“
God will punish the wicked. And before He does, we will.
”
”
John Green
“
I was honestly worried you were going to do some John Wick shit with the comb I left on the counter.
”
”
Mariana Zapata (From Lukov with Love)
“
The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie.
It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for
heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not
the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we
drink in every night.
”
”
John Piper (A Hunger for God)
“
It is dark. You cannot see. Only the hint of stars out the broken window. And a voice as old as the Snake from the Garden whispers, 'I will hold your hand.
”
”
John Wick
“
Francesca: It's still a bit cold yet.
Michael: Never stopped John and me.
Francesca: Yes, well, you're Scottish. Your blood circulates quite well half frozen.
”
”
Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
“
Why? It’s because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I’ve always loved you. Because I loved you when you were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don’t deserve you, but I love you, anyway.
”
”
Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
“
The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years.
All business and politics is personal in the Philippines.
If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump.
They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on.
I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged.
I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy.
You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn.
Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race.
After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself.
It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up.
He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather.
The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up.
You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points]
Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse.
You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow.
In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil.
There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country.
Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us.
The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys.
The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time.
I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality.
The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent.
Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins.
Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it.
Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds.
Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising.
A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't.
Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill.
It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most.
Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold.
Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink?
She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.
”
”
John Richard Spencer
“
It’s all right,” she said. “You’re through.”
“Jesus,” he finally managed, pushing water off his face. “Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. For that matter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.” Still not enough. He needed to reach back to the Old Testament for this. “Obadiah. Nebuchadnezzar. Methuselah and Job.”
“Be calm,” she said, taking him by the shoulders. “Be calm. And there are women in the Bible, you know.”
“Yes. As I recall it, they were trouble, every last one.
”
”
Tessa Dare (A Week to be Wicked (Spindle Cove, #2))
“
Oh, God, Francesca,Now there’s a good one.Why?Why? Why?” He gave each one a different tenor, as if he were testing out the word, asking it to
different people.
“Why?” he asked again, this time with increased volume
as he turned around to face her.
“Why? It’s
because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I’ve always loved you. Because I loved you when you
were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don’t deserve you, but I
love you, anyway.”
Francesca sagged against the door.
“How’s that for a witty little joke?” he mocked. “I loveyou. I loveyou, my cousin’s wife. I loveyou, the
one woman I can never have. I loveyou, Francesca Bridger-ton Stirling.
”
”
Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
“
I thought it was her wicked stepmother who poisoned her...'
'...Turned out the wicked stepmother had an alibi.'
'...Seems she was off poisoning someone else at the time. Chance in a million, really. It was just bad luck.
”
”
John Connolly (The Book of Lost Things (The Book of Lost Things, #1))
“
He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong.
”
”
John Chrysostom
“
There are times when I long to sweep away half the things I am expected to learn; for the overtaxed mind cannot enjoy the treasure it has secured at the greatest cost. ... When one reads hurriedly and nervously, having in mind written tests and examinations, one's brain becomes encumbered with a lot of bric-a-brac for which there seems to be little use. At the present time my mind is so full of heterogeneous matter that I almost despair of ever being able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the region of my mind I feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop. A thousand odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about my head like hailstones, and when I try to escape them, theme goblins and college nixies of all sorts pursue me, until I wish – oh, may I be forgiven the wicked wish! – that I might smash the idols I came to worship.
”
”
Helen Keller (The Story of My Life: With Her Letters (1887 1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education Including Passages from the Reports and Letters of Her Teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan by John Albert Macy)
“
George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge
”
”
John Le Carré
“
The whole place is soaking wet. My copy of The General in His Labyrinth is absolutely ruined."
"That's pretty good," the Colonel said, like an artist admiring another's work.
"Hey!" she shouted.
"Sorry. Don't worry, dude," he said. "God will punish the wicked. And before He does, we will.
”
”
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
“
He regards it as the highest insult for the wicked to boast of His covenant while profaning His sacred Name by their whole lives.
”
”
John Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols)
“
Waves crack with wicked fury against me ship's hull while ocean currents rage as the full moon rises o're the sea."
(Cutthroat's Omen: A Crimson Dawn)
”
”
John Phillips
“
Now discontent nibbled at him - not painfully, but constantly. Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time. The end of life is now not so terribly far away - you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch - and your mind says, "Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?" All of these, of course, are the foundation of man's greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. "What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?" And now we're coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: "What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?" And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.
”
”
John Steinbeck (Sweet Thursday (Cannery Row, #2))
“
Good people avoid sin because they love goodness, Wicked people avoid sin because they fear punishment.
”
”
John Wesley (The Almost Christian: John Wesley's Sermon In Today's English (2 of 44) (John Wesley's Forty-Four Sermons in Today's English))
“
I have a hundred times heard him say, that all ages and nations have represented their gods as wicked, in a constantly increasing progression; that mankind have gone on adding trait after trait till they reached the most perfect conception of wickedness which the human mind could devise, and have called this God, and prostrated themselves before it.
”
”
John Stuart Mill (Autobiography)
“
Lock your doors." Coming from a man she'd never met face to face, this ought to sound creepy instead of panty-dampening and protective in a John Wick meets Mr. Darcy kind of way.
”
”
Kerrigan Byrne (Nevermore Bookstore (Townsend Harbor, #1))
“
...she was really very pretty, one of the prettiest girls she knew. And as if to prove it she raised her arms and unloosed her hair, a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful, yet necessary, like a hot bath or a warm bed on a winter's night. She imagined herself for a truly sinful moment as someone wicked — a dancer, an actress.
”
”
John Fowles (The French Lieutenant’s Woman)
“
Their fathers had been twins, but John‟s had entered the world seven minutes before Michael‟s.
The most critical seven minutes in Michael Stirling‟s life, and he hadn‟t even been alive for them.
