“
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
”
”
Hermann Hesse (Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte)
“
Every good fairy tale has a kernel of truth to it.
”
”
Melissa Grey (The Girl at Midnight (The Girl at Midnight, #1))
“
Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.
”
”
Marisha Pessl (Night Film)
“
A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shriveled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
”
”
Anne Brontë (Agnes Grey)
“
He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.
”
”
Anton Chekhov (The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904)
“
We mythologists know very well that myths and legends contain borrowings, moral lessons, nature cycles, and a hundred other distorting influences, and we labor to cut them away and get to what might be a kernel of truth. In fact, these same techniques must be applied to the most sober histories, for no one writes the clear and apparent truth—if such a thing can even be said to exist.
”
”
Isaac Asimov (Foundation and Earth (Foundation, #5))
“
This is my problem. I don’t know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture I bc my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back.
You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t I say those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.
”
”
Emily Henry (Funny Story)
“
If there is any kernel of truth in the religions we so deplore,and they are just a carnival of errors,the truth is that it's possible to sink into the present moment in such a way as to find it sacred and to cease to have a problem.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
It is the kernel of truth in every story that makes its writing beautiful beyond standards.
”
”
Psyche Roxas-Mendoza
“
Gossip was nothing more than a kernel of truth cooked within masterful lies, then expertly fed to a voracious lot of people who thrived off those falsities.
”
”
Christi Caldwell (Captivated by a Lady's Charm (Lords of Honor #2))
“
No mirrors in the real world had the ability to reach inside you the way these did. You could tell yourself that the mirrors were simply telling lies, but you'd be wrong. They took tiny truths, swelling them out of proportion―and the fact that there was a kernel of truth in what they reflected made the effect devastating.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Full Tilt)
“
And in that moment Dianora had a truth brought home to her with finality: how something can seem quite unchanged in all the small surface details of existence where things never really change, men and women being what they are, but how the core, the pulse, the kernel of everything can still have become utterly unlike what it had been before.
”
”
Guy Gavriel Kay (Tigana)
“
The best stories thrived when they contained a kernel of truth. One just needed to know how to prune the falsities and deceits to find the truth lying at their shared center.
”
”
Bradley P. Beaulieu (Twelve Kings in Sharakhai (The Song of Shattered Sands, #1))
“
For, within a lie, there is always a kernel of truth.
”
”
Elle Christensen (Protecting Shaylee (The Fae Guard, #1))
“
In every fairy tale there is a kernel of truth, and that is the truth of this one. For him, I am poison. I am his death. And I will deliver.
”
”
Melinda Salisbury (The Scarecrow Queen (The Sin Eater’s Daughter, #3))
“
It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance
betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires.
”
”
Carl Sagan (The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence)
“
No one understands me!" This phrase is part of me, and as unlikely as it may seem, there's a kernel of truth in it. Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again. If only I had someone who took my feelings seriously. Alas, I haven't' yet found that person, so the search must go on.
”
”
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
“
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, who ever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my own smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my father, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
”
”
Hermann Hesse
“
Which is why I stayed long enough to buy every man a pint and winnow out at least a little kernel of wheaty truth from the chaff of gossip.
”
”
Deanna Raybourn (A Dangerous Collaboration (Veronica Speedwell, #4))
“
They make things up.” “They do,” said Maester Aemon, “but even the most fanciful song may hold a kernel of truth. Find that truth
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons (Song of Ice & Fire 1-5))
“
How wise of the founders to hide a kernel of truth within something so absurd. Who among the rational would search for it there?
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2))
“
My mother, a woman who, amid abuse, stuffed hope and a way out into the slit of a mattress, is the very face of fortitude. I am an heir to her remarkable grit. However, beneath that tough exterior, I’ve also inherited my mother’s tender femininity, that part of her spirit susceptible to bruising and bleeding, the doleful Dosha who sat by the window shelling peanuts, pondering how to carry on. The myth of the Strong Black Woman bears a kernel of truth, but it is only a half-seed. The other half is delicate and ailing, all the more so because it has been denied sunlight.
”
”
Cicely Tyson (Just As I Am)
“
I took his name, Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue
under Damaris’s power. I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered
it once. Only once. The first time he beheld you.
Tears slid down Dorian’s face at that unbearable truth.
Perhaps his father had unknowingly hidden his name within him, a final
kernel of defiance against Erawan. And had named his son for that defiance, a
secret marker that the man within still fought. Had never stopped fighting.
Dorian. His father’s name.
Dorian let go of Damaris’s hilt.
Yrene’s breathing turned ragged. Now—it had to be now.
Even with the Valg king before him, something in Dorian’s chest eased.
Healed over.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
“
As he was speaking, he kept reminding himself that he was going to a rendezvous and that not a living soul knew about it, or, probably, ever would. He led a double life--one in public, in the sight of all whom it concerned, full of conventional truth and conventional deception, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances, and another which flowed in secret. And, owing to some strange, possibly quite accidental chain of circumstances, everything that was important, interesting, essential, everything about which he was sincere and never deceived himself, everything that composed the kernel of his life, went on in secret, while everything that was false in him, everything that composed the husk in which he hid himself and the truth which was in him--his work at the bank, discussions at the club, his 'lower race,' his attendance at anniversary celebrations with his wife--was on the surface. He began to judge others by himself, no longer believing what he saw, and always assuming that the real, the only interesting life of every individual goes on as under cover of night, secretly. Every individual existence revolves around mystery, and perhaps that is the chief reason that all cultivated individuals insisted so strongly on the respect due to personal secrets.
”
”
Anton Chekhov
“
Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, squashed, annihilated by imagination and self-interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves onto the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.
”
”
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard)
“
All Truths of Orthodoxy emerge from one truth and converge in one truth, infinite and eternal. That truth is the God-man Christ. If you experience Orthodoxy to its limit, you will inevitably discover that its kernel is the God-man Christ. In fact, all the truths of Orthodoxy are nothing other than different aspects of the one Truth - the God-man Christ.
