Italic Quotes

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

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
Henry James
They were two superior eels at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.
Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse)
He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.
Terry Pratchett (Men at Arms (Discworld, #15; City Watch, #2))
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it
Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo)
Rilla was fond of italics, as most girls of fifteen are.
L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))
This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with a Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish... This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called "Speedoo" but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant. This sentence suffered a split infinitive - and survived. If this sentence has been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home.
Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)
You can't have many exclamation points left,' thought Anne, 'but no doubt the supply of italics is inexhaustible.
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Green Gables, #4))
He also seemed to speak predominantly in italics.
Gail Carriger (The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set: Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, Heartless and Timeless)
Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
Ann Beattie (Walks With Men)
He wielded verbal italics as if they were capable of actual bodily harm.
Gail Carriger (Prudence (The Custard Protocol, #1))
How about we walk back? Through the cemetery?' One thing my mom had taught me is that it's difficult to refuse requests made in italics.
The Harvard Lampoon (Nightlight: A Parody)
I'm not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you're supposed to think are deep because they're in italics. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about sentences like this: The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before. Barf. Forget it. For me personally, things are in no way more meaningful because I got to know Rachel before she died. If anything, things are less meaningful. All right?
Jesse Andrews (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)
And this is it. This is the life we get here on earth. We get to give away what we receive. We get to believe in each other. We get to forgive and be forgiven. We get to love imperfectly. And we never know what effect it will have for years to come. And all of  it…all of  it is completely worth it.
Nadia Bolz-Weber (Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People)
I’m sure people did question whether Italian printers were quite the right people to legislate on the meaning of everything; but on the other hand, resistance was obviously useless against a family that could invent italics.
Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation)
The world is full of stories, and no matter how much time we spend in it—alive or dead—there’s never time to learn them all. They just go by so quickly.
Seanan McGuire (Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day)
When I am a writer, I shall do parenthetical asides. And footnotes. There will be footnotes. I wonder how you do them? And italics. How do you make italics happen?
Neil Gaiman
He struggles to make sense of it--all this love, so bent out of shape, refracted, like light through the lens.
M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans)
Dream's evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or rejecting it—all these and many other problems have for many hundred years demanded answers which up till now could never have been satisfactory.
Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams)
Oh, good,” he muttered. “We’re going to discuss it now.” “No discussion,” she said. Her mind was quite clear now, as though a fire had blazed through it, burning away all confusion. “It’s perfectly simple. No One Must Ever Know.” He came up onto one elbow and looked at her. “Do you know,” he said, “I can hear those five words in italics. Capitalized.
Loretta Chase (Scandal Wears Satin (The Dressmakers, #2))
Fate's book, but my italics.
Don Paterson
"What?" The italics just flew out past the alcohol's guard.
Edgar Cantero (Meddling Kids)
We never see any boats. But you man the light anyway--just in case. And WE got to see it--all these years. The great light. The beautiful sweeping beam! We were here to see it, and that was enough....Weed your mind. And man the great light. Even when no one is looking.
Matthew Quick (Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock)
You might say she feels in italics and thinks in capital letters!
Katharine Weber (The Little Women)
I adore italics, don't you?
Ronald Firbank
And, my darlingest of puggles, she is yours to command.” Rue was moved to italics by the gesture. “Mine?
Gail Carriger (Prudence (The Custard Protocol, #1))
Everyone is so desensitised that the potency of artfully deployed italics has long been lost. It was good enough for H. P. Lovecraft, but apparently it isn’t good enough for the modern world, filled as it is with obtuse bastards.
Jonathan L. Howard (The Fear Institute (Johannes Cabal, #3))
Oh, sure," Gansey said, still cold and annoyed. "God forbid young men display their principles with futile but public protests when they could be skipping school and judging other students from the backseat of a motor vehicle." "Principles? Henry Cheng's principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter," Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry's voice: "Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics.
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4))
Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone! To be remiss is to be positively out in the country! What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable! I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me. I missed them all, through deliberate negligence, Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn’t come. I’m free, and against organized, clothed society. I’m naked and plunge into the water of my imagination. It’s too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time, Deliberately at the same time... No matter, I’ll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics. This spectator aspect of life is so amusing! I can’t even light the next cigarette... If it’s an action, It can wait for me, along with the others, in the nonmeeting called life.
Fernando Pessoa (Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems)
…никогда и ничего не просите! Никогда и ничего, и в особенности у тех, кто сильнее вас. Сами предложат и сами всё дадут!
Mikhail Bulgakov (Mikhail Bulgakov's Master & Margarita Or the Devil Comes to Moscow)
There's an exclamation mark on this keyboard which shares tab-space with the number one. Shift+1=! It's insufficient. Radically inadequate as the denotation of my surprise. Even in bold. Even in underlined bold italic. I need something else, some punctuation mark not yet invented.
Glen Duncan (I, Lucifer)
Dating, after all, only ends one way: poorly. If you think about it...all romantic relationships end in either (1) breakup, (2) divorce, or (3) death.
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
We must at regular and appropriate intervals speak and reassure others of our love and the long time it takes to prove it by our actions. Real love does take time. The Great Shepherd had the same thoughts in mind when he taught, ‘If ye love me, keep my commandments’ (John 14:15; italics added) and ‘If ye love me feed my sheep’ (John 21:16; italics added). Love demands action if it is to be continuing.
Marvin J. Ashton
Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it.