”
”
Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
“
I’m alright,” Joshua bit his lip, “not hungry.” “Just take a bloody strawberry,” Ezra shook the carton in his face with a wicked smirk. This is how Chitty Chitty Bang Bang started. I’ll be in a cage next.
”
”
Ashley John (Boss)
“
I landed on my left shoulder, which isn’t working. Shit, I think I dislocated it. Fuck me, John Wick made that shit look easy. He lied, it hurts like a son of bitch, worse than that first cock in the ass.
”
”
K.A. Knight (Den of Vipers)
“
though books, as Milton says, may be the embalming of mighty spirits, they are also the resurrection of rebellious, reactionary, fantastical, and wicked spirits! in books dwell all the demons and all the angels of the human mind. it is for this reason that a a bookshop -- especially a second-hand bookshop / antiquarian - is an arsenal of explosives, an armory of revolutions, an opium den of reaction.
and just because books are the repository of all the redemptions and damnations, all the sanities and insanities, of the divine anarchy of the soul, they are still, as they have alwasys been, an object of suspicion to every kind of ruling authority. in a second-hand bookshop are the horns of the altar where all the outlawed thoughts of humanity can take refuge! here, like depserate bandits, hide all the reckless progeny of our wild, dark, self-lacerating hearts. a bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens.
of all the 'houses of ill fame' which a tyrant, a bureaucrat, a propagandist, a moralist, a champion of law and order, an advocate of keeping people ignorant for their own good, hurries past with averted eyes or threatens with this minions, a bookshop is the most flagrant.
~ autobiography
”
”
John Cowper Powys
“
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet.
”
”
John Donne
“
You are not yet out of reach of the gunshot of the Devil. You have not yet resisted unto death in your striving against sin. Let the Kingdom be always before you, and believe with certainty and consistency the things that are yet unseen. Let nothing that is on this side of eternal life get inside you. Above all, take care of your own hearts, and resist the lusts that tempt you, for your hearts `are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.'d Set your faces like a flint; you have all the power of Heaven and earth on your side."
Christian
”
”
John Bunyan (The Pilgrim's Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come)
“
They say you are a blemish among Christians and that true religion gets a bad reputation because of your ungodly conduct. I have heard that some have already stumbled because of your wicked ways and that even more are in danger of being destroyed by your example. Alehouses,
”
”
John Bunyan (The Pilgrim's Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come)
“
In the preaching of the kingdom, law and gospel come together. The coming of the kingdom is the coming of a King to enforce his law on a disobedient world, that is, to enforce his covenant against covenant-breakers. But the King who comes is full of love and forgiveness. So his coming is good news, gospel, not only because he judges the wicked, but because he brings redemption, forgiveness, and reward to his redeemed people.
”
”
John M. Frame (Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief)
“
FEBRUARY 17 I WILL CAUSE YOU TO DWELL IN SAFETY I HAVE SENT My angels to surround you and to cause you to dwell in safety. They will deliver you from all danger and will surround you with My protection. I will hold you up, and you will be safe. My eyes are turned on My righteous servants, and My ears are attentive to your cry. I will deliver you from all your troubles. The name of My Son is a fortified tower for you, and you can run to it where you will be safe. Do not be afraid, for I will guide you safely wherever you go. You can lie down and sleep, for I have made you to dwell in safety. I am Your God, and I will keep you safe and will protect you forever from the wicked who freely strut around in wickedness. PSALMS 34:7–22; 78:52; 12:5 Prayer Declaration You will answer me, Lord, when I call to You, and will give me relief from my distress. You will have mercy on me and hear my prayer. You will grant peace in my family, in my land, and no one will cause me to be afraid. You will walk with me and will be My God, and I will be Your faithful servant.
”
”
John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
“
Every man loves the mercies of God, but a saint loves the God of his mercies. The mercies of God, as they are the fuel of a wicked man's lusts, so they are fuel to maintain a good man's love to God; not that their love to God is grounded upon these external benefits.
”
”
John Flavel (The Mystery of Providence)
“
It really was shocking, as though the world was going mad, people turning in on themselves and falling prey to wicked thoughts.
”
”
John King (The Football Factory)
“
Wickedness never rests easily so, in a way, one might almost feel pity for the wicked, for they are destined to live their lives in fear, in a prison of the heart.
”
”
John Connolly (The Infernals (Samuel Johnson, #2))
“
John," I murmured, rising from the bed and going to stand by the table, staring down in astonishment at the gold-rimmed china plates and intricately embroidered napkins in sapphire rings. "How did all of this get here?"
"Oh," he said casually. "It just does. Coffee?" He lifted a gleaming silver pot. "Or do I seem to remember you being more partial to tea?" His grin was wicked.
I gave him a sarcastic look-it was a cup of tea I'd thrown into his face to escape from the Underworld the last time-then sank down into the chair where the bird was perched.
”
”
Meg Cabot (Underworld (Abandon, #2))
“
You should leave her entirely."
Caire's mouth twisted humourlessly. "I find I cannot."
"Why?" St. John shook his head. "She isn't even your type."
"What is my type?"
St. John glanced away. They both knew well enough the kind of women Caire favoured.
"There's something about her," Caire said in a low voice. "She cares for everyone about her, yet neglects herself. I want to be the one who cares for her.
”
”
Elizabeth Hoyt (Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane, #1))
“
He walked the way John Wayne walks, striding out to clean up the universe, and he believed all that shit: a wicked, stupid, infantile motherfucker. Like his heroes, he was kind of pinheaded, heavy gutted, big assed, and his eyes were as blank as George Washington's eyes. But I was beginning to learn something about the blankness of those eyes. What I was learning was beginning to frighten me to death. If you look steadily into that unblinking blue, into that pinpoint at the center of the eye, you discover a bottomless cruelty, a viciousness cold and icy. In that eye, you do not exist: if you are lucky. If that eye, from its height, has been forced to notice you, if you do exist in the unbelievably frozen winter which lives behind that eye, you are marked, marked, marked, like a man in a black overcoat, crawling, fleeing, across the snow.