”
”
Justin Popović
“
postmodern approaches to knowledge inflate a small, almost banal kernel of truth—that we are limited in our ability to know and must express knowledge through language, concepts and categories—to insist that all claims to truth are value-laden constructs of culture.
”
”
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
“
The true calamity of clean eating is not that it is entirely false. It is that it contains a kernel of truth. Underneath all the nutribabble talk of 'glowing' and wellness, the gurus of clean eating are completely right to say that most modern eaters would benefit from consuming less refined sugar and processed meat and more vegetables and meals cooked from scratch. The problem is that it's near impossible to pick out the sensible bits of clean eating and ignore the rest. Whether the term clean is used or not, there is a new puritanism about food that has taken root widely.
”
”
Bee Wilson (The Way We Eat Now: Strategies for Eating in a World of Change)
“
It wasn’t every day there was a shooting in a historic lighthouse involving a celebrity chef, an officer of the court, a standard poodle and a fudge recipe.
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
My mother taught me that every story has a hundred versions. Within each one exists a hundred lies. The trick is to find the kernel of truth tucked into the center. If you can find that, cup your hands gently around it. Don’t touch it, because it can burn you. Just know it’s there; keep that secret knowledge to yourself and follow it home, like a glowing ember in the quickly darkening night.
”
”
Emily Maine Cavanagh (This Bright Beauty)
“
Truth is Truth; and the Truth of yesterday is the Truth of to-day, and the Truth of to-day is the Truth of to- morrow. Our quest, then, is to find Truth, and to cut the kernel from the husk, the text from the comment.
”
”
Aleister Crowley (THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING)
“
My Home
My home is always there,in the heaven's vault,
Where one just hears lyre's sounds,
All with a spark of life have here their resort,
A bard has, too, a space around.
It gets the farthest stars by edges of his roof,
And from a wall to one another
There is a path whose measure can be proved
Not by a look, but by a soul, rather.
A sense of basic truth in every soul nests -
The seed that's sacred and eternal:
In flesh of time it always can embrace
Space, endless, and the century's kernel.
And mighty God has built for this exclusive sense
My home of the light and wonders,
And only here I'm doomed to sufferings at length,
And only here - to calmness.
”
”
Mikhail Lermontov
“
It is often said in soccer that a country's particular style of play bears the fingerprints of its social and political nature. Thus the Germans are unfailingly characterized as resourceful and organized, while Brazilians are said to dance with the ball to the free-form, samba rhythms of Carnival. In the husk of cliche lies a kernel of truth. The Communist system of China had produced a collectivist style of women's soccer from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.
”
”
Jere Longman (The Girls of Summer: The U.S. Women's Soccer Team and How It Changed the World)
“
In truth, however, the continual coming into existence of new beings and the annihilation of already existing ones is to be regarded as an illusion produced by a contrivance of two lenses (brain-functions) through which alone we can see anything at all: they are called space and time, and in their interpenetration causality. For everything we perceive under these conditions is merely phenomenon; we do not know what things are like in themselves, i.e. independently of our perception of them. This is the actual kernel of the Kantian philosophy.
”
”
Arthur Schopenhauer (Essays and Aphorisms)
“
What else are mirrors meant for then
But so each knows himself from other men!’
Your mirrors show the husk and not the kernel;
The soul-revealing mirror is eternal:
This mirror for the soul is the saint’s face,
The one who is beyond all time and space—
‘Heart, seek a mirror of this type!’ I’d scream,
‘Reach for the ocean, and not a mere stream!
”
”
Jawid Mojaddedi (The Masnavi, Book Two)
“
The most skilled manipulators are able to mix lies with the truth. This enables them to paint a more credible illusion as the kernels of truth embedded in the illusion gives those around them the impression that what they are saying is actually real. As a result, they may get away with their lies. However, please bear in mind that the devil is in the details. So, if you knit pick long enough, you may find that you are dealing with an impostor. That’s why it’s always a good idea to take everything you hear with a grain of salt. If you choose to take everything you hear at face value, you may become disappointed when you realize that you believed someone who was deliberately trying to fool you.
”
”
William Cooper (Dark Psychology and Manipulation: Discover 40 Covert Emotional Manipulation Techniques, Mind Control, Brainwashing. Learn How to Analyze People, NLP Secret ... Effect, Subliminal Influence Book 1))
“
Art, as we have known it, stands on the threshold of the transcendental. It points beyond this world of accidental and disconnected things to another realm, in which human life is endowed with an emotional logic that makes suffering noble and love worthwhile. Nobody who is alert to beauty, therefore, is without the concept of redemption—of a final transcendence of mortal disorder into a ‘kingdom of ends’. In an age of declining faith art bears enduring witness to the spiritual hunger and immortal longings of our species. Hence aesthetic education matters more today than at any previous period in history. As Wagner expressed the point:‘It is reserved to art to salvage the kernel of religion, inasmuch as the mythical images which religion would wish to be believed as true are apprehended in art for their symbolic value, and through ideal representation of those symbols art reveals the concealed deep truth within them.’ Even for the unbeliever, therefore the ‘real presence’ of the sacred is now one of the highest gifts of art.
”
”
Roger Scruton
“
It’s like lifting—when you’re deep in a set, your arms are shaking and you’re a melting candle of pain that’s burned down to zero; you got nothing left to give. And in that darkest moment you cry out, ‘Lord, I can’t!’ and a voice comes out of the darkness and says, ‘But I can.’ That’s the still, small voice that comes in the night. That’s the sound of something bigger than yourself. That’s God talking. And he says, ‘You are not alone,’ and enfolds you in wings of the eagle, and he carries you up. But first you have to burn away everything that doesn’t matter. You have to burn away leg warmers and New Age crystals, and Madonna, and aerobics, and New Kids on the Block, and the boy you’re sweet on in school. You burn away your parents, and your friends, and everything you ever cared about, and you burn away personal safety, conventional morality. And when all that is gone, when everything is swept away in the fire and everything around you is ash, what you have left is just a tiny nugget, a little kernel of something that is good, and pure, and true. And you pick that pebble up, and you throw it at the fortress this demon has built in your friend’s soul, this leviathan of hatred and fear and oppression, and you throw this tiny pebble and it hits that wall and it goes ping . . . and nothing happens. That’s when you’ll have the hardest doubts you ever had in your life. But never doubt the truth. Never underestimate it. Because a second later, if you’ve been through the fire, you’ll hear the cracks start to spread, and all those mighty walls and iron gates will collapse like a house of cards because you have harrowed yourself until all that’s left is truth. That’s what that pebble is, Abby. It’s our core.
