Legends Never Die Quotes

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. 'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked. 'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied. 'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.' 'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked. 'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!' The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: 'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.' 'What a lovely story,' the alchemist thought.

Guard your throats and hide your eyes. He’s not dead, you fools. Legends never die.

I had heard the old Indian legend about the red fern. How a little Indian boy and girl were lost in a blizzard and had frozen to death. In the spring, when they were found, a beautiful red fern had grown up between their two bodies. The story went on to say that only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, that spot was sacred.

Don Alfredo leaves us, but his memory will last forever in our hearts. Legends never die. Thanks for everything Maestro.

Heroes are remembered but legends never die.

Why now? Why not? Live or die, a man and a woman need love. There is a need in the race. We need to share. To belong. Perhaps you will die before the year is out. But remember this: to have may be taken from you, to have had never. Far better to have tasted love before dying, than to die alone.

It's strange," I say to Day later, as we both curl up on the floor. Outside, the hurricane rages on. In a few hours we'll need to head out. "It's strange being here with you. I hardly know you. But...sometimes it feels like we're the same person born into two different worlds." He stays quiet for a moment, one hand absently playing with my hair. "I wonder what we would've been like if I'd been born into a life more like yours,and you had been born into mine. Would we be just like we are now? Would I be one of the Republic's top soldiers? And would you be a famous criminal?" I lift my head off his shoulder and look at him. "I never did ask you about your street name.Why 'Day'?" "Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again.You live in the moment, you die in the moment,you take it all one day at a time." He looks toward the railway car's open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. "You try to walk in the light.

The Queen of Air and Darkness tilted back her head and laughed. A more ghastly sound I hope never to hear. ‘Do you think I care about these trifles?’ ‘Murder is no trifle, woman,’ Arthur said. ‘No? How many men have you killed, Great King? How many have you slain without cause? How many did you cut down that you might have spared? How many died because you in your battle-rage would not heed their pleas for mercy?’ The High King opened his mouth to speak, but could make no answer.

You may claim no affiliation with them, but perhaps some have crossed your path.And perhaps you'd like to help us find them." "Oh,sure.You killed my mother. You can imagine I'm dying to help you out." Thomas manages to ignore me again. He glances at the first photo projected on the wall. "Know this person?" I shake my head. "Never seen him before." Thomas clicks the remote. Another photo pops up. "How about this one?" "Nope." Another photo. "How about this?" "Nope." Yet another stranger pops up on the wall. "Seen this girl before?" "Never seen her in my life." More unfamiliar faces. Thomas goes through them without blinking an eye or questioning my responses. What a stupid puppet of the state. I watch him as we continue, wishing I weren't chained so I could beat this man to the ground.

The magnificent thing about her [Amelia Earhart] is, in the eyes of the world, she simply never died. Her fear never witnessed, her failure never recorded, her shiny twin-engine Electra never recovered. Earhart's legacy of inspiration is amplified because her adventure is perpetual. We don't think of her as dead; we think of her as missing. She is forever flying, somewhere beyond Lae, over that limitless blue horizon.

Never let the legend die

He thought about that visionary lady. To die, he thought, never knowing the fierce joy and attendant comfort of a loved one's embrace. To sink into that hideous coma, to sink then into death and, perhaps, return to sterile, awful wanderings. All without knowing what it was to love and be loved. That was a tragedy more terrible than becoming a vampire.

There's a story... a legend, about a bird that sings just once in its life. From the moment it leaves its nest, it searches for a thorn tree... and never rests until it's found one. And then it sings... more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. And singing, it impales itself on the longest, sharpest thorn. But, as it dies, it rises above its own agony, to outsing the lark and the nightingale. The thorn bird pays its life for just one song, but the whole world stills to listen, and God in his heaven smiles.

Then you’ll die in the midst of trying to realize your Personal Legend. That’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their Personal Legends were.

I shall die soon ... Here at this Dros. And what will I have achieved in my life? I have no sons nor daughters. No living kin... Few friends. They will say, 'Here lies Druss. He killed many and birthed none'." "They will say more than that," said Virae suddenly. "They'll say, 'Here lies Druss the Legend, who was never mean, petty nor needlessly cruel. Here was a man who never gave in, never compromised his ideals, never betrayed a friend, never despoiled a woman and never used his strength against the weak.' They'll say 'He had no sons, but many a woman asleep with her babes slept more soundly for knowing Druss stood with the Drenai.' They'll say many things, whitebeard. Through many generations they will say them, and men with no strength will find strength when they hear them." "That would be pleasant," said the old man, smiling.

