Irony Of Fate Quotes

Irony is Fate's most common figure of speech.

She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrased and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.

Listen, Kafka. What you’re experiencing now is the motif of many Greek tragedies. Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man. That’s the basic worldview of Greek drama. And the sense of tragedy—according to Aristotle—comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist’s weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I’m getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.

The irony of life Is our greatest fear is to forget, Yet it's the only certain fate That anything has ever met. We know one day our earth Will find itself victim to time, That nothing will be left To tell of your story or mine, And still through life we rush Scrambling for something to remember, Perish the thought that ash be ash And not the memory of an ember.

Fate is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony.” The Black Company pg 447

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

To me it is the irony of fate,” she said. “The way they come here. Those moths could fly anywhere. Yet they keep hanging around the windows of this house.

Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure.

The Greeks believe the Fates are three sisters: one is Order, who spins out the linear thread of a life from the beginning; another is Irony, who gently cocks up the thread, marking it with some peculiar sense of balance, like justice, only blind drunk with a scale that’s been bunged into the street so it never quite settles; and the third, Inevitability, simply sits in the corner taking notes and criticizing the other two for being shameless slags until she cuts life’s thread, leaving everyone miffed at the timing.

Let no one reduce to tears or reproach This statement of the mastery of God, Who, with magnificent irony, gave Me at once both books and night Of this city of books He pronounced rulers These lightless eyes, who can only Peruse in libraries of dreams The insensible paragraphs that yield With every new dawn. Vainly does the day Lavish on them its infinite books, Arduous as the arduous manuscripts Which at Alexandria did perish. Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us) Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens; I aimlessly weary at the confines Of this tall and deep blind library. Encyclopedias, atlases, the East And the West, centuries, dynasties Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies Do walls proffer, but pointlessly. Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade Explore with my indecisive cane; To think I had imagined Paradise In the form of such a library. Something, certainly not termed Fate, rules on such things; Another had received in blurry Afternoons both books and shadow. Wandering through these slow corridors I often feel with a vague and sacred dread That I am another, the dead one, who must Have trodden the same steps at the same time. Which of the two is now writing this poem Of a plural I and of a single shadow? How important is the word that names me If the anathema is one and indivisible? Groussac or Borges, I see this darling World deform and extinguish To a pale, uncertain ash Resembling sleep and oblivion

It is one of the supreme ironies of history that the blessed birth of an only son should have proved the mortal blow. Even as the saluting cannons boomed and the flags waved, Fate had prepared a terrible story. Along with the lost battles and sunken ships, the bombs, the revolutionaries and their plots, the strikes and revolts, Imperial Russia was toppled by a tiny defect in the body of a little boy.

I had drunk so deeply of grief and innocently gambled so hard with fate and irony that a special kind of vision was gathering in my eyes, not entirely clear just yet. This was the same look people saw in your eyes when you have died for beauty and come to live accepting nature as life with no promise of paradise, and mad at people who couldn't see that.

the irony of man’s fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life, all is vanity, equalized by death.

Even the things that showed him his path seemed to point at what a fool he was. Another of life's ironies? Or just fate's way of mocking him?

The gods thought otherwise. Dis aliter visum.

I taped this quote above my sink: 'What does it matter if an influencer gains all the followers in the world only to lose her soul?

Dear friend…' The Witcher swore quietly, looking at the sharp, angular, even runes drawn with energetic sweeps of the pen, faultlessly reflecting the author’s mood. He felt once again the desire to try to bite his own backside in fury. When he was writing to the sorceress a month ago he had spent two nights in a row contemplating how best to begin. Finally, he had decided on “Dear friend.” Now he had his just deserts. 'Dear friend, your unexpected letter – which I received not quite three years after we last saw each other – has given me much joy. My joy is all the greater as various rumours have been circulating about your sudden and violent death. It is a good thing that you have decided to disclaim them by writing to me; it is a good thing, too, that you are doing so so soon. From your letter it appears that you have lived a peaceful, wonderfully boring life, devoid of all sensation. These days such a life is a real privilege, dear friend, and I am happy that you have managed to achieve it. I was touched by the sudden concern which you deigned to show as to my health, dear friend. I hasten with the news that, yes, I now feel well; the period of indisposition is behind me, I have dealt with the difficulties, the description of which I shall not bore you with. It worries and troubles me very much that the unexpected present you received from Fate brings you worries. Your supposition that this requires professional help is absolutely correct. Although your description of the difficulty – quite understandably – is enigmatic, I am sure I know the Source of the problem. And I agree with your opinion that the help of yet another magician is absolutely necessary. I feel honoured to be the second to whom you turn. What have I done to deserve to be so high on your list? Rest assured, my dear friend; and if you had the intention of supplicating the help of additional magicians, abandon it because there is no need. I leave without delay, and go to the place which you indicated in an oblique yet, to me, understandable way. It goes without saying that I leave in absolute secrecy and with great caution. I will surmise the nature of the trouble on the spot and will do all that is in my power to calm the gushing source. I shall try, in so doing, not to appear any worse than other ladies to whom you have turned, are turning or usually turn with your supplications. I am, after all, your dear friend. Your valuable friendship is too important to me to disappoint you, dear friend. Should you, in the next few years, wish to write to me, do not hesitate for a moment. Your letters invariably give me boundless pleasure. Your friend Yennefer' The letter smelled of lilac and gooseberries. Geralt cursed.

Fate is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony.

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle.