”
”
Grady Hendrix (My Best Friend's Exorcism)
“
Devon Franklin
Oprah: One of the things that you say that really struck me is that if we look at our life as a movie and God as the director of our movie, then we use our faith to help propel us forward in trusting in the director, correct?
Devon Franklin: Yes. Absolutely. Because what I realized is that sometimes we, in the most difficult times in our story, we begin to lose faith.
Oprah: And start to think we’re in control of things. But all it takes is one wrong turn and we quickly remember that’s just not true. Here is what I love. You say: “The truth is, you and I are in control of only two things: how we prepare for what might happen, and how we respond to what just happened. The moment when things actually do happen belongs to God.”
Devon: Amen.
Oprah: Brilliant. Brilliant.
Devon: It’s true. Because what happens is, the moments when things happen in our life, we don’t control. In a moment, life can change for the better or what in the moment may seem for the worse. So our job is to prepare.
Oprah: Prepare for only two things.
Devon: That’s right.
Oprah: Prepare for what might happen. And then how we respond to what has happened.
Devon: That’s right. Because so many times what keeps us in that valley of depression, what keeps us in that valley of frustration, is our response to a moment and not recognizing that it is exactly that. It’s a moment. It’s one scene of your movie. And what makes a great movie are scenes that are put together of great conflict.
Oprah: Okay. You also say: “The key is remembering your story. The spiritual journey parallels the steps involved in bringing a movie from the initial idea to theatrical release.”
Devon: Yes.
Oprah: So you start with the kernel of an idea, a process known as development and production. And development begins when you have the first vision of what you can be, correct?
Devon: Exactly. You can’t write a movie unless you know what the movie is supposed to be about. That’s what development is. Sometimes we get so frustrated in our lives, but we have to go back and say, “Wait a minute. Do I understand what the big idea of my life is supposed to be?” If my life is a story, then I have to know the point of my story. And sometimes what happens when we start developing a movie, the producers may have one vision of what the movie is supposed to be and the studio has another version and then the movie becomes nothing because there’s no clarity. So with our life, we have to have clarity of what we’re supposed to do. What do we believe we’re called to do in this life? And then that way it gives our whole development process more shape.
”
”
Oprah Winfrey (The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations)
“
Most tales carry a kernel of truth, else they're soon forgotten.
”
”
Karen Azinger (The Skeleton King (The Silk & Steel Saga, #3))
“
There’s a kernel of truth in every lie.
”
”
Timothy M. Burke (The Paradiso Files: Boston's Unknown Serial Killer)
“
IT IS COMMON AMONG humans to see things not as they are, but as what their imaginations perceive them to be. Experiences are romanticized, and folklore is created. However, some of these tall tales are not as far-fetched as you might think. For, within a lie, there is always a kernel of truth.
”
”
Elle Christensen (Protecting Shaylee (The Fae Guard, #1))
“
try to walk whenever I can. It’s good for Sprocket to walk. It’s good for me, too. Caramel sauce doesn’t taste itself.
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
Representing him. It’s a thing we lawyers do.” He leaned back on his elbows. “It’s super fun if you like arguing with people.” “But
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
Yes. That’s what she wants. She likes being reviled. It makes her feel alive. Now let her go.
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
People are hitting little old ladies on the head. Teachers are driving into trees. You are being arrested every other day by your childhood friend. Come back to California.” Funny,
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
How come so many men are fighting over you? Don’t they know what a pain in the neck you are?” “It’s
”
”
Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
The Mayan people had a different kind of encounter with the Christian cross. According to a legendary Mayan prophet, Chilam Balam, the arrival of white conquerors would be presaged by a cross symbol. The conquerors naturally interpreted this prophecy as a divine message that the Maya should renounce their own gods, convert to Christianity, and submit to Spanish rule. Analysis of the authenticity of this prophecy (and of the existence of Chilam Balam) has suggested that the claim, rather than a wholly fabricated justification for colonial subjugation of the natives, contains a kernel of truth.
”
”
Robin M. Jensen (The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy)
“
I saw a pretty shop across the Sidra the other day. It sold what looked to be lots of lacy little things. Am I allowed to buy that on your credit, too, or does that come out of my personal funds?'
Those violet eyes again drifted to me. 'I'm not in the mood.'
There was no humour, no mischief. I could go warm myself by a fire inside, but...
He had stayed. And fought for me.
Week after week, he'd fought for me, even when I had no reaction, even when I had barely been able to speak or bring myself to care if I lived or died or ate or starved. I couldn't leave him to his own dark thoughts, his own guilt. He'd shouldered them alone long enough.
So I held his gaze. 'I never knew Illyrians were such morose drunks.'
'I'm not drunk- I'm drinking,' he said, his teeth flashing a bit.
'Again semantics,' I leaned back in my seat, wishing I'd brought my coat. 'Maybe you should have slept with Cresseida after all- so you could both be sad and lonely together.'
'So you're entitled to have as many bad days as you want, but I can't get a few hours?'
'Oh, take however long you want to mope. I was going to invite you to come shopping with me for said lacy little unmentionables, but... sit up here forever, if you have to.'
He didn't respond.
I went on, 'Maybe I'll send a few to Tarquin- with an offer to wear them for him if he forgives us. Maybe he'll take those blood rubies right back.'
His mouth barely, barely tugged up at the corners. 'He'd see that as a taunt.'
'I gave him a few smiles and he handed over a family heirloom. I bet he'd give me the keys to his territory if I showed up wearing those undergarments.'
