to its lowest level in decades, secured health insurance for millions of citizens, ended one of our recent, all-too-intractable wars in the Middle East, reduced the staggering deficit he inherited from George W. Bush, and masterminded the takedown of Osama bin Laden actually hates America.76

As hard as I fought to hold on to my anger, to continue to hate my dad, the tugging of the good memories eventually found an inroad to my heart. No one is all good or all bad. The reality that my father would forever be a part of me was inescapable. A big part of making peace with myself was rediscovering the good in him and claiming that as my inheritance. The act of forgiving wasn’t like flipping a switch—forgiven . . . unforgiven . . . forgiven . . . unforgiven . . . forgiven.

Meanwhile, this only child helped to make up the pattern of his background, she was a necessary ornament to his private domestic life. There was something pleasing about the possession of a wife and a child, they formed another link in a chain of power. A son would have grown up - proved difficult. A son was hard to control, and lived all the time in the hopes of inheriting money and position. There need be none of this trouble with a daughter. Daughters could be managed, all they had to do in life was to look attractive.

But if my father could stand up to schoolmasters and if he inherited some of his own father's gifts as a teacher, he himself could never have become one. He could teach and loved teaching. He could radiate enthusiasm, but he could never impose discipline. He could never have taught a dull subject to a dull boy, never have said: "Do this because I say so." Enthusiasm spread knowledge sideways, among equals. Discipline forced it downwards from above. My father's relationships were always between equals, however old or young, distinguished or undistinguished the other person. Once, when I was quite little, he came up to the nursery while I was having my lunch. And while he was talking I paused between mouthfuls, resting my hands on the table, knife and fork pointing upwards. "You oughtn't really to sit like that," he said, gently. "Why not?" I asked, surprised. "Well..." He hunted around for a reason he could give. Because it's considered bad manners? Because you mustn't? Because... "Well," he said, looking in the direction my fork was pointing, "Suppose somebody suddenly fell through the ceiling. They might land on your fork and that would be very painful." "I see," I said, though I didn't really. It seemed such an unlikely thing to happen, such a funny reason for holding your knife and fork flat when you were not using them... But funny reason or not, it seems I have remembered it. In the same sort of way I learned about the nesting habits of starlings. I had been given a bird book for Easter (Easter 1934: I still have the book) and with its help I had made my first discovery. "There's a blackbird's nest in the hole under the tiles just outside the drawing-room window," I announced proudly. "I've just seen the blackbird fly in." "I think it's probably really a starling," said my father. "No, it's a blackbird," I said firmly, hating to be wrong, hating being corrected. "Well," said my father, realizing how I felt but at the same time unable to allow an inaccuracy to get away with it, "Perhaps it's a blackbird visiting a starling." A blackbird visiting a starling. Someone falling through the ceiling. He could never bear to be dogmatic, never bring himself to say (in effect): This is so because I say it is, and I am older than you and must know better. How much easier, how much nicer to escape into the world of fantasy in which he felt himself so happily at home.

I feared that you were the destined heir to the Secret Scroll because of the prophecy." "What prophecy?" Catty hated the tremor that had crept into her voice. "Only the child of a fallen goddess and an evil spirit will inherit the Scroll, Zoe recited. Catty's heart sunk. Her mother was a Follower, her father an evil member of the Inner Circle. She suddenly felt damned. How could she overcome such a birthright? Zoe took Catty's hand. "You must never worry that you are evil because of your heritage. The manuscript can only be given to someone with a pure heart and the strength to fight the Atrox.

We have to find a way to push them together,” Minerva said. “You know perfectly well that if Oliver marries, Gran will forget this ridiculous idea of hers about the rest of us marrying. She just wants him to produce an heir” Hetty’s eyebrows shot high. Her granddaughter had a big surprise coming down the road. “And you’re willing to throw him under the wheels of the coach to save yourself, is that it?” Jarret quipped. “No!” Her voice softened. “You and I both know he needs someone to drag him out of himself. Or he’s just going to get scarier as he gets older.” She paused. “Did you tell him about Miss Butterfield’s being an heiress?” That certainly arrested Hetty’s attention. She hadn’t dreamed that the girl had money. “Yes, but I fear that might have been a mistake-when I suggested that he marry her for her fortune, he got angry.” Of course he got angry, you fool, Hetty thought with a roll of her eyes. Honestly, did her grandson know nothing about his brother? “For goodness sake, Jarret, you weren’t supposed to suggest that. You were supposed to get him concerned that she might fall prey to fortune hunters.” At least Minerva had a brain. “Damn,” Jarret said. “Then I probably shouldn’t have exaggerated the amount.” “Oh, Lord.” Minerva sighed. “By how much?” “I kind of…tripled it.” Minerva released an unladylike oath. “Why did you do that? Now he won’t go near her. Haven’t you noticed how much he hates talk of marrying for money?” “Men say things like that, but in the end they’re practical.” “Not Oliver! You’ve just ruined everything!” “Don’t be so dramatic,” Jarret said. “Besides, I have a plan-I laid the seeds for it before I even left Oliver’s study. Come, let’s go talk to the others. It will take all of us working together.” His voice receded as the two of them apparently left the room. “If we merely…” Hetty strained to hear, but she lost the thread of the conversation. Not that it mattered. A smile tugged at her mouth. It appeared she would not have to carry off this match alone. All she need do was sit back and watch Jarret work on Oliver. In the meantime, she would let Minerva go on thinking that finding Oliver a wife would solve their dilemma. That would spur the girl to try harder. In the end, it didn’t matter why or how they managed it, as long as they did. Thank God her grandchildren had inherited her capacity for scheming. It made her proud. So Oliver thought he was going to get around her this time, did he? Well, he was in for a shock. This time he had more than just her to worry about. And with every one of the Sharpe children on Miss Butterfield’s side? She laughed. Poor Oliver didn’t stand a chance.