Oh, how awful is truth on earth! That exquisite creature, that gentle spirit, that heaven - she was a tyrant, she was the insufferable tyrant and torture of my soul! I should be unfair to myself if I didn't say so! You imagine I didn't love her? Who can say that I did not love her! Do you see, it was a case of irony, the malignant irony of fate and nature! We were under a curse, the life of men in general is under a curse! (mine in particular). Of course, I understand now that I made some mistake! Something went wrong. Everything was clear, my plan was clear as daylight: "Austere and proud, asking for no moral comfort, but suffering in silence." And that was how it was. I was not lying, I was not lying! "She will see for herself, later on, that it was heroic, only that she had not known how to see it, and when, some day, she divines, it she will prize me ten times more and will abase herself in the dust and fold her hands in homage" - that was my plan. But I forgot something or lost sight of it. There was something I failed to manage. But, enough, enough! And whose forgiveness am I to ask now? What is done is done. By bolder, man, and have some pride! It is not your fault!... Well, I will tell the truth, I am not afraid to face the truth; it was her fault, her fault!

Oh the irony life sometimes throws our way. It’s almost like fate plays a sadistic joke on us just because she’s in a mood that day—fickle bitch that she is.

It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.

We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate. But when the Gods explode, or err, or dissolve into flying clouds of gas, or shrink, or expand, or whatever else their fates might demand, then the minuscule items of their substance may in their small ways express—not protest, which of course is inappropriate to their station in life—but an acknowledgement of the existence of irony: yes, they may sometimes allow themselves—always with respect—the mildest possible grimace of irony.

Stunned, Julia could not speak. She lost her breath and her ability to form words as the room spun for a moment at the irony. She hated irony. Detested it. And in this case, the Fates had been quite perverse in their mockery.

People had always amazed him, he began. But they amazed him more since the sickness. For as long as the two of them had been together, he said, Gary’s mother had accepted him as her son’s lover, had given them her blessing. Then, at the funeral, she’d barely acknowledged him. Later, when she drove to the house to retrieve some personal things, she’d hunted through her son’s drawers with plastic bags twist-tied around her wrists. “…And yet,” he whispered, “The janitor at school--remember him? Mr. Feeney? --he’d openly disapproved of me for nineteen years. One of the nastiest people I knew. Then when the news about me got out, after I resigned, he started showing up at the front door every Sunday with a coffee milkshake. In his church clothes, with his wife waiting out in the car. People have sent me hate mail, condoms, Xeroxed prayers…” What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions--the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he’d become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both--Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with the surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me. “The irony,” he said, “… is that now that I’m this blind man, it’s clearer to me than it’s ever been before. What’s the line? ‘Was blind but now I see…’” He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. “You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought…said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed up phone message… That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I’m fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness--That’s what makes me sad. Everyone’s so scared to be happy.” “I know what you mean,” I said. His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. “No you don’t,” he said. “You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out, and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you’re afraid.” “I’m not afraid. It’s more like…” I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened. “I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” he said. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

...I remember that my mother had always said to be polite and finish my meal. At last he gave no more struggles. The deed was done. Now the boat contained four men, not one heartbeat among us. The fate they had destined for another claimed them as well. The irony of it all was more delicious than the blood consumed. -- Quote by Lane DeLuca

Your history flows from your hands write good chapters with them" RjS

Irony is the sense of humor of fate. From "Just Go" by Twila Vernon

Irony is the sense of humor of fate.

I have always believed that the chemistry of fate includes a strong measure of irony.

What irony. This great ship that carried all their fates upon her steel and rivets sailed like a compeer under him, half-blind with a limp.

It was, in fact, the same fate married women had endured before Elizabeth’s personal liberty law had passed, but this irony was seemingly lost on them.

No one knows tomorrow, yet everyone has plans for tomorrow.

She imagined fate laughing at the irony of their pairing: a liar loved by someone who could sense the truth.

He paused long enough for me to consider how wonderful life could be when it had great literature-style items, such as coincidence and fate and elegant ironies.

Frankie watched the soft moths tremble and press against the window screen. The moths came every evening when the lamp on her desk was lighted. They came from out of the August night and fluttered and clung against the screen. "To me it is the irony of fate," she said "The way they come here. Those moths could fly anywhere. Yet they keep hanging around the windows of his house.

It works. But the tricky thing is, it never works exactly how you expect. People think they're smart enough to summon up some entity or make someone fall in love with them and have it all turn out for the best. But they aren't smart enough. Whatever it is that usually decides our fates--Gods, luck, random chance--it's smarter than us. It's always smarter. Magic works, but it's an exercise in irony, sometimes a dangerous one. Be careful.

Blood that was warm has now run cold bled every day have hearts become old Telling I am the story of my past and of the ghosts at which it is aghast Life as a child was a wonderful rhapsody Free from the fetters of rational prosody Naively making brute reality a parody Revelling in a soul filled with life's melody Poverty struck and child became destitute wailing and whimpering like a wretched prostitute Of pleasure and pain does a society constitute for Man is not for God to substitute Life is a parody of paradoxical Irony Fate rules not without a touch of Tyranny While the rich belch on their goblets of honey the wretched etch on the tablets of agony

What made him most anxious, he told me, was not the big questions -the mercilessness of fate, the possibility of heaven. He was too exhausted, he said, to wrestle with those. But he'd become impatient with the way people wasted their lives, squandered their chances like paychecks. I sat on the bed, massaging his temples, pretending that just the right rubbing might draw out the disease. In the mirror I watched us both -Mr. Pucci, frail and wasted, a talking dead man. And myself with a surgical mask over my mouth, to protect him from me. "The irony," he said, "... is that now that I'm this blind man, it's clearer to me now then it's ever been before. What's the line? 'Was blind but now I see...' " He stopped and put his lips to the plastic straw. Juice went halfway up the shaft, then back down again. He motioned the drink away. "You accused me of being a saint a while back, pal, but you were wrong. Gary and I were no different. We fought ...said terrible things to each other. Spent one whole weekend not speaking to each other because of a messed-up phone message... That time we separated was my idea. I thought, well, I'm fifty years old and there might be someone else out there. People waste their happiness -that's what makes me sad. Everyone's so scared to be happy." "I know what you mean," I said. His eyes opened wider. For a second he seemed to see me. "No you don't," he said. "You mustn’t. He keeps wanting to give you his love, a gift out and out and you dismiss it. Shrug it off because you're afraid." "I'm not afraid. It's more like ..." I watched myself in the mirror above the sink. The mask was suddenly a gag. I listened. "l'll give you what I learned from all this," he said. "Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.