J.D. Salinger
I doubt I was much of a storyteller, but I would have put that smile in my book. On page 104, right next to the image of the Ward. I would have written it on my heart. I would have proofread it a thousand times under a thousand moons until a thousand tears thoroughly rationalized what it meant to me. Each time for when I’d met the darkness, and then succumbed. The smile read “you can’t break me’”—bold and in italics.
Nadège Richards (Asylum 54.0)
At Mayflower-Plymouth, we care about profit and growth. And just as much we also care about things like the health of the earth, Whole Foods plant based or I-Tal living, vegan or vegetarian living, holistic education, spirituality, human rights, money equity, social cohesion, liberty, family, human health and more. To us, Investing is more than profit.
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
Mental illness didn’t really change people. It just made them more of who they were going to be anyway. Mental illness was less like obliteration, more like italics.
Heather Sellers (You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Blindness, and Forgiveness)
Just so you know, I realize that what happened is not in any way okay, but I think we're going to have to pretend like it is. Because it wasn't okay and never will be. We will power through it; I will continue to power through it-all the stagnant, soul-crushing grief-but it will never be okay that my mom is not here.
Julie Buxbaum (Tell Me Three Things)
She thought to herself how amazing it was that she was here, walking at dusk with an old pirate-her (italics), May! If only Somber Kitty could have seen her. Maybe he would see her, soon. The thought lifted her spirits.
Jodi Lynn Anderson (May Bird and the Ever After (May Bird, #1))
I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That's something you never quite come back from. That's something that's a fresh pain every day.
Tiffany McDaniel (The Summer that Melted Everything)
But if today's low-income countries are to move from poverty to an incipient affluence... then none of those factors could make a difference without the rising consumption of fuels and electricity: a decoupling of economic growth and energy consumption during early stages of modern economic development would defy the laws of thermodynamics." (p. 350, italics added)
Vaclav Smil (Energy and Civilization: A History)
humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness” and that “nonhuman animals, including all birds and mammals, and many other creatures, including octopuses [italics added], also possess these neurological substrates.
Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness)
They were beautiful books, sometimes very thick, sometimes very thin, always typographically exhilarating, with their welter of title pages, subheads, epigraphs, emphatic italics, italicized catchwords taken from German philosophy and too subtle for translation, translator's prefaces and footnotes, and Kierkegaard's own endless footnotes, blanketing pages at a time as, crippled, agonized by distinctions, he scribbled on and on, heaping irony on irony, curse on curse, gnashing, sneering, praising Jehovah in the privacy of his empty home in Copenhagen.
John Updike
I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.
Allen Ginsberg
The silence inside the library, the big chairs, and long tables, and the fact that the library was always there and didn’t seem to have a mortgage on it, or any sort of insecurity about it—all of that made me love it.
Langston Hughes (The Big Sea (American Century Series))
When we were sprung fro the hos[ital, we waited at the elevator with two other couples, who seemed as dazed and clueless as we were. We were all being set free to care for the tiny creatures and just figure this out on our own. Looking at our faces, I wondered how the human race continues to survive.
Rachel Dratch (Girl Walks into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle)
I hate New York.” It almost makes me recoil, the way he’s said this. Bold, sans serif. No caps, but italics for the It’s not a harmless, pedestrian “I hate this song” or “I hate those chocolate balls rolled in shredded coconut.” It’s not one of those small, meaningless hatreds that shear the word of its meaning.
Kate Clayborn (Love Lettering)
Clicking on "send" has its limitations as a system of subtle communication. Which is why, of course, people use so many dashes and italics and capitals ("I AM joking!") to compensate. That's why they came up with the emoticon, too—the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne. You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the proper name for smileys. And a smiley is, famously, this: :—) Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channelling the reader's attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind. Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something. :—( Now it's sad! ;—) It looks like it's winking! :—r It looks like it's sticking its tongue out! The permutations may be endless: :~/ mixed up! <:—) dunce! :—[ pouting! :—O surprise! Well, that's enough. I've just spotted a third reason to loathe emoticons, which is that when they pass from fashion (and I do hope they already have), future generations will associate punctuation marks with an outmoded and rather primitive graphic pastime and despise them all the more. "Why do they still have all these keys with things like dots and spots and eyes and mouths and things?" they will grumble. "Nobody does smileys any more.
Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation)
When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself . . . you shall no more be able to [reach] him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest. [Italics added]
Donald T. Phillips (Lincoln On Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times)
Without the right to defend yourself--and the right to possesss the means to do it--all other supposed rights are so much hot air.
James Carlos Blake
„Защо не наминеш? Вчера у дома се беше събрал половината град.“ — А той ми отговаря: „Аз живея в другата половина!
Mikhail Bulgakov
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms...(italics in original).
Richard P. Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 1)
Кирпич ни с того ни с сего никому и никогда на голову не свалится.
Mikhail Bulgakov (Mikhail Bulgakov's Master & Margarita Or the Devil Comes to Moscow)
А я действительно похож на галлюцинацию. Обратите внимание на мой профиль в лунном свете... Хорошо, хорошо, готов молчать. Я буду молчаливой галлюцинацией.
Mikhail Bulgakov (Mikhail Bulgakov's Master & Margarita Or the Devil Comes to Moscow)
Better to start too slowly and build up,” said a piece of text in italics, “than start too quickly and give up.
Nicci French (Secret Smile)
He looks at me just long enough for me to think, in desperate italics: Fuck.
Alix E. Harrow (Starling House)
Lanier is interested in the ways in which people “reduce themselves” in order to make a computer’s description of them appear more accurate. “Information systems,” he writes, “need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality” (my italics). .... When a human being becomes a set of data on a Web site like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it's a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.