'Someone thinks mighty highly of herself.'
'Why shouldn't I? You seem to have difficulty not staring at me day and night.'
There it was - a kernel of truth and a question.
'Am I supposed to deny,' he drawled, but something sparked in those eyes, 'That I find you attractive?'
'You've never said it.'
'I've told you many times, and quite frequently, how attractive I find you.'
I shrugged, even as I thought of all those times- when I'd dismissed them as teasing compliments, nothing more. 'Well, maybe you should do a better job of it.'
The gleam in his eyes turned into something predatory. A thrill went through me as he braced his powerful arms on the table and purred, 'Is that a challenge, Feyre?'
I held that predator's gaze- the gaze of the most powerful male in Prythian. 'Is it?'
His pupils flared. Gone was the quiet sadness, the isolated guilt. Only that lethal force- on me. On my mouth. On the bob of my throat as I tried to keep my breathing even. He said, slow and soft, 'Why don't we go down to that store right now, Feyre, so you can try on those lacy little things- so I can help you pick which ones to send to Tarquin.'
My toes curled inside my fleece-lined slippers. Such a dangerous line we walked together.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
The Daglan ruled over the High Fae. And we, in turn, ruled the humans, along with the lands the Daglan allowed us to govern. Yet it was an illusion of power. We knew who our true masters were. We were forced to make the Tithe to them once a year. To offer up kernels of our power in tribute. To fuel their own power—and to limit our own. Bryce’s breath caught in her throat as an image of a Fae female kneeling at the foot of a throne appeared, a seed of light in her upheld hands. Smooth, delicate fingers closed around the Fae female’s droplet of power. It flickered, illumining pale skin. The hand that had claimed the power lifted, and Bryce stilled as the memory zoomed out to reveal the hand’s bearer: a black-haired, white-skinned Asteri. There was no mistaking the cold, otherworldly eyes. She lounged in golden robes, a crown of stars upon her head. Her red lips pulled back in a cold smile as her hand closed tightly around the seed of power. It faded into nothing, absorbed into the Asteri’s body. The Daglan became arrogant as the millennia passed, sure of their unending dominion over our world. But their overconfidence eventually blinded them to the enemies amassing at their backs, a force like none that had been gathered before. Bryce’s breath remained caught in her throat, Nesta still as death at her side, as the scene shifted to show a golden-haired High Fae female standing a step behind the Asteri’s throne. Her chin was lifted, her face as cold as her mistress’s. My mother served at that monster’s side for a century, a slave to her every sick whim. Bryce knew who it was before Silene spoke again. Knew whose truth she’d been led here, across the stars, to learn at last. Theia. 19 Lidia froze at Pollux’s words as he stepped into the steaming spray of the shower. “What do you mean they’ve fixed the Harpy?” The Hammer said over the noise of the water, tipping back his head to soak his golden hair, “They’ve been working on her as a pet project of sorts—Rigelus just told me. Apparently, it’s looking good.” “What is looking good?” Lidia asked, using all her training to keep her heartbeat calm. “That she’ll wake up. Rigelus needs one more thing.” Pollux opened the shower door and reached out a hand for her. An order more than an invitation. With fingers that felt far away, Lidia unbuttoned her uniform. “What about my cycle?” she
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3))
“
The Daglan ruled over the High Fae. And we, in turn, ruled the humans, along with the lands the Daglan allowed us to govern. Yet it was an illusion of power. We knew who our true masters were. We were forced to make the Tithe to them once a year. To offer up kernels of our power in tribute. To fuel their own power—and to limit our own. Bryce’s breath caught in her throat as an image of a Fae female kneeling at the foot of a throne appeared, a seed of light in her upheld hands. Smooth, delicate fingers closed around the Fae female’s droplet of power. It flickered, illumining pale skin. The hand that had claimed the power lifted, and Bryce stilled as the memory zoomed out to reveal the hand’s bearer: a black-haired, white-skinned Asteri. There was no mistaking the cold, otherworldly eyes. She lounged in golden robes, a crown of stars upon her head. Her red lips pulled back in a cold smile as her hand closed tightly around the seed of power. It faded into nothing, absorbed into the Asteri’s body. The Daglan became arrogant as the millennia passed, sure of their unending dominion over our world. But their overconfidence eventually blinded them to the enemies amassing at their backs, a force like none that had been gathered before. Bryce’s breath remained caught in her throat, Nesta still as death at her side, as the scene shifted to show a golden-haired High Fae female standing a step behind the Asteri’s throne. Her chin was lifted, her face as cold as her mistress’s. My mother served at that monster’s side for a century, a slave to her every sick whim. Bryce knew who it was before Silene spoke again. Knew whose truth she’d been led here, across the stars, to learn at last. Theia.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3))
“
There’s a kernel of truth in some of the most unlikely places.
”
”
Rachel Linden (The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie)
“
I don't know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don't want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It's depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who's not going to be a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back. You can't untell someone your secrets. You can't unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can't trust the person you handed them to.
”
”
Emily Henry
“
Warriors build empires around the kernel of truth that others overlook,
”
”
Kim Harrison (The Undead Pool (The Hollows, #12))
“
A well-written monologue will hold a kernel of truth for everyone who hears it. Even if it’s not their truth, right? That’s why we go back and listen to certain parts of certain movies, or dog-ear the pages of a book where the main character finally lets it out. Says their piece, because they want to be heard, and they want people to recognize the truth in it. It’s a way for them to be understood.
”
”
Alex Lucian (Tempting (Tempting, #1))
“
Most good legends were based on a kernel of truth, shrouded in layers of ignorance and imagination.
”
”
Michael Jason Brandt (Plagued, With Guilt)
“
The kernel of truth sank into the fertile soil of [her] imagination, possibilities for a happy resolution suggesting themselves in vague flashes of potential and promise...