”
”
James Baldwin (If Beale Street Could Talk)
“
The persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful just and godly person.
”
”
John Ruskin (Unto This Last)
“
The Herons! The Herons!
The mighty, fighting Herons!
No other Brotherband you'll see
Is even half as darin'
We sailed away from Hallasholm, we had to be real quick,
For Kloof had eaten Erak's ax and chewed his walking stick.
We sailed across the Stormwite and we struck a mighty storm.
We had to wear our woolly caps to keep us nice and warm.
We sailed around Cape Shelter and then south to Araluen.
We called upon the people there to find out what was doin'.
We chased an evil slaver to the market of Socorro.
"We can't rescue them tonight," said Hal. "We'll get them out tomorrow."
Lydia and the Ranger burned the market to the ground.
The rest of us, we freed the slaves then headed out of town.
The Herons! The Herons!
The mighty, fighting Herons!
No other Brotherband you'll see
Is even half as darin'
The slave master named Mahmel was a nasty kind of thug,
So Stiggy dropped a rock and crushed him like a bug.
We sailed back to Cresthaven and we set the captives free.
King Duncan said, "Well done, my lads, you're just the boys for me.
My Ranger Gilan has to go hunt down some assassins
So go along with him and give these wicked types a thrashin'."
A pirate galley barred our way. We quickly overtook 'em.
And Ingvar led the charge aboard to stab and chop and hook 'em.
We beat the Tualaghi and the Scorpions as well.
The Ranger stuck his saxe into the leader, the Shurmel.
When all the assassins threw a fit of wild hysterics,
Hal grabbed up the Shurmel's staff and brought it back for Erak.
The Herons! The Herons!
The mighty, fighting Herons!
No other Brotherband you'll see
Is even half as darin
”
”
John Flanagan
“
The advertising scheme is anything but subtle. If you want to be healed, send in your money; and if you don’t get healed, you didn’t send enough. Like the wicked religious leaders condemned in Luke 20, Benny Hinn devours “widows’ houses” as he hawks false hope in exchange for money;
”
”
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Strange Fire: The Danger of Offending the Holy Spirit with Counterfeit Worship)
“
New Testament teaching does not focus on reforming and restructuring human systems, which are never the root cause of human problems. The issue is always the heart of man—which when wicked will corrupt the best of systems and when righteous will improve the worst. If men’s sinful hearts are not changed, they will find ways to oppress others regardless of whether or not there is actual slavery. On the other hand, Spirit-filled believers will have just and harmonious relationships with each other, no matter what system they live under. Man’s basic problems and needs are not political, social, or economic but spiritual. …
”
”
John F. MacArthur Jr. (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Set of 30 Volumes)
“
Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things"; he grinned like a schoolboy. "And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can't compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?
”
”
John Le Carré (The Spy Who Came In From The Cold / Call For The Dead / A Murder Of Quality / The Looking Glass War / A Small Town In Germany)
“
St. John,” I said, “I think you are almost wicked to talk so. I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness! To what end?”
“To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account. Jane, I shall watch you closely and anxiously—I warn you of that. And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures. Don’t cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects. Do you hear, Jane?”
“Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek. I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I will be happy. Goodbye!
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
“
The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). The enemy’s lies completely mess up our thinking and weaken us if we believe them. Every day we must combat his lies with God’s truth.
”
”
Stormie Omartian (The 7-Day Prayer Warrior Experience)
“
But grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.
”
”
Chris Hedges (Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle)
“
Patriotism is a virtue of the wicked.
Irreverence is the champion of liberty, it's only sure defence.
The Golden eye of justice sees, bequites the unjust man
”
”
John Braun
“
It was that night I discovered that most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in the social niceties.
”
”
John August (Big Fish: The Shooting Script)
“
Of all the mean and wicked things a landlord can do, shutting up his footpath is the nastiest.
”
”
John Ruskin
“
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. —JOHN STEINBECK, EAST OF EDEN
”
”
Aaron Mahnke (The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals)
“
It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can't give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!"
...
"Now, John, I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
“
Although the wicked attempt whatsoever they can, and seek all means to destroy the Church, although they furiously strive against Christ and his Church so much as they are able, yet they shall not prevail.
”
”
John Calvin
“
Though wickedly aware of his surroundings, he didn’t look around; looking around attracted the eye. People who saw him would ask themselves, “Why’s that guy looking around like that?” He’d learned not to do it.
”
”
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
“
The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my fiesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...
”
”
John Donne
“
Now, if a good man cannot do good things with that oneness and universalness of mind, as a wicked man doth sin with, then is his sin heavier to weigh him down to hell than is his righteousness to buoy him up to the heavens.
”
”
John Bunyan (The Pharisee and Publican)
“
Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt, I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of troops made by the administration for the purpose of subjugating the states of the South, as in violation of the Constitution, and as a gross usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.
”
”
John Ellis
“
Why? It’s because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I’ve always loved you. Because I loved you when you were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don’t deserve you, but I love you, anyway.” Francesca sagged against the door. “How’s that for a witty little joke?” he mocked. “I love you. I love you, my cousin’s wife. I love you, the one woman I can never have. I love you, Francesca Bridgerton Stirling, who—” “Stop,” she choked out. “Now? Now that I’ve finally gotten started? Oh, I don’t think so,” he said grandly, waving one of his arms through the air like a showman. He leaned in close—painfully, uncomfortably close. And his smile was terrifying as he asked, “Are you scared yet?
”
”
Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
“
Although George was quieter than the others too, when it came to banter he could give as good as he got. Just when you thought he wasn’t listening to one of John’s wicked teases he’d shoot back a withering line that had everyone in stitches.