He is a symbol. He is a legend. He is immortal. He is incorruptible. He is Batman. I am not him. When I die, he will live. Batman has no secret identity. He has no other. He is no one. He has only hosts--mere mortal men who don this suit, this symbol, to continue his crusade. He isn't a hero. He is a cure, a cure to the virus of the human condition. He is exactly like his enemies, and yet strikingly different. He is just as swift, strong, and smart as them, just as brutal, but in the other direction. He will never kill, and he will never die. He has no name. He is Batman.

Are the fae ever sane? We live in a world that isn't there half the time. We claim that windmills are giants, and because we say it, it's true. Our lives become myth and legend, until even we can't tell what we truly are from what we're told we ought to be. How can we live that way and be considered sane? My lord was never sane, but he was my love once. He always will be, somewhere. Wherever it is that the once upon a times go when they die.

Hate was just a legend And war was never known The people worked together And they lifted many stones. They carried them to the flatlands And they died along the way But they built up with their bare hands What we still can't do today.

So, Kurt Cobain kills himself at 27 and becomes a legend. People like that are one in a million. I'm just a normal human being. I agonize and suffer, but I also laugh all the time. People all die someday and disappear as if they never existed, but that's natural. I though I wasn't afraid of dying. No, NOBODY is actually afraid of dying itself. The pain of suffering lasts for an instant. What truly agonizes me... Is the thought of your crying face from far far across the entire galaxy. You were always prettiest when you smiled.

I've never paid mind to legends ,unless I'm the legend of discussion, but even I know the stories. Ones that warn of any human who holds a siren' s heart being granted immunity to our song. It's said that's why we turn to see foam when we die

Part of the reason I haven’t found a man who appeals to me is because men aren’t raised to be men anymore, in my opinion. Gone are the take-the-bull-by-the-horns, never-say-die men legends are made of.

Can you lay your life down, so a stranger can live? Can you take what you need, but take less than you give? Could you close every day, without the glory and fame? Could you hold your head high, when no one knows your name? That's how legends are made, at least that's what they say. We say goodbye, but never let go. We live, we die, cause you can't save every soul. Gotta take every chance to, show that you're the kinda man who; Will never look back, never look down, and never let go.

But we are always running out of time. There is never enough time. That is the sad predicament of life: To never have enough time. To start dying the second you are born…

This revolution was a legend in the making. The kind of tale that sprawled out long before me and far beyond my reach. The sort of epic that was told over and over to explain how the world was never the same after this handful of people lived and fought and won or died trying. And after it happened, the story seemed somehow inevitable. Like the world was waiting to be changed, needing to be saved, and the players in the tale were all plucked out of their lives and moved into places exactly where they needed to be, like pieces on a board, just to make this story come true. But it was wilder and more terrifying and intoxicating, and more uncertain, than I’d ever thought. And I could be part of it. If I wanted to. It was getting way too late to rip myself out of this story now, or to rip it out of me. “Where

Candle In the Wind Author: Bernie Tauplin Goodbye Norma Jeane. Though I never knew you at all. You had the grace to hold yourself While those around you crawled. And they crawled out of the woodwork, And they whispered into your brain, They set you on the treadmill And they made you change your name. And it seems to me you lived your life Like a candle in the wind, Never knowing who to cling to When the rain set in. And I would have liked to have known you But I was just a kid, Your candle burned out long before Your legend ever did. Loneliness was tough. The toughest role you ever played. Hollywood created a superstar And pain was the price you paid. Even when you died The press still hounded you- All the paper had to say Was that Marilyn was found in the nude. Goodbye Norma Jeane. Though I never knew you at all. You had the grace to hold yourself While those around you crawled. Goodbye Norma Jeane. From the young man in the 22nd row Who sees you as something more than sexual, More than just our Marilyn Monroe.

I was not a great man whose history has been recorded for children to study in school. No bells will ring for me, no flags descend upon their mast. For I was an ordinary man, my son, one of many, with ordinary hopes and ordinary dreams and ordinary fears. I, too, dreamed of wealth and riches, health and strength. I, too, feared hunger and poverty, war and weakness. I was the neighbour who lived in the next house. The man standing in the subway on his way to work: who held a match to his cigarette: who walked with his dog. I was the soldier shaking with fear: the man berating the umpire at the ball game: the citizen in the privacy of the voting booth, happily electing the worthless candidate. I was the man who lived a thousand times and died a thousand times in all man’s six thousand years of record. I was the man who sailed with Noah  in his ark, who was the multitude that crossed the sea that Moses held apart, who hung from the cross next to Christ. I was the ordinary man about whom songs are never written, stories are never told, legends are never remembered.

Signs never lie. Legends never die. Quandaries are stilled, when visions are filled.” Temnon, Nemantia, and I stood there, not knowing how to respond. “Uh,” I stammered, “is that a part of the Seer’s vision?” “Gracious, no,” Maudine tittered. “I made that up myself. But it sounds deliciously legendary, doesn’t it?