”
”
Ana Chapman (Leap of Faith (Amish Miracles Series #1))
“
Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39) “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24) “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)
”
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John Ortberg (The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You)
“
The combination of bounty and spread challenges two common though contradictory worldviews. One common view is that advances in technology always boost incomes. The other is that automation hurts workers’ wages as people are replaced by machines. Both of these have a kernel of truth, but the reality is more subtle. Rapid advances in our digital tools are creating unprecedented wealth, but there is no economic law that says all workers, or even a majority of workers, will benefit from these advances.
”
”
Erik Brynjolfsson (The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies)
“
Rumors get started with a kernel of truth
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”
Kristen Hope Mazzola (Hat Trick (Shots on Goal #1))
“
Wow. And it’s true? She’s a stripper?” Noah stopped walking and looked at Paul. “No. She’s a pastor’s assistant.” “Right,” Paul said, losing that boyish grin the second he saw the angry tic in Noah’s jaw. “Okay, my bad. That wouldn’t do so much for you. Sorry.” Noah started walking again. “Sure makes life interesting, though,” he said. “And all this has made Ellie’s life a challenge, to say the least.” “And all that other stuff? Vanni says that other things he said—like about drugs and stuff—” “Not a kernel of truth to it,” Noah said. Both
”
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Robyn Carr (Forbidden Falls)
“
Legends, then, are seldom formed out of thin air. They grow out of something real. That original something may be extremely different from the final legend, but the kernel of truth is there nevertheless.
”
”
Catherine M. Andronik
“
I think every man a woman meets brings with him a kernel of truth about the concentric notions of men. So when they ask if my stories are true. I laugh since it would imply that i used every man in my life as my muse.
”
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Crystal Evans
“
Critics such as Slavoj Žižek accuse him of being a poster child for the cultural excesses of postmodern capitalism (“Ongoing ‘Soft Revolution’”). A recent round of denunciations underwritten by a mix of wonderment and red-baiting exclaim, “The founder of BuzzFeed wrote his senior thesis on the Marxism
of Deleuze and Guattari!,” adding to a long list of guilty associations—“the Israeli Defense Force reads A Thousand Plateaus!,” “Deleuze spouts the fashionable nonsense of pseudoscience!” Deleuze’s defenders are correct to dismiss such criticisms as either incomplete or outright spurious. Yet there
is a kernel of truth that goes back to an old joke—a communist is someone who reads Das Kapital; a capitalist is someone who reads Das Kapital and understands it.
”
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Andrew Culp (Dark Deleuze)
“
For example, while there is nothing redeeming about the “eager” disposition of opportunism, its “‘truth’ . . . what might be called its neutral kernel, resides in the fact that our relation with the world tends to articulate itself primarily through possibilities, opportunities, and chances, instead of according to linear and univocal directions.
”
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Sianne Ngai (Ugly Feelings)
“
I’m looking for a paramedic.” He grinned. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Did you have an idea of what size or shape paramedic you might want?” I
”
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Kristi Abbott (Kernel of Truth (Popcorn Shop Mystery #1))
“
Nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily; a fact has scarcely happened five minutes before its genuine kernel has vanished, been camouflaged, embellished, disfigured, annihilated by imagination and self-interest; shame, fear, generosity, malice, opportunism, charity, all the passions, good as well as evil, fling themselves on the fact and tear it to pieces; very soon it has vanished altogether.
”
”
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (The Leopard)
“
Someone thinks mighty highly of herself.” “Why shouldn’t I? You seem to have difficulty not staring at me day and night.” There it was—a kernel of truth and a question. “Am I supposed to deny,” he drawled, but something sparked in those eyes, “that I find you attractive?” “You’ve never said it.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
It was a rather grandiose mandate-from-heaven assessment of how indispensable he was to the progress of humankind. But like many of Musk’s most laughable assertions, it contained a kernel of truth.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
Stories make no promises of truth- yet through the study of folklore, history, archaeology, and anthropology, I've come to believe that beneath every legend lies a kernel of truth.
”
”
Signe Pike (The Forgotten Kingdom (The Lost Queen, #2))
“
Inasmuch as God is the father, I am the child. I have not emerged fully from the autistic wish for omniscience and omnipotence. I have not yet acquired the objectivity to realize my limitations as a human being, my ignorance, my helplessness. I still claim, like a child, that there must be a father who rescues me, who watches me, who punishes me, a father who likes me when I am obedient, who is flattered by my praise and angry because of my disobedience. Quite obviously, the majority of people have, in their personal development, not overcome this infantile stage, and hence the belief in God to most people is the belief in a helping father -a childish illusion. In spite of the fact that this concept of religion has been overcome by some of the great teachers of the human race, and by a minority of men, it is still the dominant form of religion.
Inasmuch as this is so, the criticism of the idea of God, as it was expressed by Freud, is quite correct. The error, however, was in the fact that he ignored the other aspect of monotheistic religion, and its true kernel, the logic of which leads exactly to the negation of this concept of God. The truly religious person, if he follows the essence of the monotheistic idea, does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God; he does not love God as a child loves his father or his mother; he has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. God becomes to him a symbol in which man, at an earlier stage of his evolution, has expressed the totality of that which man is striving for, the realm of the spiritual world, of love, truth and justice. He has faith in the principles which 'God' represents; he thinks truth, lives love and justice, and considers all of his life only valuable inasmuch as it gives him the chance to arrive at an ever fuller unfolding of his human powers -as the only reality that matters, as the only object of 'ultimate concern'; and, eventually, he does not speak about God -nor even mention his name, To love God, if he were going to use this word, would mean, then, to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love, for the realization of that which 'God' stands for in oneself.
From this point of view, the logical consequence of monotheistic thought is the negation of all 'theo-logy', of all 'knowledge about God'.
”
”
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)
“
„There are those who theorize that our dreams are simply manifestations of our subconscious thoughts and desires,“ Dirk mused, as if delivering an offhand dissertation. „Dreams do not often portray accurately the events upon which those thoughts and desires are formed, but they do demonstrate quite vividly the emotions behind them. We find ourselves involved in bizarre situations and disjointed events, and our tendency is often to dismiss the dream out-of-hand - a self-conscious response. But hidden within the thrashings of our subconscious is a kernel of truth about ourselves that needs to be understood - truth that sometimes we have refused to recognize while awake and now demands recognition while we sleep.