”
”
Cynthia Lennon (John)
“
While economic motives contributed greatly to the spread of the Reformation, they are obviously not sufficient to account for it, since they had been operative for centuries. Many Emperors tried to resist the Pope; so did sovereigns elsewhere, e.g. Henry II and King John in England. But their attempts were thought wicked, and therefore failed. It was only after the Papacy had, for a long time, so abused its traditional powers as to cause a moral revolt, that successful resistance became possible.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (Power: A New Social Analysis (Routledge Classics))
“
The devil is a wicked and angry spirit. He will not and cannot stand seeing a man enter the kingdom of God. And if the man undertakes to do so, he blocks the way himself, arousing and attempting every kind of opposition he can summon. If you want to be God's child, therefore, prepare yourself for persecution, as the wise man says. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12, 'All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.' And Christ Himself says (John 15:20): 'The disciple should not be better off than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.' There is no way out, and therefore the statement is: 'Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of the kingdom of heaven,' to let us know how to console ourselves.
”
”
Martin Luther (Luther's Works, Volume 21 (Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat))
“
WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE"
I FIX mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye ;
My picture drown'd in a transparent tear,
When I look lower I espy ;
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and marr'd, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?
But now I've drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more, I'll depart ;
My picture vanished, vanish all fears
That I can be endamaged by that art ;
Though thou retain of me
One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.
”
”
John Donne
“
Is this not precisely how the universe should look if fantasied by a defiled overmind? Is this not exactly how the universe should be presented if shaped by the careful hand of pure but unforgivingly patient malevolence? Who but the immaculate embodiment of malice would design such a contemptible thing? Indeed, is not the vulgarity of scale proof of an Omnimalevolent Creator, greater even than the finely tuned universe itself? Only a thoroughly corrupted, wicked mind could conceive of such impossible proportions and be in possession of the boorish inclination needed to then dangle such an offense to all reasonableness in front of the eyes of a curious explorer—a tiny, living, thinking organic vessel whom through tuning and coercion the Creator had ensured would one day rise to stare out longingly from the shores of their home-world prison.
”
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John Zande (The Owner of All Infernal Names: An Introductory Treatise on the Existence, Nature & Government of our Omnimalevolent Creator)
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For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace" (D&C 93:19–20). And then a few verses later the Lord says: And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come; And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning. The Spirit of truth is of God. I am the Spirit of truth, and John bore record of me, saying: He received a fulness of truth, yea, even of all truth; And no man receiveth...
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Henry B. Eyring (Because He First Loved Us)
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Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,--a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked. All the world like a woolen lover once did seem on Henry's side. Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried open for all the world to see, survived.
What he has now to say is a long wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed.
”
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John Berryman
“
Just then a little lady appeared. ‘Who are you?’ said Dorothy. ‘I am the Good Witch of the North,’ the little lady replied, ‘and if you put on the Wicked Witch’s silver shoes . . .’ ‘I’ll look like Lady Gaga.’ ‘. . . you’ll have magic powers. Now where would you like to go?’ ‘Anywhere that Andrew Lloyd Webber is not.
”
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John Crace (Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century)
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The Word of God makes me happy. Psalm 1 describes a happy man as one “who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night” (vv. 1, 2). A happy person is someone who studies the Bible.
”
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John F. MacArthur Jr. (The Keys to Spiritual Growth: Unlocking the Riches of God)
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John's particular talents hadn't gone unnoticed but they weren't his artistic talents. They were his talents for having his fellow students fall about with shocked, uncontrollable laughter at his wicked, disrespectful wit. His ability to disrupt a lecture had to be seen to be believed and John's appearance was even worse than his humour. I think he was the last stronghold of the Teddy Boys - totally aggressive and anti-establishment. My first impression of John, as he slouched reluctantly into the lettering class for the first time, was one of apprehension. I felt that I had nothing in common with this individual and as far as I was concerned I never would. In fact he frightened me to death. The only thing that John and I had in common was that we were both blind as bats without our glasses.
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Cynthia Lennon (A Twist Of Lennon)
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Putting the Lost Cause to work, however, necessitated a good measure of willful forgetting. Confederate memorialists proved equal to the task. "The world has been wickedly taught and foolishly believes that we resorted to war solely to preserve our institution of African slavery," General John S. Preston told a SASC meeting in Columbia in 1870. If anyone knew what had led to the Civil War, it was Preston, who not only attended the South Carolina Secession Convention but also served as the state's official delegate to Virginia's secession convention. The North and South were antagonistic societies whose differences were fundamentally rooted in slavery and race, he had told the Virginia convention in February 1861. But a decade later, Preston preached that slavery had not been the animating cause of secession at all.
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Ethan J. Kytle (Denmark Vesey's Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy)
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WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT HIDEOUS WOMAN THE WINKIES TAKE ORDERS FROM," Robin Hood said. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE IN LOXLEY CALL A WOMAN WITH ONE EYE, TERRIBLE CLOTHES, AND A HAGGARD FACE?"
"I don't know, Robin," Little John said. "What do you call her?"
"SINGLE!" the Prince of Thieves declared.
The Merry Men burst into a fit of haughty laughter. The Wicked Witch grunted at the insult, and steam piped out of her ears.
”
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Chris Colfer (Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories, #6))
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The afflictions of the wicked exasperate them, enrage them, stone and pave them, obdurate and petrify them, but they do not crucify them. The afflictions of the godly crucify them. And when I am come to that conformity with my Saviour, as to fulfill his sufferings in my flesh, (as I am, when I glorify him in a Christian constancy and cheerfulness in my afflictions) then I am crucified with him, carried up to his cross...
”
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John Donne
“
One day a woman went to the saintly Father John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, in France, and said, “My husband has not been to the sacraments or to Mass for years. He has been unfaithful, wicked, and unjust. He has just fallen from a bridge and was drowned —a double death of body and soul.” The Curé answered, “Madam, there is a short distance between the bridge and the water, and it is that distance which forbids you to judge.