Everything did change, faster than his fingers could type. What he had been too cautious to hope for was pulled from his dreams and made real on the television screen. At that momentous hour on December 26, 1991, as he watched the red flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the empire “empire extending eleven times zones, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic coast, encompassing more than a hundred ethnicities and two hundred languages; the collective whose security demanded the sacrifice of millions, whose Slavic stupidity had demanded the deportation of Khassan’s entire homeland; that utopian mirage cooked up by cruel young men who gave their mustaches more care than their morality; that whole horrid system that told him what he could be and do and think and say and believe and love and desire and hate, the system captained by Lenin and Zinoviev and Stalin and Malenkov and Beria and Molotov and Khrushchev and Kosygin and Mikoyan and Podgorny and Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko and Gorbachev, all of whom but Gorbachev he hated with a scorn no author should have for his subject, a scorn genetically encoded in his blood, inherited from his ancestors with their black hair and dark skin—as he watched that flag slink down the Kremlin flagpole for the final time, left limp by the windless sky, as if even the weather wanted to impart on communism this final disgrace, he looped his arms around his wife and son and he held them as the state that had denied him his life quietly died.

All the same, while a ruler can’t expect to inspire love when making himself feared, he must avoid arousing hatred. Actually, being feared is perfectly compatible with not being hated. And a ruler won’t be hated if he keeps his hands off his subjects’ property and their women. If he really has to have someone executed, he should only do it when he has proper justification and manifest cause. Above all, he mustn’t seize other people’s property. A man will sooner forget the death of his father than the loss of his inheritance. Of course there are always reasons for taking people’s property and a ruler who has started to live that way will never be short of pretexts for grabbing more. On the other hand, reasons for executing a man come more rarely and pass more quickly.

I walk down the very stairs on which they say the first rabbi’s only daughter was pushed to her death, and in her womb the child who stood to inherit the coveted Satmar dynasty, which others already had their eye on, was killed only weeks before he was expected to be born. I hate taking those steps on my own. I can feel her, Roize, the rabbi’s only, precious daughter, standing there with her large pregnant stomach, watching me with those trademark Teitelbaum eyes. Her pain lives within me. Unlike the others, I cannot forget. That was when Satmar was still a young community, hardly worth fighting over. Now the current rabbi’s sons are squabbling like children over a plastic throne. Where, I wonder, is the brotherly love that God commanded Jews to feel for each other, now, in this community that calls itself holy?

Paul’s opponents in Galatia believed that Jesus’s heroic death and resurrection had inspired a spiritual renewal movement within Israel; they advocated continuity with the past. But Paul believed that with the cross something entirely new had come into the world.7 By raising Jesus, a criminal condemned by Roman law, God had taken the shocking step of embracing what the Torah deemed defiled. Jewish law decreed: “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a gibbet”; by accepting this shameful death, Jesus had made himself legally profane, voluntarily becoming an abomination. But by raising him to the highest place in Heaven, God had vindicated Jesus, cleared him of all guilt, and in the process declared Roman law null and void and the Torah’s categories of purity and impurity no longer valid. As a result, gentiles, hitherto ritually unclean, could also inherit the blessings promised to Abraham without becoming subject to Jewish law.

But Che was neither as innocent nor as friendly as she looked. She knew nothing of the global clash of ideas that brought American soldiers to Vietnam, but the war was her life. Her position in it was dead certain. With all the passion of youth, she hated the Saigon regime, the Republic of Vietnam. This enmity was largely an inheritance. Before she was born, her father had fought with the Viet Minh against the French, and when she was a child he had been imprisoned for years by the Saigon regime, which had followed the French. In her mind they were the same, only now the shadow behind the local oppressor was not France, but the United States. Her father, a bricklayer, had been fighting his whole life. For Che, the war had turned even more personal two years earlier, when the ARVN killed her big sister, a leader in the VC underground. She knew the regime’s soldiers as nguy (fake), a word that in Vietnamese suggested a familiar Asian face masking an alien soul.3

laughed, it sounded as if he were in pain.” “What of his companion, the woman Selena? Did you meet her as well?” Jeod laughed. “If I had, I would not be here today. Morzan may have been a fearsome swordsman, a formidable magician, and a murderous traitor, but it was that woman of his who inspired the most terror in people. Morzan only used her for missions that were so repugnant, difficult, or secretive that no one else would agree to undertake them. She was his Black Hand, and her presence always signaled imminent death, torture, betrayal, or some other horror.” Eragon felt sick hearing his mother described thusly. “She was utterly ruthless, devoid of either pity or compassion. It was said that when she asked Morzan to enter his service, he tested her by teaching her the word for heal in the ancient language—for she was a spellcaster as well as a common fighter—and then pitting her against twelve of his finest swordsmen.” “How did she defeat them?” “She healed them of their fear and their hate and all the things that drive a man to kill. And then while they stood grinning at each other like idiot sheep, she went up to the men and cut their throats.…