”
”
Terry Brooks (The Black Unicorn (Magic Kingdom of Landover, #2))
“
As we have seen, the conceptual frameworks through which we comprehend reality are necessarily partial; and although not all propositions capture truth in equal measure, or are true at all, many of them may incorporate kernels of truth, offer suggestive perspectives, and illuminate reality from neglected angles.
”
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Azar Gat (Ideological Fixation: From the Stone Age to Today's Culture Wars)
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There are likely kernels of truth in the complaints that can be turned into valuable insights.
”
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Alfred Ells (The Resilient Leader: How Adversity Can Change You and Your Ministry for the Better)
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Within every worry is an opportunity for positive action. In every lie, there is a kernel of truth. Behind every neurotic symptom is the misdirected desire to live fully and well. — DAVID K. REYNOLDS, CONSTRUCTIVE LIVING.
”
”
Thibaut Meurisse (Master Your Emotions: A Practical Guide to Overcome Negativity and Better Manage Your Feelings (Mastery Series Book 1))
“
Behind every legend, strange to say, can be found a kernel of truth, a group of facts around which the legend was built.
”
”
Richard Evelyn Byrd (The Secret Lost Diary of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and The Phantom of the Poles)
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When someone violates you sexually, it does not simply haunt and aggrieve you; it alters the very shape of your soul. And altered I was. Contrary to the mythology surrounding the unflinching nature of African-American women, we, too, experience trauma. Black women—our essence, our emotional intricacies, the indignities we carry in our bones—are the most deeply misunderstood human beings in history. Those who know nothing about us have had the audacity to try to introduce us to ourselves, in the unsteady strokes of caricature, on stages, in books, and through their distorted reflections of us. The resulting Fun House image, a haphazard depiction sketched beneath the dim light of ignorance, allows ample room for our strength, our rage and tenacity, to stand at center stage. When we express anger, the audience of the world applauds. That expression aligns with their portrait of us. As long as we play our various designated roles—as court jesters and as comic relief, as Aunt Jemimas and as Jezebels, as maids whisking aperitifs into drawing rooms, as shuckin’ and jivin’ half-wits serving up levity—we are worthy of recognition in their meta-narrative. We are obedient Negroes. We are dutiful and thus affirmable. But when we dare tiptoe outside the lines of those typecasts, when we put our full humanity on display, when we threaten the social constructs that keep others in comfortable superiority, we are often dismissed. There is no archetype on file in which a Black woman is simultaneously resolute and trembling, fierce and frightened, dominant and receding. My mother, a woman who, amid abuse, stuffed hope and a way out into the slit of a mattress, is the very face of fortitude. I am an heir to her remarkable grit. However, beneath that tough exterior, I’ve also inherited my mother’s tender femininity, that part of her spirit susceptible to bruising and bleeding, the doleful Dosha who sat by the window shelling peanuts, pondering how to carry on. The myth of the Strong Black Woman bears a kernel of truth, but it is only a half-seed. The other half is delicate and ailing, all the more so because it has been denied sunlight.
”
”
Cicely Tyson (Just As I Am)
“
The universal truth behind my specific issues is that most of us invest a lot of energy, one way or another, in trying to avoid fully experiencing the reality in which we find ourselves. We don’t want to feel the anxiety that might arise if we were to ask ourselves whether we’re on the right path, or what ideas about ourselves it could be time to give up. We don’t want to risk getting hurt in relationships or failing professionally; we don’t want to accept that we might never succeed in pleasing our parents or in changing certain things we don’t like about ourselves – and we certainly don’t want to get ill and die. The details differ from person to person, but the kernel is the same. We recoil from the notion that this is it – that this life, with all its flaws and inescapable vulnerabilities, its extreme brevity, and our limited influence over how it unfolds, is the only one we’ll get a shot at. Instead, we mentally fight against the way things are – so that, in the words of the psychotherapist Bruce Tift, ‘we don’t have to consciously participate in what it’s like to feel claustrophobic, imprisoned, powerless, and constrained by reality’.12 This struggle against the distressing constraints of reality is what some old-school psychoanalysts call ‘neurosis’, and it takes countless forms, from workaholism and commitment-phobia to co-dependency and chronic shyness.
”
”
Oliver Burkeman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It)
“
So, here's the first tip for working on your partner's core negative image of you: the more you refute it, the more you'll reinforce it. But the more you admit to the kernel of truth within your partner's exaggeration, the greater the odds that the exaggeration will relax. Try it. Don't defend yourself - yield. Yielding can work as a core negative image buster.
”
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Terrence Real (Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship (Goop Press))
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Indeed, Bialik’s anguished poem—long seen by critics, literary scholars, and historians as brilliant in its imaginative power but a distortion of the historical record—deserves to be reassessed. At its core is a kernel of historical truth that is painful to acknowledge, aired widely at the time and then, like so many other details, deemed shameful and therefore sidelined.
”
”
Steven J. Zipperstein (Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History)
“
I saw a pretty shop across the Sidra the other day. It sold what looked to be lots of lacy little things. Am I allowed to buy that on your credit, too, or does that come out of my personal funds?'
Those violet eyes again drifted to me. 'I'm not in the mood.'
There was no humour, no mischief. I could go warm myself by a fire inside, but...
He had stayed. And fought for me.
Week after week, he'd fought for me, even when I had no reaction, even when I had been been able to speak or bring myself to care if I lived or died or ate or starved. I couldn't leave him to his own dark thoughts, his own guilt. He'd shouldered them alone long enough.
So I held his gaze. 'I never knew Illyrians were such morose drunks.'
'I'm not drunk- I'm drinking,' he said, his teeth flashing a bit.
'Again semantics,' I leaned back in my seat, wishing I'd brought my coat. 'Maybe you should have slept with Cresseida after all- so you could both be sad and lonely together.'
'So you're entitled to have as many bad days as you want, but I can't get a few hours?'