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Fulton J. Sheen (Victory Over Vice (Illustrated))
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I step on the stage and find the lights blazing against me and yet in the same distance pulling me forward. I am like something left over after a storm. Slight, a waif. It is like I am underwater in a pool of brightness. Slowly slowly I walk down towards the men. (...) I guess they don't know what they are seeing. I guess it is true they are seeing a lovely woman. Soft-breasted woman (...) I might be one of the footlights, with a burning wick for a heart. I don't utter a blessed word. (...) John Cole all spit and polish approaches from the far side of the stage and we hear the men draw in their breath like a sea tide drawing back on the shingle of a beach. He approaches and approaches. They know I'm a man because they have read it on the bill. But I'm suspecting that every one of them would like to touch me and now John Cole is their ambassador of kisses. Slowly slowly he edges nearer. He reaches out a hand, so openly and plainly that I believe I am going to expire. The held-in breath of the audience is not let out again. Half a minute passes. It is unlikely any of them could of holded their breath like this underwater. They have found new lungs. Down down we go under them waters of desire. Every last man, young and old, wants John Cole to touch my face, hold my narrow shoulders, put his mouth against my lips. Handsome John Cole, my beau. Our love in plain sight. Then the lungs of the audience giving out, and a rasping rush of sound. We have reached the very borderland of our act, the strange frontier. (…) We part like dancers, we briefly go down to our patrons, we briefly bow, and then we have turned and are gone. As if for ever. They have seen something they don’t understand and partly do, in the same breath. We have done something we don’t understand neither and partly do.
”
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Sebastian Barry (Days Without End (Days Without End, #1))
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when Francesca had turned to him with those bottomless blue eyes and said, 'The baby was to have been yours in a way, too,' she'd shattered him to his very soul.
She didn't know.
She had no idea.
And as long as she remained in the dark about his feelings for her, as long as she couldn't understand why he had no choice but to hate himself for every step he took in John's shoes, he couldn't be near her. Because she was going to keep saying things like that.
”
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Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
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Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things”; he grinned like a schoolboy. “And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can’t compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?
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John Le Carré (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold)
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Ay,’ he continued, as if unaware of my presence, ‘blessed indeed are they who die in the Lord; but the wicked man and the persecutor has no bonds in his death; he may flourish for a season as a green bay-tree; he may enlarge his bounds, and cast forth his arms in his pride; but the time shall come when they will seek him, but shall not find him, and the place which knew him once shall know him no more for ever:* “For why? the way of godly men Unto the Lord is known; Whereas the way of wicked men Shall quite be overthrown.” ’*
”
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John William Polidori (The Vampyre and Other Tales of the Macabre)
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Wicked problems demand people who are creative, pragmatic, flexible, and collaborative. They never invest too much in their ideas, because they know they will have to alter them. They know there’s no right place to start, so they simply start somewhere and see what happens. They accept the fact that they’re more likely to understand the problem after it’s solved than before. They don’t expect to get a good solution; they keep working until they’ve found something that’s good enough. They’re never convinced they know enough to solve the problem, so they’re constantly testing their ideas on different stakeholders.
”
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John Brockman (This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking)
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It was strange. She would have thought that she'd sense John's presence, feel him in the air, see him in the surroundings they'd shared for two years. But instead, he was simply gone, and the influx of women had changed the tone of the house entirely. Francesca supposed that was a good thing; she needed the support of women right now.
But it was odd, living among women. There were more flowers now - vases everywhere, it seemed. And there was no longer any lingering smell of John's cheroot, or the sandalwood soap he'd favored.
Kilmartin House now smelled of lavender and rose-water, and every whiff of it broke Francesca's heart.
”
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Julia Quinn (When He Was Wicked (Bridgertons, #6))
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The kitchen. La cucina, the true mother country, this warm cave of the good witch deep in the desolate land of loneliness, with pots of sweet potions bubbling over the fire, a cavern of magic herbs, rosemary and thyme and sage and oregano, balm of lotus that brought sanity to lunatics, peace to the troubled, joy to the joyless, this small twenty-by-twenty world, the altar a kitchen range, the magic circle a checkered tablecloth where the children fed, the old children, lured back to their beginnings, the taste of mother's milk still haunting their memories, fragrance in the nostrils, eyes brightening, the wicked world receding as the old mother witch sheltered her brood from the wolves outside.
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John Fante (The Brotherhood of the Grape)
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It should not be doubted that our inheritance of secular law is precious, and something that we should hold onto in the face of the many threats to it. It is our principal defence against what Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill denounced as the tyranny of the majority. Majority opinion may be wrong; majority desires may be wicked; majority strength may be dangerous. There is someone more important than the majority, namely the person who disagrees with it. We must protect that person. He is the one who can raise the question that no crowd wants to listen to, which is the question whether it is in the right. Until opposition is protected, therefore, there is no door through which reason can enter the affairs of government. But how is opposition protected? What makes it possible for people to agree to disagree?
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Roger Scruton (How to Be a Conservative)
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FEBRUARY 3 MY FIRE WILL CONSUME THE WORKS OF WITCHCRAFT AND OCCULTISM DO NOT TURN away from Me to serve other gods, for if you turn your children away from Me to serve other gods, My anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. Break down the altars of witchcraft and burn any occultic idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to Me. I have chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be My people, My treasured possession. Do not test My promises to you and turn to witchcraft and idols, for I will cause a fire to consume your wickedness just as I did with the children of Israel. ACTS 19:18–20; DEUTERONOMY 7:3–6; PSALM 106:16–23 Prayer Declaration Lord, release Your fire and burn up the idols of this land. Let the works of witchcraft and occultism be burned in Your fire. Let Your flame be kindled against wicked spirits, and let demons be exposed and cast out with Your fire.