Living—comes with a price, as does freedom. The sons and daughters, friends and soul mates surrounding us today, offer their lives as a shield against dark things, giving peace a fighting chance. There is no greater irony, and only those who protect a nation can understand the paradox. Whether by some crinkle of fate or man’s eternal flaws, struggle is a part of life, but so is hope. There are things crushingly certain in this world. The warmth of blood and tears will always chill as it blankets soil and gravestones. In the silent but healing breath seized between war and peace, there will always be memorable moments. The ones that keep life worth living. You just need to recognize them, and hold onto them as long as you can. Today—belongs to all of us.

It is a small but noteworthy irony that among the first Allied troops who crossed the Elbe River and met up with Russian troops in April of 1945—encircling Berlin and sealing Hitler’s fate—was a small band of resourceful American boys, rowing a captured German racing shell.

They say fate is written in the stars, but the irony is that stars don't project the future, they reflect the past. If you think about it, every time you look at a star, you're looking back in time. The North Star is four hundred thirty light-years away, so when you see it shining, the light hitting your eyes is already four hundred thirty years old.

The same event could happen to four different people and one would deem it a coup, another kismet, another ironic, another auspicious. A coup signified chaos, kismet signified fate, irony signified order, auspicious signified faith. Meanwhile, odds were quantifiable but chances were not. Chances were abstract and “for” whereas odds were concrete and “against.

In my unfortunately infrequent encounters with real passion, I'm rarely as careful as I ought to be. The rationalization goes something like: With all the bullets and mortar rounds I've survived, I must be immune to sexually transmitted diseases. Stupid, I know. More likely, fate will indulge its taste for irony by killing me with AIDS os some other unpleasant alternative.

and during the moments she did think of herself she was stunned by the irony of her fate. She had become the wife of a desaparecido. She had often said that no one disappeared in their country, and that such stories were anti-patriotic lies. When she saw the distraught women marching every Thursday in the plaza with portraits of their relatives pinned to their bosoms, she had said they were in the pay of Moscow. She never imagined she would find herself in the same situation as those wives and mothers searching for their loved ones. Legally,

Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival—what we may loosely call the Scientific Outlook, 1 the picture of Mr. [H. G.] Wells and the rest. Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance—what tragic irony—the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama—just as everything seems against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glance briefly at the age of monsters. Dragons prowl the earth, devour one another, and die. Then comes the theme of the younger son and the ugly duckling once more. As the weak, tiny spark of life began amidst the huge hostilities of the inanimate, so now again, amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little naked, shivering, cowering creature, shuffling, not yet erect, promising nothing, the product of another millionth millionth chance. Yet somehow he thrives. He becomes the Cave Man with his club and his flints, muttering and growling over his enemies’ bones, dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I never could quite make out why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy till one of them is old enough to tear him, cowering before the horrible gods whom he created in his own image. But these are only growing pains. Wait till the next act. There he is becoming true Man. He learns to master Nature. Science comes and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the present (for it is a mere nothing by the time scale we are using), you follow him on into the future. See him in the last act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demigods now rules the planet—and perhaps more than the planet—for eugenics have made certain that only demigods will be born, and psychoanalysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity, and communism that all which divinity requires shall be ready to their hands. Man has ascended his throne. Henceforward he has nothing to do but to practise virtue, to grow in wisdom, to be happy. And now, mark the final stroke of genius. If the myth stopped at that point, it might be a little bathetic.

Do not underestimate your own courage. You are part of an elite. Not of power, position and wealth, but an elite of the sensitive, the considerate and the tenacious. Its members are to be discovered in all castes, and throughout all ages, and among them there is a shared understanding. They represent a tradition of struggle against cruelty and unrelenting chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few gain notoriety. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves, their consideration is without frills, their tenacity is not braggartly but has the power to really endure, and above all the can accept the irony of their own fate". ... "It is pointless to be any less than all you can be.

On one occasion, the principal sent me a message that a British girl would be sitting behind me, and that I should be helpful to her during the exam. Ironically, that girl had been sent back to Peshawar by expat parents for an arranged marriage. She was finding it hard to adjust to the conservative environment of Peshawar. The man she ended up marrying had put in a proposal to my family for me a year earlier. I had thought this man from Charsadda would not let me continue my education or have a career. Seeing him as a backward Pashtun, I had refused. A few years later, I bumped into the same girl. She had become a judge, and was madly in love with her rather progressive Pashtun husband, while I had found myself under lock-and-key in good old England.