Zadie Smith (Feel Free: Essays)
There is no love in Puritanism. It turns out that these monsters that won't allow any deviation from that rigid orthodoxy are obsessed with frigging, fucking, wanking, twatty sex. Don't do it, they screamed, while that's exactly what they did. My mother's cunt was all bent out of shape to prove it...All those Puritan preachers were vindictive, vengeful men spouting hateful thoughts and threats, and it's disheartening that they're still taught in the schools with reverence. They were shits. And they spouted shit. And a goodly portion of the world is still spouting shit.
Larry Kramer (The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart)
So what if sometimes Sam was an emotional exhibitionist, going up and down all the time? She could be a storm. But she could be a soft candle lighting up a dark room. So what if she made me a little crazy? All of it—​all her emotional stuff, her ever-changing moods and tones of voice—​it made her seem so incredibly alive.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (The Inexplicable Logic of My Life)
When everything was burning up right in front of you, you could imagine parts of yourself burning along with it-all your disappointments, all the things you'd done that you wish you hadn't, even all the bad memories.
Tommy Wallach (We All Looked Up)
I now warn the reader not to mock me and my mental daze. It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues. In my youth I once read a French detective tale where the clues were actually in italics; but that is not McFate's way—even if one does learn to recognize certain obscure indications.
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
When a male-based culture is re-formed into a male-and-female-based culture, it presents a truer picture of the character of God, who created all people as his image bearers. When the voices of women become customary, common, expected, and accepted, the church becomes more inviting, more inclusive, more empathetic, more compassionate, safer, and more secure—for everyone. We pray for that day. [1] Luke 4:18-19, NRSV, italics added. [
Scot McKnight (A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing)
I remember the warm mother smell caught between her legs, and the intimacy of our physical touching nestled inside of the anxiety/pain like a nutmeg nestled inside its covering of mace. The radio, the scratching comb, the smell of petroleum jelly, the grip of her knees and my stinging scalp all fall into—[italics] the rhythms of a litany of Year’s in my swimming scalp all fall into the rhythms, the rituals of Black women combing their daughter’s hair.
Audre Lorde (Zami: A New Spelling of My Name)
That day was an education for me. I'll never forget it. Standing in teh doorway, watching the reaction of the men and women gathered there, I witnessed the poewrful effect of unwavering, uncomplaining, uncompromising leadership. It changed me. It was one of those moments when you say to yourself, [in italics] That's what I want to be when I grow up. and you know you've grown up a little already, simply because you recognize it. Norman called Ducky-Bob's party supply and ordered chairs while I wheeled the second bed out to the hallway. Mommy, Margaret Valentine, and I rushed around, getting everything we needed to cater the cramped but memorable even, and on Tuesday morning, about three dozen top members of the Chili's team jammed into Norman's room at Presbyterian Hospital. Norman didn't what his people to see him lying down, so I'd helped him get into a jogging suit and robe, and propped him up on one of those rolling carts they use to distribute meals. He was in unthinkable pain, but he spoke to them from his heart about how much he appreciated them, how committed he was to the success of the organization, and how far they could all go together.
Nancy G. Brinker (Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer)
Writing about the futility of trying to force a wolf into a vehicle, Martino describes the final stage of the conflict. The italics are hers: "But if I continue, perhaps muttering 'Get up you lazy old dusty thing,' The wolf grabs my arm in his teeth, snarling, as if to say, Look, move me where I don't want to go, and we're going to have problems. Your problems will be bigger than mine. He then looks at me with a frank arresting stare, the strength of the mountain rumbling in his eyes.
Teresa Tsimmu Martino
Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committed’. Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the ‘smelly little orthodoxies’—tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote Dr Faustus. My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read: This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do. not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone avails, humanistic science, the ideal of the free and beautiful human being. [italics mine] The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann’s point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo’. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between.
Christopher Hitchens (For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports)
immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, "I don't believe you. Let me see you try it." I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it is quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time, my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With these, I learned mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster's Spelling Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book.
Frederick Douglass (Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass: By Frederick Douglass & Illustrated)
By the way, I should like to make it clear here and now that the story will not be a story of South Africa. I guarantee no genuine local colour -- you know the sort of thing -- half a dozen words in italic on every page. I admire it very much, but I can't do it.
Agatha Christie (The Man in the Brown Suit (Colonel Race #1))
People were wired to hell. He wanted to growl like a rabid mastiff when he heard someone say, "The body is a machine." What asshole thought of that? Screwed up and angry and wanting love, fucking desperate to get it and not knowing how to get it, and willing to do anything just to get a taste of it. Or worse, striking out because you couldn't get it-all that love you wanted. The body was not a machine. Machines and computers, he could deal with. There was always a solution for the problem. What was the solution for him?
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (In Perfect Light)
The July 1848 Seneca Falls women’s rights convention—brought about by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, among others—issued a “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” that sanctified a movement’s creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.” The italics are mine; the vision the suffragists’. Susan B. Anthony, an essential figure, echoed the point down the years: “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union,” she said in 1873 after she illegally cast a ballot for U. S. Grant for president. “And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men.
Jon Meacham (The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels)
He understands he’ll spent the rest of his life in prison, but it’s the same confusion he felt in that moment of delirium in his twenties: the rest of his life (italic) and prison (italic) are two pieces that don’t fit together, the lock and the key, an incomprehensible equation.