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John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
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Despite the fact that Uncle Rulon and his followers regard the governments of Arizona, Utah, and the United States as Satanic forces out to destroy the UEP, their polygamous community receives more than $6 million a year in public funds. More than $4 million of government largesse flows each year into the Colorado City public school district—which, according to the Phoenix New Times, “is operated primarily for the financial benefit of the FLDS Church and for the personal enrichment of FLDS school district leaders.” Reporter John Dougherty determined that school administrators have “plundered the district’s treasury by running up thousands of dollars in personal expenses on district credit cards, purchasing expensive vehicles for their personal use and engaging in extensive travel. The spending spree culminated in December [2000], when the district purchased a $220,000 Cessna 210 airplane to facilitate trips by district personnel to cities across Arizona.” Colorado City has received $1.9 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave its streets, improve the fire department, and upgrade the water system. Immediately south of the city limits, the federal government built a $2.8 million airport that serves almost no one beyond the fundamentalist community. Thirty-three percent of the town’s residents receive food stamps—compared to the state average of 4.7 percent. Currently the residents of Colorado City receive eight dollars in government services for every dollar they pay in taxes; by comparison, residents in the rest of Mohave County, Arizona, receive just over a dollar in services per tax dollar paid. “Uncle Rulon justifies all that assistance from the wicked government by explaining that really the money is coming from the Lord,” says DeLoy Bateman. “We’re taught that it’s the Lord’s way of manipulating the system to take care of his chosen people.” Fundamentalists call defrauding the government “bleeding the beast” and regard it as a virtuous act.
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Jon Krakauer (Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith)
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APRIL 30 EXECUTE JUDGMENT AGAINST MY OPPRESSORS MY CHILD, HEAR my words, for I am the Lord your God. I will execute judgment in the morning and deliver those who have been plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. I will punish them according to the fruit of their doings and will judge them according to My righteousness. I will hold you up in mercy, and in the multitude of the anxieties within you, My comfort will delight your soul. I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away. I will bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick. I will make a covenant of peace with you and cause showers of blessing to come down in your season. You will know that I am the Lord who has broken the bands of your yoke and delivered you from the hand of those who oppressed you. JEREMIAH 21:12; EZEKIEL 34:16, 25–27 Prayer Declaration Father, because I am Your sheep, You will deliver me from all the places where my oppressors have scattered me. You will feed me in good pasture and shelter me on the high mountains of Your grace. I will no longer be a prey for the wicked but will dwell safely, and no one will make me afraid. For You are my Lord, and You have broken the yoke of oppression and delivered me from my oppressors.
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John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
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APRIL 24 I WILL ABOLISH THE IDOLS IN AMERICA AND THE NATIONS IF MY PEOPLE who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. I will hasten the day when I alone shall be exalted in your land, and everything proud and lofty shall be brought low. The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and I alone will be exalted in that day. I will utterly abolish any false idols, that the glory of My majesty may be seen. My anger will be kindled against the idols that speak delusion and the diviners who envision lies and tell false dreams. I will bring shame upon all idolatry and will strengthen My faithful servants. 2 CHRONICLES 7:14; ISAIAH 2:11–18; ZECHARIAH 10:5–6 Prayer Declaration Lord, cause our nation to humble itself and to pray and seek Your face and to turn from their wicked ways. Forgive our sins and heal our land. Sprinkle this land with clean water, and cleanse us from all filthiness and idols. Let all false gods and idols be removed from the land in the name of Jesus. Let America renounce her uncleanness and enter back into a covenant with You that she will put no other gods before You, O Lord.
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John Eckhardt (Daily Declarations for Spiritual Warfare: Biblical Principles to Defeat the Devil)
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In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses. The twisted, smooth-barked boles of the trees were yellow-ochre and burnt orange; through their tightly woven foliage filtered a gloomy, tinted light. At their roots grew great clumps of multifaceted translucent crystal like alien fungi.
Charcoal grey frogs with viridescent eyes croaked as the column floundered between the pools. Beneath the greasy surface of the water unidentifiable reptiles moved slowly and sinuously. Dragonflies whose webby wings spanned a foot or more hummed and hovered between the sedges: their long, wicked bodies glittered bold green and ultramarine; they took their prey on the wing, pouncing with an audible snap of jaws on whining, ephemeral mosquitoes and fluttering moths of april blue and chevrolet cerise.
Over everything hung the heavy, oppressive stench of rotting metal. After an hour, Cromis’ mouth was coated with a bitter deposit, and he tasted acids. He found it difficult to speak. While his horse stumbled and slithered beneath him, he gazed about in wonder, and poetry moved in his skull, swift as the jewelled mosquito-hawks over a dark slow current of ancient decay.
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M. John Harrison (The Pastel City)
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Back in the days when the settlers were moving to the West, a wise man stood on a hill outside a new Western town. As the settlers came from the East, the wise man was the first person they met before coming to the settlement. They asked eagerly what the people of the town were like. He answered them with a question: "What were the people like in the town you just left?" Some said, "The town we came from was wicked. The people were rude gossips who took advantage of innocent people. It was filled with thieves and liars." The wise man answered, "This town is the same as the one you left." They thanked the man for saving them from the trouble they had just come out of. They then moved on further west. Then another group of settlers arrived and asked the same question: "What is this town like?" The wise man asked again, "What was the town like where you came from?" These responded, "It was wonderful! We had dear friends. Everyone looked out for the others' interest. There was never any lack because all cared for one another. If someone had a big project, the entire community gathered to help. It was a hard decision to leave, but we felt compelled to make way for future generations by going west as pioneers." The wise old man said to them exactly what he had
said to the other group: "This town is the same as the one you left." These people responded with joy, "Let's settle here!
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John Bevere (The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense)
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And our host said, “It seems to us that the American people are democratic people. Can you explain to us why the American government has as its friends reactionary governments, the governments of Franco and Trujillo, the military dictatorship of Turkey, and the corrupt monarchy of Greece?”