Living—comes with a price, as does freedom. The sons and daughters, friends and soul mates surrounding us today, offer their lives as a shield against dark things, giving peace a fighting chance. There is no greater irony, and only those who protect a nation can understand the paradox. Whether by some crinkle of fate or man’s eternal flaws, struggle is a part of life, but so is hope. There are things crushingly certain in this world. The warmth of blood and tears will always chill as it blankets soil and gravestones. In the silent but healing breath seized between war and peace, there will always be memorable moments. The ones that keep life worth living. You just need to recognize them, and hold onto them as long as you can. Today—belongs to all of us. “Hooyah,

I’m not sure I see your point.” “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.” “Sorry but I’m not really appreciating your point here.” “You don’t need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own. Because—” up went the batwing eyebrow—“well, if you didn’t take picture from museum, and Sascha didn’t steal it back, and I didn’t think of claiming reward—well, wouldn’t all those dozens of other paintings remain missing too? Forever maybe? Wrapped in brown paper? Still shut in that apartment? No one to look at them? Lonely and lost to the world? Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found?” “I think this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’ ” “Yes—but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?

All kinds of things are happening to me." I begin. ,,Some I choose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other any more. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense od who I am. It's as if my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch. Oshima gazes deep into m eyes. "Listen, Kafka. What you are experiencing now is the motif od many Greek tragedies. Man does not chose fate. Fate chooses man. That is the basic world view of Greek drama. And the sense od tragedy - according to Aristotle - somes, ironically enough, not drom the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I am getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a Great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of lazines or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.

THE DEFENDANT: Thank you, your Honor. I stand before your Honor humbly and painfully aware that we are here today for one reason: Because of my actions that I pled guilty to on August 21, and as well on November 29. I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to, the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America. Viktor Frankl in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," he wrote, "There are forces beyond your control that can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation." Your Honor, this may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. The irony is today is the day I am getting my freedom back as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate. I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. In fact, I now know that there is little to be admired. I want to be clear. I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light. It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the elicit act of the President rather than to listen to my own inner voice which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious.

The most productive nation in the world, yet unable to properly feed, clothe and shelter over a third of its population. Vast areas of valuable soil turning to waste land because of neglect, indifference, greed and vandalism. Torn some eighty years ago by the bloodiest civil war in the history of man and yet to this day unable to convince the defeated section of our country of the righteousness of our cause nor able, as liberators and emancipators of the slaves, to give them true freedom and equality, but instead enslaving and degrading our own white brothers. Yes, the industrial North defeated the aristocratic South—the fruits of that victory are now apparent. Wherever there is industry there is ugliness, misery, oppression, gloom and despair. The banks which grew rich by piously teaching us to save, in order to swindle us with our own money, now beg us not to bring our savings to them, threatening to wipe out even that ridiculous interest rate they now offer should we disregard their advice. Three-quarters of the world’s gold lies buried in Kentucky. Inventions which would throw millions more out of work, since by the queer irony of our system every potential boon to the human race is converted into an evil, lie idle on the shelves of the patent office or are bought up and destroyed by the powers that control our destiny. The land, thinly populated and producing in wasteful, haphazard way enormous surpluses of every kind, is deemed by its owners, a mere handful of men, unable to accommodate not only the starving millions of Europe but our own starving hordes. A country which makes itself ridiculous by sending out missionaries to the most remote parts of the globe, asking for pennies of the poor in order to maintain the Christian work of deluded devils who no more represent Christ than I do the Pope, and yet unable through its churches and missions at home to rescue the weak and defeated, the miserable and the oppressed. The hospitals, the insane asylums, the prisons filled to overflowing. Counties, some of them big as a European country, practically uninhabited, owned by an intangible corporation whose tentacles reach everywhere and whose responsibilities nobody can formulate or clarify. A man seated in a comfortable chair in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, a man surrounded by every luxury and yet paralyzed with fear and anxiety, controls the lives and destinies of thousands of men and women whom he has never seen, whom he never wishes to see and whose fate he is thoroughly uninterested in.

When someone is no more, we take off immediately to find them, but while a person is alive and is desperate to see us, we have no time to visit.

William III died childless in 1702, in a fall when his horse stumbled over a molehill, an obstacle that seems as if it should have some philosophical significance but, as far as can be seen, does not.

The irony of life is a twisted game; but my god you learn fast, the ins and outs of how to play your part the best you can.

As with all tragedies, the real tragedy of my life is just an irony of Fate. I reject life because it is a prison sentence, I reject dreams as being a vulgar form of escape. Yet I live the most sordid and ordinary of real lives and the most intense and constant of dream lives. I’m like a slave who gets drunk during his rest hour - two miseries inhabiting one body.

If I had to sum up my life, my journey in one word, it would be today. I did it all for this moment. The irony is, I never knew through my plotting and scheming a day like this could exist for me. Fate threw me the cards while Karma had its wicked way with me. Luck was never factored in, but it came through for this opportunist enough to know that at times, it was present, and others it had abandoned me completely. Noted, luck. And fuck you for it. But if I have to measure my life against the uncontrollable powers of what could be, at any time, for or against me, I’ll have to bat them all away. I’ll have to choose something else to measure my life by, a different entity all together, a cosmic force to trump all others, her. Without her, my purpose would feel meaningless, as would this day.

Perhaps indeed the weights on the scale get balanced and in the fifth act a semblance of catharsis and order is imposed upon the players and we continue our lives and do our best until the day comes when we have to go either gentle or raging into that good night. I suspect the real issue is how we conduct ourselves when the ironies of fate seem more than the soul can bear.

I was one of the privileged majority who would be leading troops in combat in just a month, and I felt a keen sense of irony when the lance corporal/clerk who processed my orders turned out to be one of the officer candidates who had flunked out of my OCS class. His reward for failure would be a safe stateside tour of duty behind a typewriter, and although I would not have traded places with him for anything, he was living proof of the Marine Corps axiom that the shitbirds get the easy assignments.