Maybe he can tell us where they took our things.” Dropping into a squat, the herbalist placed two fingers against the youth’s jugular vein, feeling his pulse. Then she slapped his cheeks and peeled back his eyelids. The novitiate remained slack and motionless. His lack of response seemed to annoy the herbalist. “One moment,” she said, closing her eyes. A slight frown creased her brow. For a while, she was still; then she sprang upward with sudden speed. “What a self-absorbed little wretch! No wonder his parents sent him to join the priests. I’m surprised they put up with him as long as they did.” “Does he know anything of use?” asked Eragon. “Only the path to the surface.” She pointed toward the door to the left of the altar, the same door through which the priests had entered and departed. “It’s amazing that he tried to free you; I suspect it’s the first time in his life he’s ever done anything of his own accord.” “We have to bring him with us.” Eragon hated to say it, but duty compelled him. “I promised we would if he helped us.” “He tried to kill you!” “I gave my word.” Angela sighed and rolled her eyes. To Arya, she said, “I don’t suppose you can convince him otherwise?

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

There is no silence upon the earth or under the earth like the silence under the sea; No cries announcing birth, No sounds declaring death. There is silence when the milt is laid on the spawn in the weeds and fungus of the rock-clefts; And silence in the growth and struggle for life. The bonitoes pounce upon the mackerel, And are themselves caught by the barracudas, The sharks kill the barracudas And the great molluscs rend the sharks, And all noiselessly-- Though swift be the action and final the conflict, The drama is silent. There is no fury upon the earth like the fury under the sea. For growl and cough and snarl are the tokens of spendthrifts who know not the ultimate economy of rage. Moreover, the pace of the blood is too fast. But under the waves the blood is sluggard and has the same temperature as that of the sea. There is something pre-reptilian about a silent kill. Two men may end their hostilities just with their battle-cries, 'The devil take you,' says one. 'I'll see you in hell,' says the other. And these introductory salutes followed by a hail of gutturals and sibilants are often the beginning of friendship, for who would not prefer to be lustily damned than to be half-heartedly blessed? No one need fear oaths that are properly enunciated, for they belong to the inheritance of just men made perfect, and, for all we know, of such may be the Kingdom of Heaven. But let silent hate be put away for it feeds upon the heart of the hater. Today I watched two pairs of eyes. One pair was black and the other grey. And while the owners thereof, for the space of five seconds, walked past each other, the grey snapped at the black and the black riddled the grey. One looked to say--'The cat,' And the other--'The cur.' But no words were spoken; Not so much as a hiss or a murmur came through the perfect enamel of the teeth; not so much as a gesture of enmity. If the right upper lip curled over the canine, it went unnoticed. The lashes veiled the eyes not for an instant in the passing. And as between the two in respect to candour of intention or eternity of wish, there was no choice, for the stare was mutual and absolute. A word would have dulled the exquisite edge of the feeling. An oath would have flawed the crystallization of the hate. For only such culture could grow in a climate of silence-- Away back before emergence of fur or feather, back to the unvocal sea and down deep where the darkness spills its wash on the threshold of light, where the lids never close upon the eyes, where the inhabitants slay in silence and are as silently slain.

Psalm 5 Song of the Clouded Dawn For the Pure and Shining One, for her who receives the inheritance.11 By King David. 1Listen to my passionate prayer! Can’t You hear my groaning? 2Don’t You hear how I’m crying out to You? My King and my God, consider my every word, For I am calling out to You. 3At each and every sunrise You will hear my voice As I prepare my sacrifice of prayer to You. Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life on the altar And wait for Your fire to fall upon my heart.12 4I know that You, God, Are never pleased with lawlessness, And evil ones will never be invited As guests in Your house. 5Boasters collapse, unable to survive Your scrutiny, For Your hatred of evildoers is clear. 6You will make an end of all those who lie. How You hate their hypocrisy And despise all who love violence! 7But I know the way back home, And I know that You will welcome me Into Your house, For I am covered by Your covenant of mercy and love. So I come to Your sanctuary with deepest awe, To bow in worship and adore You. 8Lord, lead me in the pathways of Your pleasure, Just like You promised me You would, Or else my enemies will conquer me. Smooth out Your road in front of me, Straight and level so that I will know where to walk. 9For you can’t trust anything they say. Their hearts are nothing but deep pits of destruction, Drawing people into their darkness with their speeches. They are smooth-tongued deceivers Who flatter with their words! 10Declare them guilty, O God! Let their own schemes be their downfall! Let the guilt of their sins collapse on top of them, For they rebel against You. 11But let them all be glad, Those who turn aside to hide themselves in You, May they keep shouting for joy forever! Overshadow them in Your presence As they sing and rejoice, Then every lover of Your name Will burst forth with endless joy. 12Lord, how wonderfully You bless the righteous. Your favor wraps around each one and Covers them Under Your canopy of kindness and joy. 11. 5:Title The Hebrew word used here is Neliloth, or “flutes.” It can also be translated “inheritances.” The early church father, Augustine, translated this: “For her who receives the inheritance,” meaning the church of Jesus Christ. God the Father told the Son in Psalm 2 to ask for His inheritance; here we see it is the church that receives what Jesus asks for. We receive our inheritance of eternal life through the cross and resurrection of the Son of God. The Septuagint reads “For the end,” also found in numerous inscriptions of the Psalms. 12. 5:3 Implied in the concept of preparing the morning sacrifice. The Aramaic text states, “At dawn I shall be ready and shall appear before You.