Emily St. John Mandel (The Glass Hotel)
But since the downfall of the mythological hypothesis an interpretation of the dream has been wanting. The conditions of its origin; its relationship to our psychical life when we are awake; its independence of disturbances which, during the state of sleep, seem to compel notice; its many peculiarities repugnant to our waking thought; the incongruence between its images and the feelings they engender; then the dream's evanescence, the way in which, on awakening, our thoughts thrust it aside as something bizarre, and our reminiscences mutilating or rejecting it—all these and many other problems have for many hundred years demanded answers which up till now could never have been satisfactory. Before all there is the question as to the meaning of the dream, a question which is in itself double-sided. There is, firstly, the psychical significance of the dream, its position with regard to the psychical processes, as to a possible biological function; secondly, has the dream a meaning—can sense be made of each single dream as of other mental syntheses?
Sigmund Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams)
She closed her eyes briefly, feeling sick. Olivia had experienced strangulation before. Having to look directly into the face of the person who was killing you made the experience beyond awful. But there were worse things than that. Staring into the void of unresolved memory, living an eternal mystery, waking up night after night seeing the face of someone you desperately wanted to save but having not the slightest clue how to do it—all that was worse. If going through with this experience gave her the answers she needed, if it gave her peace, it would be well worth one-hundred-and-thirty seconds of fear and pain.
Leslie Parrish (Cold Touch (Extrasensory Agents, #2))
Romanians often claim to have the language that most closely resembles ancient Latin. But in fact, according to Mario Pei, if you wish to hear what ancient Latin sounded like, you should listen to Lugudorese, an Italic dialect spoken in central Sardinia, which in many respects is unchanged from the Latin of 1,500 years ago.
Bill Bryson (The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way)
I know that of all the great shifts that have occurred in America--the freedom of slaves, the rights of women, the equality of gays and lesbians--none has happened easily, and certainly none has happened instantly and without serious attacks and backlash. But the reason we have these things is because the fair-minded people who came before us would not give up. In my life, I have seen elections stolen--either outright or through the electoral college. I have seen wars fought because there was no other way to get peace. I have seen the rich get richer and I have seen the poor get poorer. I have seen facts get harder and harder to hide--and easier and easier to manipulate. I have been angry and I have been frustrated and I have been ecstatic and I have been proven right and wrong and back again. I have given up on some things, but I have refused to give up on most things. And I can honestly say that all of it--all of it--seems to have led me to where we are, here and now.
David Levithan (Wide Awake)
Оскорбление является обычной наградой за хорошую работу.
Mikhail Bulgakov
Think of it—all ours, to do as we like with, for as Harold Skimpole so rightly observes, £60 saved is £60 gained, and I’d reckoned on spending it all.
Dorothy L. Sayers (The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries Volume One: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death)
Your grandparents are English?" "Grandfather is,but Grandmere is French. And my other grandparents are American,of course." "Wow.You really are a mutt." St. Clair smiles. "I'm told I take after my English grandfather the most, but it's only because of the accent." "I don't know.I think of you as more English than anything else.And you don't just sound like it,you look like it,too." "I do?" He surprised. I smile. "Yeah,it's that...pasty complexion. I mean it in the best possible way," I add,at his alarmed expression. "Honestly." "Huh." St. Clair looks at me sideways. "Anyway.Last summer I couldn't bear to face my father, so it was the first time I spent the whole holiday with me mum." "And how was it? I bet the girls don't tease you about your accent anymore." He laughs. "No,they don't.But I can't help my height.I'll always be short." "And I'll always be a freak,just like my dad. Everyone tells me I take after him.He's sort of...neat,like me." He seems genuinely surprised. "What's wrong with being neat? I wish I were more organized.And,Anna,I've never met your father,but I guarantee you that you're nothing like him." "How would you know?" "Well,for one thing,he looks like a Ken doll.And you're beautiful." I trip and fall down on the sidewalk. "Are you all right?" His eyes fill with worry. I look away as he takes my hand and helps me up. "I'm fine.Fine!" I say, brushing the grit from my palms. Oh my God, I AM a freak. "You've seen the way men look at you,right?" he continues. "If they're looking, it's because I keep making a fool of myself." I hold up my scraped hands. "That guy over there is checking you out right now." "Wha-?" I turn to find a young man with long dark hair staring. "Why is he looking at me?" "I expect he likes what he sees." I flush,and he keeps talking. "In Paris, it's common to acknowledge someone attractive.The French don't avert their gaze like other cultures do. Haven't you noticed?" St. Clair thinks I'm attractive. He called me beautiful. "Um,no," I say. "I hadn't noticed." "Well.Open your eyes." But I stare at the bare tree branches, at the children with balloons, at the Japanese tour group. Anywhere but at him. We've stopped in front of Notre-Dame again.I point at the familiar star and clear my throat. "Wanna make another wish?" "You go first." He's watching me, puzzled, like he's trying to figure something out. He bites his thumbnail. This time I can't help it.All day long, I've thought about it.Him.Our secret. I wish St. Clair would spend the night again.
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
All of it—all of it for him. For Rowan, who had known exactly what sword he was picking up that day in the mountain cave, who had thrown it to her across the ice as a future bargaining chip—the only protection he could offer her against Maeve, if she was smart enough to figure it out. She had only realized what he’d done—that he’d known all along—when she’d mentioned the ring to him weeks ago and he’d told her he hoped she found some use for it. He didn’t yet understand that she had no interest in bargaining for power or safety or alliance. So Celaena said, “I’ll make a trade with you, though.” Maeve’s brows narrowed. Celaena jerked her chin. “Your beloved’s ring—for Rowan’s freedom from his blood oath.” Rowan stiffened. His friends whipped their heads to her. “A blood oath is eternal,” Maeve said tightly. Celaena didn’t think his friends were breathing. “I don’t care. Free him.” Celaena held out the ring again. “Your choice. Free him, or I melt this right here.