'Oh, take however long you want to mope. I was going to invite you to come shopping with me for said lacy little unmentionables, but... sit up here forever, if you have to.'
He didn't respond.
I went on, 'Maybe I'll send a few to Tarquin- with an offer to wear them for him if he forgives us. Maybe he'll take those blood rubies right back.'
His mouth barely, barely tugged up at the corners. 'He'd see that as a taunt.'
'I gave him a few smiles and he handed over a family heirloom. I bet he'd give me the keys to his territory if I showed up wearing those undergarments.'
'Someone thinks mighty highly of herself.'
'Why shouldn't I? You seem to have difficulty not staring at me day and night.'
There it was - a kernel of truth and a question.
'Am I supposed to deny,' he drawled, but something sparked in those eyes, 'That I find you attractive?'
'You've never said it.'
'I've told you many times, and quite frequently, how attractive I find you.'
I shrugged, even as I thought of all those times- when I'd dismissed them as teasing compliments, nothing more. 'Well, maybe you should do a better job of it.'
The gleam in his eyes turned into something predatory. A thrill went through me as he braced his powerful arms on the table and purred, 'Is that a challenge, Feyre?'
I held that predator's gaze- the gaze of the most powerful male in Prythian. 'Is it?'
His pupils flared. Gone was the quiet sadness, the isolated guilt. Only that lethal force- on me. On my mouth. On the bob of my throat as I tried to keep my breathing even. He said, slow and soft, 'Why don't we go down to that store right now, Feyre, so you can try on those lacy little things- so I can help you pick which ones to send to Tarquin.'
My toes curled inside my fleece-lined slippers. Such a dangerous line we walked together.
”
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
I feel I’ve learned how an ethnic war can start, maybe even a genocide. First, there is the fear of an Other, a fear of being eclipsed, based on a kernel of truth. Someone’s social status is improving at someone else’s expense; someone’s demographic advantage may be at risk. A particular kind of leader may arise at such moments: a populist who understands the pain of those whose luck is running out, who claims to know how to protect those who are feeling victimized. He will profess to have no desire for political power. He may be a poet or an artist or a billionaire “drafted” into the position by the will of the people. He will simultaneously stir up people’s fear—of globalization, or demographic shifts, or multiculturalism—and claim to be the only one able to redress it. The binding ingredient is fear. Fear knits the leader to his followers. Fear becomes a rallying cry and a weapon. Over time, the victims, in thrall to their savior, become perpetrators.
”
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Jessica Stern (My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide)
“
How will that infrastructure, that secret of secrets this side of our theses and our theory, be able in turn to rest upon the acts of absolute consciousness? Does the descent into the realm of our 'archeology' leave our analytical tools intact? Does it make no changes at all in our conception of noesis, noema, and intentiomality--in our ontology? After we have made this descent, are we still entitled to seek in an analytics of acts what upholds our own and the world's life without appeal? We know that Husserl never made himself too clear about these questions. A few words are there like indicators pointing to the problem--signaling unthought-of elements to think about. To begin with, the element of a 'pre-theoretical constitution,' which is charged with accounting for 'pre-givens,' those kernels of meaning about which man and the world gravitate. We may with equal truth say of these pre-givens (as Husserl says of the body) either that they are always 'already constituted' for us or that they are 'never completely
constituted'—in short, that consciousness is always behind or ahead of them, never contemporaneous. Husserl was undoubtedly thinking of these singular beings when in another connection he evoked a constitution which would not proceed by grasping a content as an exemplification of a meaning or an essence (Auffassungsinhalt-Auffassung als . . .) , an operating or latent intentionality like that which animates time, more ancient than the intentionality of human acts. There must be beings for us which are not yet kept in being by the centrifugal activity of consciousness: significations it does not spontaneously confer upon contents, and contents which participate obliquely in a meaning in the sense that they indicate a meaning which remains a distant meaning and which is not yet legible in them as the monogram or stamp of thetic consciousness. In such cases we do still have a grouping of intentional threads around certain knots which govern them, but the series of retro-references (Rückdeutungen) which lead us ever deeper could not possibly reach completion in the intellectual possession of a noema. There is an ordered sequence of steps, but it is
without end as it is without beginning.
”
”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Signs)
“
The only reason I have alluded to this is that the ascetic ideal has, for the present, even in the most spiritual sphere, only one type of real enemy and injurer: these are the comedians of this ideal – because they arouse mistrust. Everywhere else where spirit is at work in a rigorous, powerful and honest way, it now completely lacks an ideal – the popular expression for this abstinence is ‘atheism’ –: except for its will to truth. But this will, this remnant of an ideal, if you believe me, is that ideal itself in its strictest, most spiritual formulation, completely eso- teric, totally stripped of externals, and thus not so much its remnant as its kernel. Unconditional, honest atheism (– its air alone is what we breathe, we more spiritual men of the age!) is therefore not opposed to the ascetic ideal as it appears to be; instead, it is only one of the ideal’s last phases of development, one of its final forms and inherent logical conclusions, – it is the awe-inspiring catastrophe of a two-thousand-year discipline in truth-telling, which finally forbids itself the lie entailed in the belief in
127 ‘the religion of suffering’.