You know that I'm the owner of Curried Dreams, right? I inherited it as his wife." Her parents had never gotten divorced. Ashna remembered how guilty she had felt every time she prayed that they would. "I think it's time we sell it." Ashna dumped the paper towels in the garbage, hands shaking. The urge to press down, crush the garbage until it shrank to the bottom of the bin pushed inside her. "That's a new low, even for you." She gave in and jammed her hand into the garbage, pressing it down until it crushed and folded and smashed. "You already hate me. I might as well do what's right for you and risk you hating me more." "How is forcing me to give up my livelihood right for me?" She washed her hands to keep from shoving the garbage again. "If it weren't for Curried Dreams you would actually be looking for and doing something you enjoyed. You'd get out from that dark place your father thrust you into." Ashna was shaking now. All she wanted was to walk away. To crawl into bed. To get away from Shobi. The habit of walking away from things must be a hard one to break. Go to hell, Frederico Silva! "Curried Dreams is not a dark place. I can turn it around. I'm close to doing it." "You're not going to win that show. You don't even like being a chef! You can't win without passion." "Thanks, Mom. And not all of us are selfish enough to put ourselves and our damn passion before everything else!" Shobi gasped and Ashna sucked in her lips.

Celia realized she'd shocked Mr. Pinter when his thick black brows drew together in a frown. His lean form seemed even more rigid than usual, and his angular features-the arrow of a nose and bladed jaw-even more stark. IN his severe morning attire of black serge and white linen, he radiated male disapproval. But why? He knew she was the only "hellion" left unmarried. Did he think she would let her brothers and sisters lose their inheritance out of some rebellious desire to thwart Gran's ultimatum? Of course he did. He'd been so kind and considerate during her recitation of the dream that she'd almost forgotten he hated her. Why else were his eyes, gray as slate after a storm, now so cold and remote? The blasted fellow was always so condescending and sure of himself, so...so... Male. "Forgive me, my lady," he said in his oddly raspy voice, "but I was unaware you had any suitors." Curse him for being right. "Well, I don't...exactly. There are men who might be interested but haven't gone so far as to offer marriage." Or even to show a partiality to her. "And you're hoping I'll twist their arms so they will?" She colored under his piercing gaze. "Don't be ridiculous." This was the Mr. Pinter she knew, the one who'd called her "a reckless society miss" and a "troublemaker." Not that she cared what he thought. He was like her brother's friends, who saw her as a tomboy because she could demonstrate a rifle's fine qualities. And like Cousin Ned. Scrawny bitch with no tits-you don't have an ounce of anything female on you. Curse Ned to hell.

With a scowl, he turned from the window, but it was too late. The sight of Lady Celia crossing the courtyard dressed in some rich fabric had already stirred his blood. She never wore such fetching clothes; generally her lithe figure was shrouded in smocks to protect her workaday gowns from powder smudges while she practiced her target shooting. But this morning, in that lemon-colored gown, with her hair finely arranged and a jeweled bracelet on her delicate wrist, she was summer on a dreary winter day, sunshine in the bleak of night, music in the still silence of a deserted concert hall. And he was a fool. "I can see how you might find her maddening," Masters said in a low voice. Jackson stiffened. "Your wife?" he said, deliberately being obtuse. "Lady Celia." Hell and blazes. He'd obviously let his feelings show. He'd spent his childhood learning to keep them hidden so the other children wouldn't see how their epithets wounded him, and he'd refined that talent as an investigator who knew the value of an unemotional demeanor. He drew on that talent as he faced the barrister. "Anyone would find her maddening. She's reckless and spoiled and liable to give her husband grief at every turn." When she wasn't tempting him to madness. Masters raised an eyebrow. "Yet you often watch her. Have you any interest there?" Jackson forced a shrug. "Certainly not. You'll have to find another way to inherit your new bride's fortune." He'd hoped to prick Masters's pride and thus change the subject, but Masters laughed. "You, marry my sister-in-law? That, I'd like to see. Aside from the fact that her grandmother would never approve, Lady Celia hates you." She did indeed. The chit had taken an instant dislike to him when he'd interfered in an impromptu shooting match she'd been participating in with her brother and his friends at a public park. That should have set him on his guard right then. A pity it hadn't. Because even if she didn't despise him and weren't miles above him in rank, she'd never make him a good wife. She was young and indulged, not the sort of female to make do on a Bow Street Runner's salary. But she'll be an heiress once she marries. He gritted his teeth. That only made matters worse. She would assume he was marrying her for her inheritance. So would everyone else. And his pride chafed at that. Dirty bastard. Son of shame. Whoreson. Love-brat. He'd been called them all as a boy. Later, as he'd moved up at Bow Street, those who resented his rapid advancement had called him a baseborn upstart. He wasn't about to add money-grubbing fortune hunter to the list. "Besides," Masters went on, "you may not realize this, since you haven't been around much these past few weeks, but Minerva claims that Celia has her eye on three very eligible potential suitors." Jackson's startled gaze shot to him. Suitors? The word who was on his lips when the door opened and Stoneville entered. The rest of the family followed, leaving Jackson to force a smile and exchange pleasantries as they settled into seats about the table, but his mind kept running over Masters's words. Lady Celia had suitors. Eligible ones. Good-that was good. He needn't worry about himself around her anymore. She was now out of his reach, thank God. Not that she was ever in his reach, but- "Have you got any news?" Stoneville asked. Jackson started. "Yes." He took a steadying breath and forced his mine to the matter at hand.