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
There is a wonderful metaphor of the unconscious in Peter Gay’s excellent biography of Freud, Freud: A Life for Our Time (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 128: “Rather, the unconscious proper resembles a maximum-security prison holding anti-social inmates languishing for years or recently arrived, inmates harshly treated and heavily guarded, but barely kept under control and forever attempting to escape” (italics added).
John E. Sarno (Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection)
But this story ends when you open the door. It doesn’t matter if you managed to guess which room is mine, which door I closed behind me. You put your hand on the door handle, you knock, it’s all over. End of story. By choosing one, you chose the other, too. Do you understand why? Those two consequences are joined at the hip, they’re Siamese twins. Even if you picked the door with the lady behind it—all questions answered, all explanations given, your life solved for you—it’s still true that you gave the tiger permission to jump. You gave your assent to catastrophe, you invited tragedy and horror to walk right in. You got lucky, that’s all. Mallon
Peter Straub (A Dark Matter)
You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.
C.S. Lewis (The Screwtape Letters)
It’s the typical hungry-vagina fodder, written in the same cotton-candy verbiage: “To really wow your guy pal, wait until he’s almost there”—this is written in italics, an editorial nudge-wink—”and then put him in your mouth for a mind-blowing climax.” Tasha is always annoyed by the use of “him” in place of “penis.” What if she didn’t know any better? What if she thought “him” meant him? All of him? She imagines herself an anaconda of a woman, her jaw unhinged, swallowing her lover like a reptilian black widow.
Olivia A. Cole (Panther in the Hive)
Then there occurred to me the 'glucklichste Gedanke meines Lebens,' the happiest thought of my life, in the following form. The gravitational field has only a relative existence in a way similar to the electric field generated by magnetoelectric induction. Because for an observer falling freely from the roof of a house there exists-at least in his immediate surroundings-no gravitational field [his italics]. Indeed, if the observer drops some bodies then these remain relative to him in a state of rest or of uniform motion, independent of their particular chemical or physical nature (in this consideration the air resistance is, of course, ignored). The observer therefore has the right to interpret his state as 'at rest.' Because of this idea, the uncommonly peculiar experimental law that in the gravitational field all bodies fall with the same acceleration attained at once a deep physical meaning. Namely, if there were to exist just one single object that falls in the gravitational field in a way different from all others, then with its help the observer could realize that he is ina gravitational field and is falling in it. If such an object does not exist, however-as experience has shown with great accuracy-then the observer lacks any objective means of perceiving himself as falling in a gravitational field. Rather he has the right to consider his state as one of rest and his environment as field-free relative to gravitation. The experimentally known matter independence of the acceleration of fall is therefore a powerful argument for the fact that the relativity postulate has to be extended to coordinate systems which, relative to each other, are in non-uniform motion.
Albert Einstein
Had she been able to listen to her body, the true Virginia would certainly have spoken up. In order to do so, however, she needed someone to say to her: “Open your eyes! They didn’t protect you when you were in danger of losing your health and your mind, and now they refuse to see what has been done to you. How can you love them so much after all that?” No one offered that kind of support. Nor can anyone stand up to that kind of abuse alone, not even Virginia Woolf. Malcolm Ingram, the noted lecturer in psychological medicine, believed that Woolf’s “mental illness” had nothing to do with her childhood experiences, and her illness was genetically inherited from her family. Here is his opinion as quoted on the Virginia Woolf Web site: As a child she was sexually abused, but the extent and duration is difficult to establish. At worst she may have been sexually harassed and abused from the age of twelve to twenty-one by her [half-]brother George Duckworth, [fourteen] years her senior, and sexually exploited as early as six by her other [half-] brother… It is unlikely that the sexual abuse and her manic-depressive illness are related. However tempting it may be to relate the two, it must be more likely that, whatever her upbringing, her family history and genetic makeup were the determining factors in her mood swings rather than her unhappy childhood [italics added]. More relevant in her childhood experience is the long history of bereavements that punctuated her adolescence and precipitated her first depressions.3 Ingram’s text goes against my own interpretation and ignores a large volume of literature that deals with trauma and the effects of childhood abuse. Here we see how people minimize the importance of information that might cause pain or discomfort—such as childhood abuse—and blame psychiatric disorders on family history instead. Woolf must have felt keen frustration when seemingly intelligent and well-educated people attributed her condition to her mental history, denying the effects of significant childhood experiences. In the eyes of many she remained a woman possessed by “madness.” Nevertheless, the key to her condition lay tantalizingly close to the surface, so easily attainable, and yet neglected. I think that Woolf’s suicide could have been prevented if she had had an enlightened witness with whom she could have shared her feelings about the horrors inflicted on her at such an early age. But there was no one to turn to, and she considered Freud to be the expert on psychic disorders. Here she made a tragic mistake. His writings cast her into a state of severe uncertainty, and she preferred to despair of her own self rather than doubt the great father figure Sigmund Freud, who represented, as did her family, the system of values upheld by society, especially at the time.   UNFORTUNATELY,
Alice Miller (The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting)
Delete the italics I am not popular enough. I am not good enough. I am not strong enough. I am not lovable enough. I am not attractive enough. I am not cool enough. I am not hot enough. I am not clever enough. I am not funny enough. I am not educated enough. I am not Oxford enough. I am not literary enough. I am not rich enough. I am not posh enough. I am not young enough. I am not tough enough. I am not well-traveled enough. I am not talented enough. I am not cultured enough. I am not smooth-skinned enough. I am not thin enough. I am not muscular enough. I am not famous enough. I am not interesting enough. I am not worth enough. (I am enough.)