The lack of much outside investment allowed Gates and Allen to hold the vast majority of their company’s stock through the mideighties. Jobs, while his net worth had climbed into a significant fortune with Apple’s rise, didn’t own enough to control his destiny and was fired. It was a cruel irony: For all his counterculture spirit and brilliance, he suffered the mercenary’s fate, left with money but no kingdom. Gates, however, remained reluctant to go public even ten years after Microsoft’s founding. Eventually, due to the number of Microsoft employees who owned shares, and U.S. securities laws obligating any company with more than 500 shareholders to be registered, which Microsoft expected to soon pass, Gates agreed to list his shares. But as a final symbol of resistance, he did try to fly coach during the IPO roadshow—one last ode to parsimony—until his underwriters insisted otherwise.

[Death by Starvation or Boredom] Many are those who work For cheap wages Only to barely survive One breath at a time… Just one more breath… And others who have so much Yet work simply to kill boredom Only to feel that they are saving A world that is drowning Because of their greed And their love for power and wealth… The first one remains one step or less Closer to dying of starvation; While the second one -who provides the wages of the first one- Remain one step or less closer to dying of boredom… And here lies the irony! It’s as if fate insists on breaking All human barriers To force everyone to choose Between death by starvation or boredom… And owe to those who die of both… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on January 28, 2023]

How do you get the freedom that your soul craves? This is the great irony about freedom. To become truly free, you must surrender. Surrender is not a popular concept. It goes against everything we think we know about being free... But surrender is the only way to achieve freedom for your soul... If you want to free your soul, you acknowledge that there is a spiritual order that God has designed for you. You are not the center of the universe. You are not the master of your fate. You are not the captain of your ship. There is a God, and you aren't him. True freedom comes when you embrace God's overall design for the world and your place in it. This is why in the Bible you see this strong connection between God's law and soul-freedom.

Mind without heart The leaf had fallen, The branch still stood there intact, It was a gradual event and not at all sudden, The fallen leaf, the still existing branch was an undeniable fact, But why did the branch still hang on, waiting for something? As the leaf from the floor looked at it while time consumed it, Maybe the branch wanted to see the leaf on the floor dying, And with its shadow touch it, and feel it; and whisper to it, “There where you grew you shall grow again next season, I will wait for you here throughout the winter, And to do so, I need no motivation because I have my reason, I have loved you and I do not wish to be a quitter,” And finally there was nothing left of the leaf, the fallen and dead leaf, There was only its trace, a faint impression on the soil, This added to the branch’s anguish and grief, For time had robbed her of its every moment of toil, People passed by and trampled the leaf’s almost fossilised impression, Until there was nothing left of the leaf neither on the branch nor on the soil, The branch chided the fate’s paucity and time’s baseless aggression, For they even erased the leaf’s last impression that was as thin as silver foil, By the time winter entered its prime, The branch stood there waiting for it to pass, Not because it wanted to feel the joys of summer time, But it wanted the leaf to re-appear and re-grow so that it could undo time’s act so crass, Time passed by, spring arrived, the branch was filled with leaves, But that leaf never grew again, the same leaf, the fallen one, So the branch misses him and it continuously grieves, But she shows it to no one, because no leaf compares to her dear leaf, the fallen one, Maybe that is why it is beginning to bend, Though it is converted in thousands of fresh leaves, The branch has been unable to cope with the dear leaf’s premature end, So she keeps peeping into time’s graves, To find the grave of the leaf that she lost prematurely, And lie there beside him, and finally fall, Then be together with him timelessly, And say, “For you I too had to fall afterall!” Today the sun has risen but the branch has fallen forever, Exactly where the leaf had fallen, It is a love of different kind, and the branch is a special lover, Who would never let go of what time from her had stolen, After a year the branch too disappeared from the floor, Now there is neither the branch nor the leaf, Time knows it, fate planned it, but I witnessed it; and this I cannot ignore, But knowing they are somewhere together now, even if that be the graveyard of time, is a relief, Time and fate are never obsequious, Because they neither love nor hate, But they are masquerading and pretentious, And they never know how it feels when the branch lies naked in a leafless state, That is time’s and fate’s irony of which they may never know, But you and I who have minds and hearts, Yet become part of a fake and grotesque show, Where either mind thinks without the heart or the heart from mind’s innocence departs!

Penelope and I had a complicated past. One full of unspoken truths, missed chances, and stolen moments. I’d hurt her. She had hurt me. It was fate’s twisted sense of humor that we were now thrown together in some odd, domesticated role. The irony was cruel.

Society doesn’t accept that happiness is the key to success, to them here is the definition of success: You do what you are meant to do as a pawn in the world and make some money doing it, then die and make way for other pawns. Now if you make an animal buy into this stupid rule, it’s understandable. What is not is how a so called higher being such as a human can ever accept that his or her fate is just to be a pawn leading a meaningless life, no matter how highly paid that pawn is. If you have the slightest ability to think consciously you will eventually realize that just doing what society asks you to do is no success at all if it deprives you of happiness. In fact, it means your life has been a total failure.

As we’ll see, there was an irony in this. The government’s claims were propagandistic exaggerations, which came to be widely disbelieved. But actually the government resisted far more than the Communists, who resisted very little and whose losses were a small fraction of those suffered by the KMT’s forces.

Once Stalin had more than a million soldiers occupying Manchuria, the Chinese civil war became inevitable, because Mao understood that the central government no longer had the capability to eliminate him militarily. The irony, of course, is that the president of the United States, meeting with Stalin at Yalta, implored the Soviets to send their troops to Manchuria and that the Soviet invasion was facilitated by American Lend-Lease supplies.

Darwin's theory shows the truth of naturalism: we are animals like any other; our fate and that of the rest of life on Earth are the same. Yet, in an irony all the more exquisite because no one has noticed it, Darwinism is now the central prop of the humanist faith that we can transcend our animal natures and rule the Eart.