Palo Mayombe is perhaps best known for its display of human skulls in iron cauldrons and accompanied by necromantic practices that contribute to its eerie reputation of being a cult of antinomian and hateful sorcerers. This murky reputation is from time to time reinforced by uninformed journalists and moviemakers who present Palo Mayombe in similar ways as Vodou has been presented through the glamour and horror of Hollywood. It is the age old fear of the unknown and of powers that threaten the established order that are spawned from the umbra of Palo Mayombe. The cult is marked by ambivalence replicating an intense spectre of tension between all possible contrasts, both spiritual and social. This is evident both in the history of Kongo inspired sorcery and practices as well as the tension between present day practitioners and the spiritual conclaves of the cult. Palo Mayombe can be seen either as a religion in its own right or a Kongo inspired cult. This distinction perhaps depends on the nature of ones munanso (temple) and rama (lineage). Personally, I see Palo Mayombe as a religious cult of Creole Sorcery developed in Cuba. The Kongolese heritage derives from several different and distinct regions in West Africa that over time saw a metamorphosis of land, cultures and religions giving Palo Mayombe a unique expression in its variety, but without losing its distinct nucleus. In the history of Palo Mayombe we find elite families of Kongolese aristocracy that contributed to shaping African history and myth, conflicts between the Kongolese and explorers, with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade being the blood red thread in its development. The name Palo Mayombe is a reference to the forest and nature of the Mayombe district in the upper parts of the deltas of the Kongo River, what used to be the Kingdom of Loango. For the European merchants, whether sent by the Church to convert the people or by a king greedy for land and natural resources, everything south of present day Nigeria to the beginning of the Kalahari was simply Kongo. This un-nuanced perception was caused by the linguistic similarities and of course the prejudice towards these ‘savages’ and their ‘primitive’ cultures. To write a book about Palo Mayombe is a delicate endeavor as such a presentation must be sensitive both to the social as well as the emotional memory inherited by the religion. I also consider it important to be true to the fundamental metaphysical principles of the faith if a truthful presentation of the nature of Palo Mayombe is to be given. The few attempts at presenting Palo Mayombe outside ethnographic and anthropological dissertations have not been very successful. They have been rather fragmented attempts demonstrating a lack of sensitivity not only towards the cult itself, but also its roots. Consequently a poor understanding of Palo Mayombe has been offered, often borrowing ideas and concepts from Santeria and Lucumi to explain what is a quite different spirituality. I am of the opinion that Palo Mayombe should not be explained on the basis of the theological principles of Santeria. Santeria is Yoruba inspired and not Kongo inspired and thus one will often risk imposing concepts on Palo Mayombe that distort a truthful understanding of the cult. To get down to the marrow; Santeria is a Christianized form of a Yoruba inspired faith – something that should make the great differences between Santeria and Palo Mayombe plain. Instead, Santeria is read into Palo Mayombe and the cult ends up being presented at best in a distorted form. I will accordingly refrain from this form of syncretism and rather present Palo Mayombe as a Kongo inspired cult of Creole Sorcery that is quite capable