118
Third essay
God. (The same process of development in India, completely independ- ently, which therefore proves something; the same ideal forcing the same conclusion; the decisive point was reached five centuries before the European era began, with Buddha or, more precisely: already with the Sankhya philosophy subsequently popularized by Buddha and made into a religion.) What, strictly speaking, has actually conquered the Christian God? The answer is in my Gay Science (section 357):128 ‘Christian moral- ity itself, the concept of truthfulness which was taken more and more seriously, the confessional punctiliousness of Christian conscience, trans- lated and sublimated into scientific conscience, into intellectual rigour at any price. Regarding nature as though it were a proof of God’s goodness and providence; interpreting history in honour of divine reason, as a con- stant testimonial to an ethical world order and ethical ultimate purpose; explaining all one’s own experiences in the way pious folk have done for long enough, as though everything were providence, a sign, intended, and sent for the salvation of the soul: now all that is over, it has conscience against it, every sensitive conscience sees it as indecent, dishonest, as a pack of lies, feminism, weakness, cowardice, – this severity makes us good Europeans if anything does, and heirs to Europe’s most protracted and bravest self-overcoming!’ . . . All great things bring about their own demise through an act of self-sublimation: that is the law of life, the law of necessary ‘self-overcoming’ in the essence of life, – the lawgiver himself is always ultimately exposed to the cry: ‘patere legem, quam ipse tulisti’.129 In this way, Christianity as a dogma was destroyed by its own morality, in the same way Christianity as a morality must also be destroyed, – we stand on the threshold of this occurrence. After Christian truthfulness has drawn one conclusion after another, it will finally draw the strongest con- clusion, that against itself; this will, however, happen when it asks itself, ‘What does all will to truth mean?’ . . . and here I touch on my problem again, on our problem, my unknown friends (– because I don’t know of any friend as yet): what meaning does our being have, if it were not that that will to truth has become conscious of itself as a problem in us? . . . Without a doubt, from now on, morality will be destroyed by the will to truth’s becoming-conscious-of-itself: that great drama in a hundred acts reserved for Europe in the next two centuries, the most terrible, most questionable drama but perhaps also the one most rich in hope . . .
”
”
nietsczhe
“
many false memories possess a kernel of truth, hidden under layers of invention.
”
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Erik Vance (Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain's Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal)
“
What else are mirrors meant for then
95
But so each knows himself from other men!’
Your mirrors show the husk and not the kernel;
The soul-revealing mirror is eternal:
This mirror for the soul is the saint’s face,
The one who is beyond all time and space—
‘Heart, seek a mirror of this type!’ I’d scream,
‘Reach for the ocean, and not a mere stream!
”
”
Jawid Mojaddedi (The Masnavi, Book Two)
“
Every story holds a kernel of truth. Some more, some less. It's all in the telling.
”
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Steena Holmes (The Forgotten Ones)
“
… Though I never agreed with him fully, a part of me wanted to listen to his words as if they contained kernel of truth and, yet another part, wanted to banish the echo of his words from my head …
”
”
P. Sheelwant (The Foe Within)
“
He’d concluded that “school’s not for smart kids,” a kernel of truth inside an excuse wrapped up as a brag: comfort for a refusenik.
”
”
Brian Alexander (Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town)
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That is the ultimate alternative: is the opposition between Loveand Law to be reduced to its “truth,” the opposition, internal to theLaw itself, between the determinate positive Law and the excessivesuperego injunction, the Law beyond every measure—that is to say,is the excess of Love with regard to the Law the form of appearanceof a superego Law, of a Law beyond any determinate law; or is theexcessive superego Law the way the dimension beyond the Law ap-pears withinthe domain of the Law, so that the crucial step to be ac-complished is the step (comparable to Nietzsche’s “High Noon”)from the excessive Law to Love, from the way Love appears withinthe domain of the Law to Love beyond the Law? Lacan himselfstruggled continuously with this same deeply Pauline problem: isthere love beyond Law? Paradoxically (in view of the fact that thenotion as unsurpassable Law is usually perceived as Jewish), in thevery last page of Four Fundamental Concepts,he identifies this stance oflove beyond Law as that of Spinoza, opposing it to the Kantian no-tion of moral Law as the ultimate horizon of our experience. InEthics of Psychoanalysis,Lacan deals extensively with the Pauline di-alectic of the Law and its transgression13—perhaps what we shoulddo, therefore, is read this Pauline dialectic together with its corol-lary, Saint Paul’s other paradigmatic passage, the one on love from 1Corinthians 13.
Crucial here is the clearly paradoxical place of Love with regard to All(to the completed series of knowledge or prophecies): first, SaintPaul claims that love is here even if we possess all of knowledge—then, in the second quoted paragraph, he claims that love is hereonly for incomplete beings, that is, beings who possess incompleteknowledge.When I “know fully . . . as I have been fully known,” willthere still be love? Although, in contrast to knowledge, “love neverends,” it is clearly only “now” (while I am still incomplete) that“faith, hope, and love abide.”
The only way out of this deadlock isto read the two inconsistent claims according to Lacan’s feminineformulas of sexuation:14even when it is “all” (complete, with no ex-ception), the field of knowledge remains, in a way, non-all, incom-plete—love is not an exception to the All of knowledge, but preciselythat “nothing” which makes incomplete even the complete series/field of knowledge. In other words, the point of the claim that, evenif I were to possess all knowledge, without love, I would be nothing,is not simply that withlove, I am “something”—in love, I am also noth-ing,but, as it were, a Nothing humbly aware of itself, a Nothing par-adoxically made rich through the very awareness of its lack.Only a lacking, vulnerable being is capable of love: the ultimatemystery of love, therefore, is that incompleteness is, in a way, higherthan completion. On the one hand, only an imperfect, lacking beingloves: we love because we do notknow all. On the other hand, evenif we were to know everything, love would, inexplicably, still behigher than completed knowledge. Perhaps the true achievement ofChristian is to elevate a loving (imperfect) Being to the place ofGod, that is, of ultimate perfection. That is the kernel of the Chris-tian experience. In the previous pagan attitude, imperfect earthlyphenomena can serve as signs of the unattainable divine perfection.In Christianity, on the contrary, it is physical (or mental) perfectionitself that is the sign of the imperfection (finitude, vulnerability, un-certainty) of you as the absolute person. becomes a sign of this spiritual dimension—not the sign of your“higher” spiritual perfection, but the sign of youas a finite, vulner-able person. Only in this way do we really break out of idolatry. Forthis reason, the properly Christian relationship between sex and loveis not the one between body and soul, but almost the opposite...
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ZIZEK
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I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. JOHN 12:24
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Anne Graham Lotz (Fixing My Eyes on Jesus: Daily Moments in His Word)
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Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who's not going to become a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back. You can't untell someone your secrets. You can't unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can't trust the person you handed them to.
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Emily Henry (Funny Story)