The irony of fate is that in most cases, if not any, the ugly and the stupid, but not the bright and the smart. have the best of it in the world. Unlike the latter, they enjoy their indisturbed, indifferent and without disquiet life. In order to live so you need not so much more intellect, not so deep thinking, not so high principles. You need only to eat, to drink and to have sex as intensely as you can, without serious attention to what is going in the world indeed.

I need to get at Fate’s design in this. What exactly does it want of me? Did it pick me? Because Miss Brown…” he began with a calm warning. “I worked for Fate in the past. I slaved my ass off for her. Then she handed me over to Irony, a cruel bastard with a shit eating grin, and I worked for him too. I slaved for both, all my life, without stop, without wavering. I was a good employee to the universe. And then one day, I quit,” he said. “I’ve been MIA for near a decade. And it seems… I’ve been found.” She

Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man. That’s the basic world view of drama. And the sense of tragedy comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist’s weak points but from his good qualities. People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but their virtues. Irony depends a person, helps them to mature. It’s the entrance to salvation on a higher plane, to a place where you can find a more universal kind of hope.

Truth is the irony of fate.

What a fucking destiny is that... or fate or whaatever is it? ... COme on isn't it kinda of life irony seeing the girl with which I should conversation.,.. but the problem is that I can't... not because I don't want... but I can't... ... It's just difficult!

I haven’t missed the irony that, assuming they weren’t slaughtered, the sons that my father abandoned to an anonymous fate no doubt exhibited blind loyalty to the Varr regime, while the son he nurtured and protected betrayed it.

This barren land is cursed, for it possesses a cruel irony—it grants you that which you hold dear in a manner both unexpected and ill-fated!

I was choosing to be alone then; it was not the inescapable consequence of the wolf’s death, nor even a carefully considered decision. I was embracing my solitude, courting my pain. It was not the first time I had chosen such a course. I handled that thought carefully, for it was sharp enough to kill me. I had chosen my isolated years with Hap in my cabin. No one forced me into that exile. The irony was that it had been the granting of my often-voiced wish. Throughout my youth, I had always asserted that what I truly wished was to live a life where I could make my own choices, independent of the “duties” of my birth and position. It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I pleased only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways. To be part of a family, or a community, is to have duties and responsibilities, to be bound by the rules of that group. I had lived apart from that for a time, but now I knew that had been my choice. I had chosen to renounce my responsibilities to my family, and accepted the ensuing isolation as the cost. At the time, I had insisted to myself that fortune had forced me into that role. Just as I was making a choice now, even though I tried to persuade myself I was but following the inescapable path fate had set out for me. To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not the cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.

There’s a painful irony to stories like that, to discovering how frequently and easily success transmutes into depression. Avoiding this fate has something to do with not letting your current goal become your only goal.

Kidnapping an archivist from a library and holding her prisoner in my home was hardly the makings of a match made in heaven, but fate decided to have a little irony.

I am so used to people loving others more than they love me. At school, they said that I was the most gifted. But I always knew that it was an irony of fate to have been given so many gifts, only for me to feel even more intensely what I might have been to others when nobody wanted me. . . . I do not ask for much—so little—only that no other person must always stand in the way and get closer. This is the only thing I have longed for in my entire life, to be another person’s first choice. . . . Just once, let me show you what I can be when someone truly loves me. . . . Look at me closely. Am I pretty? Yes, when someone loves me, I am pretty. Otherwise, I am not. Am I good? Yes, when someone loves me, I am kindheartedness itself. Am I unselfish? Oh, I can be so selfless that any of my thoughts may dissolve into the thought of another.

The boy who was Strifbjorn is a whore. It’s an irony the wolf should be prepared to savor, before he leaves the boy to his fate.

Neemai wasn’t sure whether it was the beautiful sunset or the liveliness of the place that was warming a little fire in his heart. He even smiled at the kids as they started a row again, only to know that it wouldn’t last more than a minute. Neemai’s smile was unfeigned, unlike the ones he faked in the office. Perhaps Lady Destiny was watching him as an irony of fate, an ice cream rickshaw selling ‘Dinkum Ice Cream’ sounded a bell. The sound of the bell took his mindfulness away from the kids. He turned and looked at the ice cream rickshaw painted in red and yellow, immediately hit with the recollection of the school days. Just like the rest of the boys, he would save the change to buy the ice cream sticks. It was cheapest on the menu and tasted little better than flavoured ice, but the excitement of slurping the cola and orange sticks and laughing as each other’s lips got washed in the colours of the flavor was incomparable. The joy was simple, and absolute. Ice creams have brought more goodwill to the world than all the peace meetings, he thought musing at the delight that the ice cream rickshaw allured among the park people. There are certain things we become unconsciously aware of even when we are not looking at it. Everybody was aware of its presence, and like the sun that was going down, the ice cream rickshaw made its presence known.

... for the weak and the ineffectual, who cannot rise to the dignity and nobility of tragedy, or the luxury of irony, for whom even ordinary acts of will are impossible, melodrama is a substitute. People deprived of the capacity to change their fate can only repetitively lament this fact, and since they belong to the vast majority of the world's population, melodrama should be taken seriously for its world-historical impact.

In life's event chain fate loves irony. So don't get defensive its not a rumor i'm a bit masochistic a mix of illogical and realistic need a love who understands dark humor. I laugh at tragedy and flirt with pain, kiss me through melancholy let's dance in the rain.

For the second time in a matter of days, fate had gone and plunked her down right in front of me, only to slap me in the face with her jerk-off boyfriend. What kind of Alanis Morrisette irony was that?