He had no desire to eke out a living from the land as his family had during his childhood. He and Saphira were a Rider and dragon; their doom and their destiny was to fly at the forefront of history, not to sit before a fire and grow fat and lazy. And then there was Arya. If he and Saphira lived in Palancar Valley, he would see her rarely, if at all. “No,” said Eragon, and the word was like a hammerblow in the silence. “I don’t want to go back.” A cold tingle crawled down his spine. He had known he had changed since he, Brom, and Saphira had set out to track down the Ra’zac, but he had clung to the belief that, at his core, he was still the same person. Now he understood that this was no longer true. The boy he had been when he first set foot outside of Palancar Valley had ceased to exist; Eragon did not look like him, he did not act like him, and he no longer wanted the same things from life. He took a deep breath and then released it in a long, shuddering sigh as the truth sank into him. “I am not who I was.” Saying it aloud seemed to give the thought weight. Then, as the first rays of dawn brightened the eastern sky over the ancient island of Vroengard, where the Riders and dragons had once lived, he thought of a name--a name such as he had not thought of before--and as he did, a sense of certainty came over him. He said the name, whispered it to himself in the deepest recesses of his mind, and all his body seemed to vibrate at once, as if Saphira had struck the pillar beneath him. And then he gasped, and he found himself both laughing and crying--laughing that he had succeeded and for the sheer joy of comprehension; crying because all his failings, all the mistakes he had made, were now obvious to him, and he no longer had any delusions to comfort himself with. “I am not who I was,” he whispered, gripping the edges of the column, “but I know who I am.” The name, his true name, was weaker and more flawed than he would have liked, and he hated himself for that, but there was also much to admire within it, and the more he thought about it, the more he was able to accept the true nature of his self. He was not the best person in the world, but neither was he the worst.

Go on, ask me another question. I’m rather enjoying this game.” He cocked an eyebrow at her and, although he was certain it was pointless, he said, “Cheep cheep?” The herbalist brayed with laughter, and some of the werecats opened their mouths in what appeared to be toothy smiles. However, Shadowhunter seemed displeased, for she dug her claws into Eragon’s legs, making him wince. “Well,” said Angela, still laughing, “if you must have answers, that’s as good a story as any. Let’s see…Several years ago, when I was traveling along the edge of Du Weldenvarden, way out to the west, miles and miles from any city, town, or village, I happened upon Grimrr. At the time, he was only the leader of a small tribe of werecats, and he still had full use of both his paws. Anyway, I found him toying with a fledgling robin that had fallen out of its nest in a nearby tree. I wouldn’t have minded if he had just killed the bird and eaten it--that’s what cats are supposed to do, after all--but he was torturing the poor thing: pulling on its wings; nibbling its tail; letting it hop away, then knocking it over.” Angela wrinkled her nose with distaste. “I told him that he ought to stop, but he only growled and ignored me.” She fixed Eragon with a stern gaze. “I don’t like it when people ignore me. So, I took the bird away from him, and I wiggled my fingers and cast a spell, and for the next week, whenever he opened his mouth, he chirped like a songbird.” “He chirped?” Angela nodded, beaming with suppressed mirth. “I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. None of the other werecats would go anywhere near him for the whole week.” “No wonder he hates you.” “What of it? If you don’t make a few enemies every now and then, you’re a coward--or worse. Besides, it was worth it to see his reaction. Oh, he was angry!” Shadowhunter uttered a soft warning growl and tightened her claws again. Grimacing, Eragon said, “Maybe it would be best to change the subject?” “Mmm.” Before he could suggest a new topic, a loud scream rang out from somewhere in the middle of the camp. The cry echoed three times over the rows of tents before fading into silence. Eragon looked at Angela, and she at him, and then they both began to laugh.

Farewell, ye gilded follies, pleasing troubles; Farewell, ye honour'd rags, ye glorious bubbles; Fame's but a hollow echo, Gold, pure clay; Honour the darling but of one short day; Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin; State, but a golden prison, to live in And torture free-born minds; embroider'd Trains, Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins; And Blood allied to greatness is alone Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own. Fame, Honour, Beauty, State, Train, Blood and Birth, Are but the fading blossoms of the earth. I would be great, but that the sun doth still Level his rays against the rising hill: I would be high, but see the proudest oak Most subject to the rending thunder-stroke: I would be rich, but see men, too unkind Dig in the bowels of the richest mind: I would be wise, but that I often see The fox suspected, whilst the ass goes free: I would be fair, but see the fair and proud, Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud: I would be poor, but know the humble grass Still trampled on by each unworthy ass: Rich, hated wise, suspected, scorn'd if poor; Great, fear'd, fair, tempted, high, still envy'd more. I have wish'd all, but now I wish for neither. Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair: poor I'll be rather. Would the World now adopt me for her heir; Would beauty's Queen entitle me the fair; Fame speak me fortune's minion, could I " vie Angels " with India with a speaking eye Command bare heads, bow'd knees, strike justice dumb, As well as blind and lame, or give a tongue To stones by epitaphs, be call'd " great master " In the loose rhymes of every poetaster ? Could I be more than any man that lives, Great, fair, rich wise, all in superlatives; Yet I more freely would these gifts resign Than ever fortune would have made them mine. And hold one minute of this holy leisure Beyond the riches of this empty pleasure. Welcome, pure thoughts; welcome, ye silent groves; These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves. Now the wing'd people of the sky shall sing My cheerful anthems to the gladsome spring: A pray'r-book, now, shall be my looking-glass, In which I will adore sweet virtue's face. Here dwell no hateful looks, no palace cares, No broken vows dwell here, nor pale-fac'd fears; Then here I'll sit, and sigh my hot love's folly, And learn t' affect an holy melancholy: And if contentment be a stranger then, I'll ne'er look for it, but in heaven, again.