We could not answer their questions because we didn’t know enough, and because we are not in the confidence of our makers of foreign policy. We told them instead what was being asked in America: the questions about the domination of the Balkans by Communist parties; the questions about, and the denunciations of, the use of the veto by the Russians in the United Nations; the questions about the denunciation of America by the Russian press. These things seemed to balance each other—they knew no more about their foreign policy than we knew about ours. There was no animosity in their questions, only wonder.
Finally our host stood up, and he raised his glass, and he said, “Somewhere in all of this there must be an answer, and there must be an answer quickly. Let us drink to the hope that the answer may be found, for the world needs peace, needs peace very badly.” And he pointed to the two who were struggling with the heavy beams to build a roof, and he said, “This winter those two will have a house for the first time since 1941. They must have peace, they want their house. They have three small children who have never had a house to live in. There cannot be in the world anyone so wicked as to want to put them back in holes under the ground. But that is where they have been living.”
The host opened the champagne and poured a little of the precious fluid into each of our glasses.
”
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John Steinbeck
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Something must be wrong then in art, or the happiness of life is sickening in the house of civilization. What has caused the sickness? Machine-labour will you say? Well, I have seen quoted a passage from one of the ancient Sicilian poets rejoicing in the fashioning of a water-mill, and exulting in labour being set free from the toil of the hand-quern in consequence; and that surely would be a type of man's natural hope when foreseeing the invention of labour-saving machinery as 'tis called; natural surely, since though I have said that the labour of which art can form a part should be accompanied by pleasure, so one could deny that there is some necessary labour even which is not pleasant in itself, and plenty of unnecessary labour which is merely painful. If machinery had been used for minimizing such labour, the utmost ingenuity would scarcely have been wasted on it; but is that the case in any way? Look round the world, and you must agree with John Stuart Mill in his doubt whether all the machinery of modern times has lightened the daily work of one labourer. And why have our natural hopes been so disappointed? Surely because in these latter days, in which as a matter of fact machinery has been invented, it was by no means invented with the aim of saving the pain of labour. The phrase labour-saving machinery is elliptical, and means machinery which saves the cost of labour, not the labour itself, which will be expended when saved on tending other machines. For a doctrine which, as I have said, began to be accepted under the workshop-system, is now universally received, even though we are yet short of the complete development of the system of the Factory. Briefly, the doctrine is this, that the essential aim of manufacture is making a profit; that it is frivolous to consider whether the wares when made will be of more or less use to the world so long as any one can be found to buy them at a price which, when the workman engaged in making them has received of necessaries and comforts as little as he can be got to take, will leave something over as a reward to the capitalist who has employed him. This doctrine of the sole aim of manufacture (or indeed of life) being the profit of the capitalist and the occupation of the workman, is held, I say, by almost every one; its corollary is, that labour is necessarily unlimited, and that to attempt to limit it is not so much foolish as wicked, whatever misery may be caused to the community by the manufacture and sale of the wares made.
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William Morris (Art Under Plutocracy: Exploring the Corrosive Influence of Wealth on Art in the 19th Century)
“
Or, in your case, as wide. Wait. Did you just say Gandalf?”
“He is the founder of our order, and the first of the Five Warlocks. He comes from afar across the Western Ocean, from Easter Island, or perhaps from Japan.”
“No, I think he comes from the mind of a story writer. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic from the days just before First Space Age. Unless I am confusing him with the guy who wrote about Talking Animal Land? With the Cowardly Lion who gets killed by a Wicked White Witch? I never read the text, I watched the comic.”
“Oh, you err so! The Witches, we have preserved this lore since the time of the Fall of the Giants, whom we overthrew and destroyed. The tale is this: C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke were led by the Indian Maiden Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and back, stealing the land from the Red Man and selling them blankets impregnated with smallpox. It was called the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. When they reached the Pacific, they set out in the Dawn Treader to find the sea route to India, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. They came to the Last Island, called Ramandu or Selidor, where the World Serpent guards the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and there they found Gandalf, returned alive from the underworld, and stripped of all his powers. He came again to mortal lands in North America to teach the Simon Families. The Chronicle is a symbolic retelling of their journey. It is one of our Holy Books.”
“Your Holy Books were written for children by Englishmen.”
“The gods wear many masks! If the Continuum chooses the lips of a White Man to be the lips through which the Continuum speaks, who are we to question? Tolkien was not Roman. He was of a race called the hobbits, Homo floresiensis, discovered on an isle in Indonesia, and he would have lived in happiness, had not the White Man killed him with DDT. So there were no Roman Catholics involved. May the Earth curse their memory forever! May they be forgotten forever!”
“Hm. Earth is big. Maybe it can do both. You know about Rome? It perished in the Ecpyrosis, somewhat before your time.”
“How could we not? The Pope in Rome created the Giants, whom the Witches rose up against and overthrew. Theirs was the masculine religion, aggressive, intolerant, and forbidding abortion. Ours is the feminine religion, peaceful and life-affirming and all-loving, and we offer the firstborn child to perish on our sacred fires. The First Coven was organized to destroy them like rats! When Rome was burned, we danced, and their one god was cast down and fled weeping on his pierced feet, and our many gods rose up. My ancestors hunted the Christians like stoats, and when we caught them, we burned them slowly, as they once did of us in Salem. What ill you do is returned to you tenfold!”
“Hm. Are you willing to work with a Giant? I saw one in the pit, and saw the jumbo-sized coffin they pried him out from. What if he is a baptized Christian? Most of them were, since they were created by my pet pope and raised by nuns.”
“All Christians must perish! Such is our code.”
“Your code is miscoded.”
“What of the Unforgettable Hate?”
“Forget about it.
”
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John C. Wright (The Judge of Ages (Count to the Eschaton Sequence, #3))
“
A curse is God's "recompense" (Lamentations 3:65) in the life of a person and his or her descendants as a result of iniquity. The curse causes sorrow of heart and gives demonic spirits legal entry into a family whereby they can carry out and perpetuate their wicked devices.