...she turned in the water, she observed herself at every angle and in every light, she writhed upon herself--and always this offensive, naked body pursued her. It was a flight from her own body that she was attempting, as if from another person whom she, Signora Isotta, was unable to save at a difficult juncture, and could only abandon to her fate. Yet this body, so rich and so impossible to conceal, had indeed been a glory of hers, a source of self-satisfaction; only a contradictory chain of circumstances, apparently sensible, could make it now a cause for shame. Or perhaps not; perhaps her life always consisted only of the clothed lady she had been all of her days, and her nakedness hardly belonged to her, was a rash state of nature revealed only now and then, arousing wonder in human beings, foremost in her. Now Signora Isotta recalled that even when she was alone or in private with her husband she had always surrounded her being naked with an air of complicity, of irony, part embarrassed and part feline, as if she were temporarily putting on joyous but outraged disguises, for a kind of secret carnival between husband and wife. She had become accustomed with some reluctance to owning a body, after the first disappointed romantic years, and she had taken it on like someone who learns he can command a long-yearned for property.

He crossed to her and took her in his arms. “Oh, Zarozinia, we should never have met, never have married. We can only hurt one another at this time. Our happiness was so brief…” “If you would be hurt by me, then hurt you shall be,” she said softly, “but if you would be comforted, then I am here to comfort my lord.” He relented with a sigh. “These are loving words, my dear—but they are not spoken in loving times. I have put love aside for the nonce. Try to do likewise and thus we’ll both dispense with added complication.” Without anger, she drew slowly away from him and with a slight smile that had something of irony in it, pointed to the bed, where Stormbringer lay. “I see your other mistress still shares your bed,” she said. “And now you need never try to dismiss her again, for that black lord of Nihrain has given you an excuse to forever keep her by your side. Destiny—is that the word? Destiny! Ah, the deeds men have done in destiny’s name. And what is destiny, Elric, can you answer?” He shook his head. “Since you ask the question in malice, I’ll not make the attempt to answer it.” She cried suddenly: “Oh, Elric! I have traveled for many days to see you, thinking you would welcome me. And now we speak in anger!” “Fear!” he said urgently. “It is fear, not anger. I fear for you as I fear for the fate of the world! See me to my ship in the morning and then make speed back to Karlaak, I beg you.” “If you wish it.” She walked back into the small chamber which joined the main one.

There is something stupid about raw events of which Destiny, if it exists, cannot be insensible. There is something stupid about self-evidence and truth from which a superior irony cannot but spare us. Thus everything is expiated one way or another. Forgetting or mourning are no more then the period of time required by reversibility.

By the time Theophilus attacked Serapis the laws were on his side. But many other Christians were so keen to attack the demonic temples that they didn’t wait for legal approval. Decades before the laws of the land permitted them to, zealous Christians began to indulge in acts of violent vandalism against their ‘pagan’ neighbours. The destruction in Syria was particularly savage. Syrian monks – fearless, rootless, fanatical – became infamous both for their intensity and for the violence with which they attacked temples, statues and monuments – and even, it was said, any priests who opposed them. Libanius, the Greek orator from Antioch, was revolted by the destruction that he witnessed. ‘These people,’ he wrote, ‘hasten to attack the temples with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet. Then utter desolation follows, with the stripping of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues, and the overthrow of altars, and the priests must either keep quiet or die . . . So they sweep across the countryside like rivers in spate.’ Libanius spoke elegiacally of a huge temple on the frontier with Persia, a magnificent building with a beautiful ceiling, in whose cool shadows had stood numerous statues. Now, he said, ‘it is vanished and gone, to the grief of those who had seen it’ – and the grief of those who now never would. This temple had been so striking, he said, that there were even those who argued that it was as great as the temple of Serapis – which, he added with an irony not lost on later historians, ‘I pray may never suffer the same fate.

The irony of the situation forced me to smile, featuring my newly cracked tooth. Years earlier, I had run through the same woods with all of my might, looking for safety, trying to get away from campus. Tonight, I ran through the same woods looking for safety, but in the other direction.

The irony is that the fate of all the species on which our very existence depends is in our hands.

Photographs from Distant Places (1) In distant villages, You always see the same scenes: Farms Cattle Worship spaces Small local shops. Just basic the things humans need To endure life. (2) ‘Can you stay with me forever?’ She asked him in the airport, While hugging him tightly in her arms. ‘Sorry, I can’t. My flight leaves in two hours and a half.’ He responded with an artificially caring voice, As he kissed her on her right cheek. (3) I was walking in one of Bucharest’s old streets, In a neighborhood that looked harshly beaten by Time, And severely damaged by development and globalization. I saw a poor homeless man Combing his dirty hair In a side mirror of a modern and expensive car! (4) The shape and the color of the eyes don’t matter. What matters is that, As soon as you gaze into them, You know that they have seen a lot. All eyes that dare to bear witness To what they have seen are beautiful. (5) A stranger asked me how I chose my path in life. I told him: ‘I never chose anything, my friend.’ My path has always been like someone forced to sit In an airplane on a long flight. Forced to sit with the condition Of keeping the seatbelt on at all times, Until the end of the flight. Here I am still sitting with the seatbelt on. I can neither move Nor walk. I can’t even throw myself out of the plane’s emergency exit To end this forced flight! (6) After years of searching and observing, I discovered that despair’s favorite hiding place Is under business suits and tuxedos. Under jewelry and expensive night gowns. Despair dances at the tables where Expensive wines of corruption And delicious dinners of betrayal are served. (7) Oh, my poet friend, Did you know that The bouquet of fresh flowers in that vase On your table is not a source of inspiration or creativity? The vase is just a reminder Of a flower massacre that took place recently In a field Where these poor flowers happened to be. It was their fate to have their already short lives cut shorter, To wither and wilt in your vase, While breathing the not-so-fresh air In your room, As you sit down at your table And write your vain words. (8) Under authoritarian regimes, 99.9% of the population vote for the dictator. Under capitalist ‘democratic’ regimes, 99.9% of people love buying and consuming products Made and sold by the same few corporations. Awe to those societies where both regimes meet to create a united vicious alliance against the people! To create a ‘nation’ Of customers, not citizens! (9) The post-revolution leaders are scavengers not hunters. They master the art of eating up The dead bodies and achievements Of the fools who sacrificed themselves For the ‘revolution’ and its ideals. Is this the paradox and the irony of all revolutions? (10) Every person is ugly if you take a close look at them, And beautiful, if you take a closer look. (11) Just as wheat fields can’t thrive Under the shadow of other trees, Intellectuals, too, can’t thrive under the shadow Of any power or authority. (12) We waste so much time trying to change others. Others waste so much time thinking they are changing. What a waste! October 20, 2015