Matt takes some time to settle himself before he speaks. When he does, he shares an anecdote about how Julie had written a book for him to have after she was gone, and she titled it, The Shortest Longest Romance: An Epic Love and Loss Story. He loses it here, then slowly composes himself and keeps going. He explains that in the book, he was surprised to find that near the end of the story—their story—Julie had included a chapter on how she hoped Matt would always have love in his life. She encouraged him to be honest and kind to what she called his “grief girlfriends”—the rebound girlfriends, the women he’ll date as he heals. Don’t mislead them, she wrote. Maybe you can get something from each other. She followed this with a charming and hilarious dating profile that Matt could use to find his grief girlfriends, and then she got more serious. She wrote the most achingly beautiful love letter in the form of another dating profile that Matt could use to find the person he’d end up with for good. She talked about his quirks, his devotion, their steamy sex life, the incredible family she inherited (and that, presumably, this new woman would inherit), and what an amazing father he’d be. She knew this, she wrote, because they got to be parents together—though in utero and for only a matter of months. The people in the crowd are simultaneously crying and laughing by the time Matt finishes reading. Everyone should have at least one epic love story in their lives, Julie concluded. Ours was that for me. If we’re lucky, we might get two. I wish you another epic love story. We all think it ends there, but then Matt says that he feels it’s only fair that Julie have love wherever she is too. So in that spirit, he says, he’s written her a dating profile for heaven. There are a few chuckles, although they’re hesitant at first. Is this too morbid? But no, it’s exactly what Julie would have wanted, I think. It’s out-there and uncomfortable and funny and sad, and soon everyone is laugh-sobbing with abandon. She hates mushrooms, Matt has written to her heavenly beau, don’t serve her anything with mushrooms. And If there’s a Trader Joe’s, and she says that she wants to work there, be supportive. You’ll also get great discounts. He goes on to talk about how Julie rebelled against death in many ways, but primarily by what Matt liked to call “doing kindnesses” for others, leaving the world a better place than she found it. He doesn’t enumerate them, but I know what they are—and the recipients of her kindnesses all speak about them anyway.

What he had been too cautious to hope for was pulled from his dreams and made real on the television screen. At that momentous hour on December 26, 1991, as he watched the red flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the empire extending eleven times zones, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic coast, encompassing more than a hundred ethnicities and two hundred languages; the collective whose security demanded the sacrifice of millions, whose Slavic stupidity had demanded the deportation of Khassan’s entire homeland; that utopian mirage cooked up by cruel young men who gave their mustaches more care than their morality; that whole horrid system that told him what he could be and do and think and say and believe and love and desire and hate, the system captained by Lenin and Zinoviev and Stalin and Malenkov and Beria and Molotov and Khrushchev and Kosygin and Mikoyan and Podgorny and Brezhnev and Andropov and Chernenko and Gorbachev, all of whom but Gorbachev he hated with a scorn no author should have for his subject, a scorn genetically encoded in his blood, inherited from his ancestors with their black hair and dark skin—as he watched that flag slink down the Kremlin flagpole for the final time, left limp by the windless sky, as if even the weather wanted to impart on communism this final disgrace, he looped his arms around his wife and son and he held them as the state that had denied him his life quietly died.

What I know in my soul is that the prejudice, inequality, and broken systems that do exist are wrong and dangerous. As Americans, they anger and shame so many of us. Personally, I can’t just sit on a couch and watch the news, or run a company, while society erupts, or walk into some form of retirement and be still. On the sidelines is not where most of us want to be. We must see beyond what’s in front of us. We must reimagine the promise of America. How? By using empathy to try to understand, raising our voices to condemn darkness, and casting our votes to choose the kind of leadership we want our grandchildren to grow up with. But we must also use our hard skills and resources to craft a better reality for ourselves, our neighbors and those with whom we share this land. We can protest but also plan. Search for the truth and share it broadly. Listen to others, and blend ideas. Criticize, but also create. It’s time to commit to a deeper level of shared accountability—to neighbor as well as to stranger, and to self. Americans will always have differences, because that is the nature of the republic we have created. But we owe our children a less divisive America, just as many of our parents fought for a less divided country than the one they inherited. It is time for all of us to elevate the best of ourselves. It is time to climb, and to reclaim the high ground. To do so we must make a choice, one that we have made before. It is a choice between renewal or decline. Our country has a history of renewal at moments when we’ve faced decline, but we also know that renewing our nation’s honor is not a forgone conclusion. The future is not going to bend toward America because we’re American. We’re going to have to bend it ourselves, nudge it, move it. At every turn, let us choose to replace meanness with kindness; pettiness with significance; hate with love; gridlock with compromise; complaints with creative solutions. As a nation, we must be tough but not at the expense of one another. So let us also champion and celebrate those with strength of character—the upstanders among us—because there are so many whose daily intentions and actions echo the heroism of the past, who strive for honesty in the present, and who are already reimagining the promise of America, and will do so for years to come. Above all, let us choose to believe in each other because now and always—we are in this together.