Matt Haig
Washington Post, was recorded in the “Special China Series,” documents issued by the State Department in August, 1969, but came to the notice of the public only when reported by Terence Smith in the New York Times. Mao and Chou En-lai, it turns out, approached President Roosevelt in January, 1945, “trying to establish relations with the United States in order to avoid total dependence on the Soviet Union” (italics added). It seems that Ho Chi Minh never received an answer, and information of the Chinese approach was suppressed because, as Professor Allen Whiting has commented, it contradicted “the image of monolithic Communism directed from Moscow.
Hannah Arendt (Crises of the Republic: Lying in Politics, Civil Disobedience, On Violence, and Thoughts on Politics and Revolution)
В первые годы, когда я еще их не знала, они бывали во французских литературных кругах, встречались с людьми своего поколения (сходившего во Франции на нет), с Ренье, с Бурже, с Франсом. — Потом мы им всем надоели, — говорил Дмитрий Сергеевич, — и они нас перестали приглашать. — Потому что ты так бестактно ругал большевиков, — говорила она своим капризным скрипучим голосом, — а им всегда так хотелось их любить. — Да, я лез к ним со своими жалобами и пхохочествами (он картавил), а им хотелось совсем другого: они находили, что русская революция ужасно интересный опыт, в экзотической стране, и их не касается. И что, как сказал Ллойд Джордж, торговать можно и с каннибалами.
Нина Берберова (Italics are Mine)
I catch her as she tumbles, lest her fall be ungraceful, a messy rending of gut and bone. I ease her to the ground lightly, put her head in my lap, stroke her brow, whisper sweet sounds without form to her. My queen, greatest of all queens in Greece, stares up at the sky and does not see her brothers in it...All eyes of gods and men depart, save I.
Claire North (Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1))
One often hears that today’s cultural war is fought between traditionalists who believe in a firm set of values and postmodern relativists who consider ethical rules, sexual identities, and so on as a result of contingent power games. But is this really the case? The ultimate postmodernists today are conservatives themselves. Once traditional authority loses its substantial power, it is not possible to return to it—all such returns today are a postmodern fake. Does Trump enact traditional values? No, his conservativism is a postmodern performance, a gigantic ego trip. Playing with “traditional values,” mixing references to tradition with open obscenities, Trump is the ultimate postmodern president, while Sanders is an old-fashioned moralist.
Slavoj Žižek (Heaven in Disorder)
Loving People to Life People do not grow at a steady upward rate. We grow, hit plateaus, fall back, surge again, plateau and fall back again. Guess who, other than ourselves, suffers and hurts during these times? Whomever the Lord uses to love us back to life—someone who will grieve and be on his or her knees constantly in intercession. Paul addressed the Galatians as “my children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you” (4:19, italics mine). Plus, when we don’t really want to come alive, we tend to attack and criticize whoever is committed to trying to love us to life. How many times do we intercede? As often and as long as it takes for the other to mature and grab hold of his own life, so that he, too, becomes a father in Christ rather than a child.
John Loren Sandford (Deliverance and Inner Healing)
Ambition is a constipated expression of a human longing. Whereever you are you want to be something more, depending on what you are exposed to . If you know money you are thinking more money, knowledge more knowledge , love more love etc. The moment you acheived it, you just want more and more of it.All you are looking for is a limitless expansion. As long as your ambition is physical in nature (from your senses) which essentially has a defined boundary. Through physical nature if you are trying to satisfy your urge for boundlesness, you will exhaust somewhere. To acheive this you need alternative means , which today is the most corrupted word called "Spirituality" . Sprituality is not a religion or looking up or down, it means a dimension you want to touch beyond your physical nature.
Sadhguru (Ambition to Vision)
The more dutifully scholars acknowledge that the concept of race belongs in the same category as geocentrism or witchcraft, the more blithely they invoke it as though it were both a coherent analytical category and a valid empirical datum. In place of Jefferson’s moment of impassioned truth-telling, his successors fall back on italics or quotation marks, typographical abbreviations for the trite formula, ‘race is a social construction.’ The formula is meant to spare those who invoke race in historical explanation the raised eyebrows that would greet someone who, studying a crop failure, proposed witchcraft as an independent variable. But identifying race as a social construction does nothing to solidify the intellectual ground on which it totters. The London Underground and the United States of America are social constructions; so are the evil eye and the calling of spirits from the vasty deep; and so are murder and genocide. All derive from the thoughts, plans, and actions of human beings living in human societies. Scholars who intone ‘social construction’ as a spell for the purification of race do not make clear—perhaps because they do not themselves realize—that race and racism belong to different families of social construction, and that neither belongs to the same family as the United States of America or the London Underground. Race belongs to the same family as the evil eye. Racism belongs to the same family as murder and genocide. Which is to say that racism, unlike race, is not a fiction, an illusion, a superstition, or a hoax. It is a crime against humanity.
Barbara J. Fields (Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life)
Remember, too, that words on a page have several dimensions: they are seen, they are partially heard, particularly if they seem to suggest a sound, and they have a kind of tangible quality—think of the depressing sight of a whole great paragraph ahead of you, solidly black with huge heavy-sounding words. Moreover, some words seem soft and some hard, some liquid, some warm, some cold; your reader will respond to “soft laughter” but not to “striped laughter”; he will respond more readily to “soft laughter” than to “sweet laughter,” because he can hear it more easily. There are also words like “itchy” and “greasy” and “smelly” and “scratchy” that evoke an almost physical response in the reader; use these only if you need them. Exclamation points, italics, capitals, and, most particularly, dialect, should all be used with extreme caution. Consider them as like garlic, and use them accordingly.