The defenses that form a person’s character support a grand illusion, and when we grasp this we can understand the full drivenness of man. He is driven away from himself, from self-knowledge, self-reflection. He is driven toward things that support the lie of his character, his automatic equanimity. But he is also drawn precisely toward those things that make him anxious, as a way of skirting them masterfully, testing himself against them, controlling them by defying them. As Kierkegaard taught us, anxiety lures us on, becomes the spur to much of our energetic activity: we flirt with our own growth, but also dishonestly. This explains much of the friction in our lives. We enter symbiotic relationships in order to get the security we need, in order to get relief from our anxieties, our aloneness and helplessness; but these relationships also bind us, they enslave us even further because they support the lie we have fashioned. So we strain against them in order to be more free. The irony is that we do this straining uncritically, in a struggle within our own armor, as it were; and so we increase our drivenness, the second-hand quality of our struggle for freedom. Even in our flirtations with anxiety we are unconscious of our motives. We seek stress, we push our own limits, but we do it with our screen against despair and not with despair itself. We do it with the stock market, with sports cars, with atomic missiles, with the success ladder in the corporation or the competition in the university. We do it in the prison of a dialogue with our own little family, by marrying against their wishes or choosing a way of life because they frown on it, and so on. Hence the complicated and second-hand quality of our entire drivenness. Even in our passions we are nursery children playing with toys that represent the real world. Even when these toys crash and cost us our lives or our sanity, we are cheated of the consolation that we were in the real world instead of the playpen of our fantasies. We still did not meet our doom on our own manly terms, in contest with objective reality. It is fateful and ironic how the lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.

The irony of fate is that in most cases, if not all, the dull and stupid, but not the intelligent and bright, have the best of it in the world, enjoy their indisturbed and indifferent life. To live in such a way, they don't need intellect, deep thinking or high principles. All they need is to eat, to drink and to have sex as intensely as possible, without serious attention to what is happening in the external world.

The unconscious is very serious today - even a little bit sad - because we repress serious things into it: sex, death, libido, desire. But if it were irony and offhandedness which were repressed, what form would the new unconscious take then? It would become ironic; we would have ironic, breezy drives and fantasies, which would surface in our dreams and our slips, in our neuroses and madness. But isn't it already that way, in a sense? Television will perhaps only have been invented in order, by a delectable detour, to give back its force to the silence of the image. We certainly have to accept an authority, but one more stupid than ourselves. That is the great law of the political world. This is wonderfully apparent in the USSR (Zinoviev tells of the pharaonic stupidity of the Soviet leaders, equalled only by the pharaonic servitude of the Soviets themselves), but you can see it in France just as clearly. Why prefer Marchais, Le Pen, Chirac and other such hollow figures to more sophisticated people? Why have they not long ago sunk beneath their own idiocy? The fact is that these figures are the surest remedy against the anxiety we all feel at the reign and the primacy of intelligence. They reassure us about our own stupidity, and this is their vital function as it was that of the shaman. And how can you ward off stupidity, if not by a greater stupidity? I notice that on windows which have been left untouched, which have not, in other words, seen the faintest shadow of a duster for ten years, there is not more than a fraction of a millimetre of dirt and dust. No more, in the end, than the wind and rain scratch from the surface of a rock in the same period. There is a dreamlike slowness to both erosion and sedimentation.

They say fate is written in the stars, but the irony is that stars don't project the future, they reflect the past. If you think about it, every time you look at a star, you're looking back in time. . . it's all real, the star's shape, its brightness, its changes, all the stages of its life-there's nothing false about it, it's simply translated across time. You and I have both lost someone. I like to think they're like the stars. Their light hasn't gone out. Candlelight goes out. But something as bright as a star, or a soul, that light moves on.

They say fate is written in the stars, but the irony is that stars don’t project the future, they reflect the past. If you think about it, every time you look at a star, you’re looking back in time. The North Star is four hundred thirty light-years away, so when you see it shining, the light hitting your eyes is already four hundred thirty years old.

The other four in the gang were hanged in short order, but because of my age, the magistrate handed me a lesser sentence. Ten months on the Scarborough." "Sir Ross was the magistrate who sentenced you," Lottie murmured, remembering what Sophia had told her. A bitter smile twisted Nick's mouth. "Little did either of us know that we would someday be brothers-in-law.

How did you learn that he was still alive?" "I came to London," Sophia replied, "to take revenge on the magistrate who had sentenced him to the prison hulk. I blamed him for my brother's death. But to my dismay, I soon found myself falling in love with him." "Sir Ross?

All those years I spent trying to bring the men that murdered Roosevelt Haynes to justice, and turns out my daddy wasn’t Roosevelt but the leader of the lynch mob. How’s that for irony?