Vienna's reputation as a city of luxury, merrymaking and indulgence actually lies much further in the past, in the time of the Babenbergs at whose courts the Minnesinger were prestigious guests, similar to publicity-seeking pop stars of today. the half-censorious, half-envious comments of foreigners often reflect the ambivalence that so many have felt about a city that was both seductive and dangerous. Such was indeed how Grillparzer described the city he loved and hated in his "Farewell to Vienna"(1843) though he had more in mind than simply the temptations of the flesh. But if Vienna was insidiously threatening under its hedonistic surface for a Grillparzer, others have simply regarded it as cheerfully, even shamelessly, immoral. 'lhe humanist scholar Enea Silvio Piccolomini, private secretary to Friedrich III and subsequently elected Pope Pius II, expressed his astonishment at the sexual freedom of the Viennese in a letter to a fellow humanist in Basel written in 1450: "'lhe number of whores is very great, and wives seem disinclined to confine their affections to a single man; knights frequently visit the wives of burghers. 'lhe men put out some wine for them and leave the house. Many girls marry without the permission of their fathers and widows don't observe the year of mourning." 'the local equivalent of the Roman cicisbeo is an enduring feature of Viennese society, and the present author remembers a respectable middle-class intellectual (now dead) who habitually went on holiday with both wife and mistress in tow. Irregular liaisons are celebrated in a Viennese joke about two men who meet for the first time at a party. By way of conversation one says to the other: "You see those two attractive ladies chatting to each other over there? Well, the brunette is my wife and the blonde is my mistress." "that's funny," says his new friend; "I was just about to say the same thing, only the other way round." In Biedermeier Vienna (1815-48), menages d trois seem not to have been uncommon, since the gallant who became a friend of the family was officially known as the Hausfreund. 'the ambiguous status of such a Hausfreund features in a Wienerlied written in 1856 by the usually non-risque Johann Baptist Moser. It con-terns a certain Herr von Hecht, who is evidently a very good friend of the family of the narrator. 'lhe first six lines of the song innocently praise the latter's wife, who is so delightful and companionable that "his sky is always blue"; but the next six relate how she imported a "friend", Herr von Hecht, and did so "immediately after the wedding". This friend loves the children so much "they could be his own." And indeed, the younger one looks remarkably like Herr von Hecht, who has promised that the boy will inherit from him, "which can't be bad, eh?" the faux-naivete with which this apparently commonplace situation is described seems to have delighted Moser's public-the song was immensely popular then and is still sung today.

I do hate you," Xander replied, happily devouring his third scone. "If you notice, I have kept the blueberry confections for myself and given you" - he shuddered - "the lemon-flavored scones. Such is the depth of my loathing for you personally and on principle.

Well, he wanted it. Everyone wanted it whether you liked it or you hated it. The more you hated it sometimes, the more you wanted it. This they didn’t understand.

This granddaughter whom he didn’t hate was perhaps the only miracle fate had thrown his way. .

I hate this country,” she thought,” I hate it. I always hated it, really. It’s too flat and terrible, there’s no end or beginning to it, and the people are too flat and patient, taking things the way they do and believing them. To inherit the highest degree of glory – to sit beside Brother Joseph again, in another world, and to be commanded by that voice again.” She knew suddenly that Simon belonged to them and not to her – he was flat and yielding and patient, too, Simon was. He wasn’t living now, he was living forever.

The culmination of John XXIII’s bid to repair relations between Catholics and Jews in the wake of the Holocaust was the milestone declaration of the Second Vatican Council known as Nostra Aetate. Opposed by many Church conservatives, it declared that Jews were not collectively responsible for the death of Jesus or eternally cursed by God. The great historical tragedy is that such a statement had to be issued in the first place. But for nearly two thousand years, the Church taught that Jews as a people were guilty of deicide, the very murder of God. “The blood of Jesus,” wrote Origen, “falls not only on the Jews of that time, but on all generations of Jews up to the end of the world.” Pope Innocent III wholeheartedly agreed. “Their words—‘May his blood be on us and our children’—have brought inherited guilt upon the entire nation, which follows them as a curse where they live and work, when they are born and when they die.” Were such words spoken today, they would rightly be branded as hate speech.

inherit the Sight, nor can they be a Vessel. He would have been a dead weight to her. And so, instead of raising him like a mother should, she left him outside to die.” No…Clio thought. What he was saying…it couldn’t be true. “I imagine she never knew that he survived, or maybe she just never cared either way. But the boy did survive. He was picked up by a wandering tribe of Untouched, and he grew up hating the woman who had thrown him away. He grew up and planned to destroy her and take the power that should have been his by birth. “So, dear sister, I think I know our mother best.” His grin was a malicious snarl, showing all of his teeth.

Trouble chases sinners,        while blessings reward the righteous. 22 Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren,        but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly. 23 A poor person’s farm may produce much food,        but injustice sweeps it all away. 24 Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children.        Those who love their children care enough to discipline them. 25 The godly eat to their hearts’ content,        but the belly of the wicked goes hungry.

His mother hated his father. Perhaps being hated by your wife was something he inherited.