Shirley Jackson (Come Along With Me)
hold of people’s minds and actually control them. View a corporate stronghold like the giant squid that attacked Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, waiting for people to swim near so it could wrap its tentacles about them. Whenever people begin to think in certain ways, principalities can maneuver appropriate corporate strongholds into position to clamp about them and actually rob them of the freedom to think. While individual strongholds serve as lodgings for local ruling demons, corporate strongholds offer a home to what Paul referred to: Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:11–12, italics mine Corporate strongholds are wielded by principalities, rulers, demonic archangels that use them to imprison the minds and control the thoughts of entire peoples—nations, cities, denominations, local churches, political parties, even philanthropic groups. If you have ever asked, “How could principalities become world rulers of this present darkness?” the foremost answer lies here—by means of corporate strongholds. The function of a corporate stronghold is to imprison the minds of a people or group, to take away their freedom to think anything— including cold, hard facts and logic—contrary to the mindset of the stronghold. It hypnotizes whomever its spell overshadows, so that they cannot see portions of the Word of God (or even secular truths) that might set them free from its delusive grip. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 2 Corinthians 3:14–16, italics mine That veil, to me, is a corporate stronghold of
John Loren Sandford (Deliverance and Inner Healing)
CORE MEDITATION: Breathing This classic meditation can deepen concentration by teaching us to focus on the “in breath” and the “out breath.” Sit comfortably on a cushion or chair and keep your back upright, without straining or overarching. If you can’t sit, then lie on your back on a yoga mat or folded blanket with your arms at your sides. Just be at ease and close your eyes, or gaze gently a few feet in front of you and aim for a state of alert relaxation. Take three or four deep breaths, feeling the air as it enters your nostrils, fills your chest and abdomen, and flows out again. Then let your breathing settle into a natural rhythm, and just feel the breath as it happens, without trying to change it or improve it—all you have to do is feel it. Notice where you sense your breath most intensely. Perhaps it’s at the nostrils, or at the chest or abdomen. Then rest your attention as lightly as a butterfly rests on a flower—only on that area—and become aware of the sensations there. For example, if you’re focusing on the breath at the nostrils, you may experience tingling, vibration, or pulsing, or you may observe that the breath is cooler when it comes in and warmer when it goes out. If you’re focusing on the breath at the abdomen, you may feel movement, pressure, stretching, or release. You don’t need to name these feelings—simply let your attention rest on them, one breath at a time. (Notice how often the word rest comes up in this instruction. This is a very restful practice). You don’t need to make the inhalation deeper or longer or different from the way it is. Just be aware of it, one breath at a time. Whenever you notice your attention has wandered and your mind has jumped to the past or the future, to judgment or speculation, don’t worry about it. Seeing your attention has wandered is the signal to gently let go of whatever has distracted you and return your attention to the feeling of the breath. If you have to let go over and over again, that’s fine—being able to more gracefully start over when we’ve become distracted or disconnected is one of the biggest benefits of meditation practice.
Sharon Salzberg (Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace)
What though some suffer and die, what though they lay down their lives for the testimony of Jesus and the hope of eternal life--so be it--all these things have prevailed from Adam's day to ours. They are all part of the eternal plan; and those who give their "all" in the gospel cause shall receive the Lord's "all" in the mansions which are prepared. . . . We have yet to gain that full knowledge and understanding of the doctrines of salvation and the mysteries of the kingdom that were possessed by many of the ancient Saints. O that we knew what Enoch and his people knew! Or that we had the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon, as did certain of the Jaredites and Nephites! How can we ever gain these added truths until we believe in full what the Lord has already given us in the Book of Mormon, in the Doctrine and Covenants, and in the inspired changes made by Joseph Smith in the Bible? Will the Lord give us the full and revealed account of the creation as long as we believe in the theories of evolution? Will he give us more guidance in governmental affairs as long as we choose socialistic ways which lead to the overthrow of freedom? We have yet to attain that degree of obedience and personal righteousness which will give us faith like the ancients: faith to multiply miracles, move mountains, and put at defiance the armies of nations; faith to quench the violence of fire, divide seas and stop the mouths of lions; faith to break every band and to stand in the presence of God. Faith comes in degrees. Until we gain faith to heal the sick, how can we ever expect to move mountains and divide seas? We have yet to receive such an outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord in our lives that we shall all see eye to eye in all things, that every man will esteem his brother as himself, that there will be no poor among us, and that all men seeing our good works will be led to glorify our Father who is in heaven. Until we live the law of tithing how can we expect to live the law of consecration? As long as we disagree as to the simple and easy doctrines of salvation, how can we ever have unity on the complex and endless truths yet to be revealed? We have yet to perfect our souls, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel, and to walk in the light as God is in the light, so that if this were a day of translation we would be prepared to join Enoch and his city in heavenly realms. How many among us are now prepared to entertain angels, to see the face of the Lord, to go where God and Christ are and be like them? . . . Our time, talents, and wealth must be made available for the building up of his kingdom. Should we be called upon to sacrifice all things, even our lives, it would be of slight moment when weighed against the eternal riches reserved for those who are true and faithful in all things. [Ensign, Apr. 1980, 25]
Bruce R. McConkie
The Dakota 38 refers to thirty-eight Dakota men who were executed by hanging, under orders from President Abraham Lincoln. To date, this is the largest “legal” mass execution in US history. The hanging took place on December 26, 1862—the day after Christmas. This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. --- These amended and broken treaties are often referred to as the Minnesota Treaties. The word Minnesota comes from mni, which means water; and sota, which means turbid. Synonyms for turbid include muddy, unclear, cloudy, confused, and smoky. Everything is in the language we use. -- Without money, store credit, or rights to hunt beyond their ten-mile tract of land, Dakota people began to starve. The Dakota people were starving. The Dakota people starved. In the preceding sentence, the word “starved” does not need italics for emphasis. -- Dakota warriors organized, struck out, and killed settlers and traders. This revolt is called the Sioux Uprising. Eventually, the US Cavalry came to Mnisota to confront the Uprising. More than one thousand Dakota people were sent to prison. As already mentioned,“Real” poems do not “really” require words. --- I am a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation—and in this dual citizenship, I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.