There
”
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John Eckhardt (Identifying And Breaking Curses)
“
Any peace, rest and quiet we have is from this alone. Who would be safe if wicked men had power to perform all the sin they conceive? We are indebted to providence for the preservation of our lives, our families, and everything we hold dear. May we not say at times, with the psalmist, 'My soul is among lions(psa.57:4)?How could we live if God did not deal with them (psa. 58:60)? Some he cuts off and destroys, some he deprives of power, some he robs he diverts in other ways. We must, with the psalmist, praise the Lord for his countless wise providences (psa.104:24). In the Lords right ways, the just are made to walk, but the transgressors fall (Hos. 14:9).
Indwelling Sin in Believers (pg118)
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John Owen
“
When wicked men attack us with a view to overwhelm us, either by force or fraud, we know how difficult it is to preserve always the same fortitude. We place our hope of victory in endeavoring resolutely and vigorously to oppose force to force, and art to art. And this is a temptation which so much the more affects honest and steady men, who are otherwise zealous to do well, when the cruelty of their enemies compels them to turn aside from the right path.
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John Calvin (Complete Bible Commentaries (Active Table of Contents in Biblical Order))
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Venetia was then twenty-two, perilously near to being on the shelf.
'Without ever having been *off* it, Sir John - though that's not precisely what I mean, only that its is a wicked shame, so beautiful as she is, and so full of liveliness, besides having the best disposition imaginable!
”
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Georgette Heyer (Venetia)
“
John Piper:“The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable” (A Hunger for God [Wheaton:Crossway, 1997], 14). “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.
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D.A. Carson (For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God's Word)
“
It is simply diabolical, despicable, downright evil that the heart should be so misunderstood, maligned, feared, and dismissed. But there is our clue again. The war we are in would explain so great a loss. This is the last thing the Enemy wants you to know. His plan from the beginning was to assault the heart, just as the Wicked Witch did to the Tin Woodman. Make them so busy, they ignore the heart. Wound them so deeply, they don't want a heart. Twist their theology, so they despise the heart. Take away their courage. Destroy their creativity. Make intimacy with God impossible for them.
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John Eldredge (Waking the Dead)
“
the chaff here, however, burns with “unquenchable” fire (cf. Isa 66:24). Jewish people had various views of Gehinnom (or Gehenna), or hell: the wicked would burn up instantly; they would be tortured for a year and then either released or destroyed; or they would burn forever. In his message to the religious elite (v. 7) John sides with the harshest option articulated by his contemporaries.
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Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
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You were united with Him in a mystical death that took place. The thing that died was your old wicked heart. This is also called the “old man” or the “fleshly nature.” How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? (Rom. 6:2-3, ESV) You “died to sin.” This means it is no longer a part of you. You are not a “sinner saved by grace.” You are a saint. Take the word sinner completely out of the equation now. Grace transformed you from one thing into another. Consider the following translations of the previous verse: How is it possible for us, such persons as we are, who have been separated once for all from the sinful nature, any longer to live in its grip? (Rom. 6:2, WET) We died to our old sinful lives, so how can we continue living with sin? (Rom. 6:2, NCV) God did not just pull you out of sin. He pulled sin out of you! You are now the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. This is much more than the forgiveness of the old self. This entails the complete annihilation of the old self. God sank the whole ship.
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John Crowder (Mystical Union)
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In fact, some drugs were completely misunderstood. Morphine, for example, wasn’t seen so much as a painkiller back then as a sleep aid…albeit one that was highly addictive. So much so that a former Confederate colonel named John Pemberton created a coca wine—a sort of tonic made of wine and cocaine—as a medicinal cure. When the city of Atlanta passed prohibition laws in 1886, Pemberton swapped out the wine for carbonated water, but the cocaine stayed in the beverage for almost two more decades. Today Pemberton’s drink is still sold as Coca-Cola, but the medicinal roots are long gone.
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Aaron Mahnke (The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals)
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It proved what the Vicar said, that there really was a devil lurking in the shadows in the dark recesses of the human mind, a monster preying on the defenceless, the old and the young, small boys and old ladies, the raving lunatics turned onto the streets for some care in the community. It really was shocking, as though the world was going mad, people turning in on themselves and falling prey to wicked thoughts.
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John King (The Football Factory)
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If all the world hated you and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved of you and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.
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John Searles (Help for the Haunted)
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6aSeek the LORD while He may be found;† bCall upon Him while He is near. 7aLet the wicked forsake his way† And the unrighteous man his bthoughts; And let him creturn to the LORD, And He will have dcompassion on him, And to our God, For He will eabundantly pardon. 8“For My thoughts are not ayour thoughts,† Nor are byour ways My ways,” declares the LORD. 9“For aas the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts. 10“For as the arain and the snow come down from heaven,† And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing bseed to the sower and bread to the eater; 11So will My aword be which goes forth from My mouth; It will bnot return to Me empty, Without caccomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. 12“For you will go out with ajoy† And be led forth with bpeace; The cmountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, And all the dtrees of the field will clap their hands. 13“Instead of the athorn bush the bcypress will come up,† And instead of the cnettle the myrtle will come up, And 1it will be a d2memorial to the LORD, For an everlasting esign which fwill not be cut off.
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John F. MacArthur Jr. (NASB, The MacArthur Study Bible)
John Sandford (Wicked Prey (Lucas Davenport, #19))
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Someone left this rose in my room.”
“A rose?”
“Yes. Someone left it on my pillow, while I was sleeping. There was a note wrapped around the stem. It just said soon.”
Finnegan’s fingers tightened around her shoulder. “King John would never be so subtle. Ominous flora isn’t exactly his style.
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Rhiannon Thomas (Kingdom of Ashes (A Wicked Thing, #2))