Layli Long Soldier (Whereas)
A quel tempo, in tutto l'Occidente, neppure uno degli scrittori in auge si sarebbe schierato dalla nostra parte per denunciare le persecuzioni dell'intellighenzja nell'Unione Sovietica, le repressioni, la censura, gli arresti, i processi, la chiusura dei giornali, la ferrea legge del realismo socialista che portava all'eliminazione fisica degli scrittori russi che non vi aderivano. La vecchia generazione che annoverava scrittori come Wells, Shaw, Rolland, Mann, era schierata senza riserve per la "Nuova Russia", per "L'interessante esperimento che aveva cancellato gli orrori del regime zarista", per Stalin contro Trockij, come era stato per Lenin contro tutti gli altri leader dei partiti politici russi. Questa generazione con Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, André Gide (fino al 1936) e Stefan Zweig aveva sempre, in ogni conrroversia, aderito alla linea del partito comunista contro l'opposizione. C'erano poi gli scrittori della generazione "di mezzo", con il gruppo di Bloomsbury, con Virginia Woolf, oppure Valéry. Hemingway, che non avevano mai dimostrato un particolare enrusiasmo per il partito comunista ed erano completamente indifferenrti a quanto accadeva in Russia negli anni Trenta.
Nina Berberova (Italics are Mine)
to look at Louisa, stroked her cheek, and was rewarded by a dazzling smile. She had been surprised by how light-skinned the child was. Her features were much more like Eva’s than Bill’s. A small turned-up nose, big hazel eyes, and long dark eyelashes. Her golden-brown hair protruded from under the deep peak of her bonnet in a cascade of ringlets. “Do you think she’d come to me?” Cathy asked. “You can try.” Eva handed her over. “She’s got so heavy, she’s making my arms ache!” She gave a nervous laugh as she took the parcel from Cathy and peered at the postmark. “What’s that, Mam?” David craned his neck and gave a short rasping cough. “Is it sweets?” “No, my love.” Eva and Cathy exchanged glances. “It’s just something Auntie Cathy’s brought from the old house. Are you going to show Mikey your flags?” The boy dug eagerly in his pocket, and before long he and Michael were walking ahead, deep in conversation about the paper flags Eva had bought for them to decorate sand castles. Louisa didn’t cry when Eva handed her over. She seemed fascinated by Cathy’s hair, and as they walked along, Cathy amused her by singing “Old MacDonald.” The beach was only a short walk from the station, and it wasn’t long before the boys were filling their buckets with sand. “I hardly dare open it,” Eva said, fingering the string on the parcel. “I know. I was desperate to open it myself.” Cathy looked at her. “I hope you haven’t built up your hopes, too much, Eva. I’m so worried it might be . . . you know.” Eva nodded quickly. “I thought of that too.” She untied the string, her fingers trembling. The paper fell away to reveal a box with the words “Benson’s Baby Wear” written across it in gold italic script. Eva lifted the lid. Inside was an exquisite pink lace dress with matching bootees and a hat. The label said, “Age 2–3 Years.” Beneath it was a handwritten note:   Dear Eva, This is a little something for our baby girl from her daddy. I don’t know the exact date of her birthday, but I wanted you to know that I haven’t forgotten. I hope things are going well for you and your husband. Please thank him from me for what he’s doing for our daughter: he’s a fine man and I don’t blame you for wanting to start over with him. I’m back in the army now, traveling around. I’m due to be posted overseas soon, but I don’t know where yet. I’ll write and let you know when I get my new address. It would be terrific if I could have a photograph of her in this little dress, if your husband doesn’t mind. Best wishes to you all, Bill   For several seconds they sat staring at the piece of paper. When Eva spoke, her voice was tight with emotion. “Cathy, he thinks I chose to stay with Eddie!” Cathy nodded, her mind reeling. “Eddie showed me the letter he sent. Bill wouldn’t have known you were in Wales, would he? He would have assumed you and Eddie had already been reunited—that he’d written with your consent on behalf of you both.” She was afraid to look at Eva. “What are you going to do?” Eva’s face had gone very pale. “I don’t know.” She glanced at David, who was jabbing a Welsh flag into a sand castle. “He said he was going to be posted overseas. Suppose they send him to Britain?” Cathy bit her lip. “It could be anywhere, couldn’t it? It could be the other side of the world.” She could see what was going through Eva’s mind. “You think if he came here, you and he could be together without . . .” Her eyes went to the boys. Eva gave a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as if she was afraid someone might see her. “What about Eddie?” “I don’t know!” The tone of her voice made David look up. She put on a smile, which disappeared the
Lindsay Ashford (The Color of Secrets)