The monster, Hitler, died like Uther, frightened, hiding, haunted by his crimes and his wholly reasonable belief that all decent human beings would turn their backs on him. Who really cares where Hitler’s bones lie, or how he died, as long as he is safely dead? Now, in the twenty-first century, Karl Marx’s grave in a London cemetery is no longer a rallying cry to the poisoned idea that the end justifies the means. We shall never know for certain where Arthur lies, or if he even lived. If he was a myth, then it was necessary for human beings to invent him. Hail, Arthur, King of the Britons! I wish another hero would take your place, now that the west has such a need of you.

Then you'll die in the midst of trying to realize your Personal Legend. That's a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their Personal Legends were.

Gods do not die, they are transformed. They are sundered, reforged, slain, reborn, eaten and regurgitated. The debts of our legends are never cancelled, because the seed of their renewal is contained in each payment.

I write to preserve the legends of yesterday in hopes that others to come will record the legends of today. For tyrants are feared, then reviled, and soon forgotten. Yet, for as long as men and women tell stories, legends will never die!

I-I know you think me a monster, and maybe I am, b-but please never doubt how much I believed in you. Everything I did was for you. Yes, I did it all for you! I would live and die for you. Over and over if I had to. I was never your enemy.

I pray that the world never runs out of dragons. I say that in all sincerity, though I have played a part in the death of one great wyrm. For the dragon is the quintessential enemy, the greatest foe, the unconquerable epitome of devastation. The dragon, above all other creatures, even the demons and the devils, evokes images of dark grandeur, of the greatest beast curled asleep on the greatest treasure hoard. They are the ultimate test of the hero and the ultimate fright of the child. They are older than the elves and more akin to the earth than the dwarves. The great dragons are the preternatural beast, the basic element of the beast, that darkest part of our imagination. The wizards cannot tell you of their origin, though they believe that a great wizard, a god of wizards, must have played some role in the first spawning of the beast. The elves, with their long fables explaining the creation of every aspect of the world, have many ancient tales concerning the origin of the dragons, but they admit, privately, that they really have no idea of how the dragons came to be. My own belief is more simple, and yet, more complicated by far. I believe that dragons appeared in the world immediately after the spawning of the first reasoning race. I do not credit any god of wizards with their creation, but rather, the most basic imagination wrought of unseen fears, of those first reasoning mortals. We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in. There are so many people in the land who want an answer, a definitive answer, for everything in life, and even for everything after life. They study and they test, and because those few find the answers for some simple questions, they assume that there are answers to be had for every question. What was the world like before there were people? Was there nothing but darkness before the sun and the stars? Was there anything at all? What were we, each of us, before we were born? And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die? Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek. One self-proclaimed prophet came through Ten-Towns denying the possibility of an afterlife, claiming that those people who had died and were raised by priests, had, in fact, never died, and that their claims of experiences beyond the grave were an elaborate trick played on them by their own hearts, a ruse to ease the path to nothingness. For that is all there was, he said, an emptiness, a nothingness. Never in my life have I ever heard one begging so desperately for someone to prove him wrong. This is kind of what I believe right now… although, I do not want to be proved wrong… For what are we left with if there remains no mystery? What hope might we find if we know all of the answers? What is it within us, then, that so desperately wants to deny magic and to unravel mystery? Fear, I presume, based on the many uncertainties of life and the greatest uncertainty of death. Put those fears aside, I say, and live free of them, for if we just step back and watch the truth of the world, we will find that there is indeed magic all about us, unexplainable by numbers and formulas. What is the passion evoked by the stirring speech of the commander before the desperate battle, if not magic? What is the peace that an infant might know in its mother’s arms, if not magic? What is love, if not magic? No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith. And that, I fear, for any reasoning, conscious being, would be the cruelest trick of all. -Drizzt Do’Urden

It was something he had never quite understood about himself. He had seen thousands of men die in nearly ten years of war and could look on it at times with a near-total detachment, but an animal suffering - be it a horse or needra injured in battle, or the stag now dying - moved him deeply.

She’d entered a city made entirely of leather and paper. Celaena put a hand against her heart. Escape routes be damned. “I’ve never seen—how many volumes are there?” Chaol shrugged. “The last time anyone bothered to count, it was a million. But that was two hundred years ago. I’d say maybe more than that, especially given the legends that a second library lies deep beneath, in catacombs and tunnels.” “Over a million? A million books?” Her heart leapt and danced, and she cracked a smile. “I’d die before I even got through half of that!” “You like to read?” She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you?” Not waiting for an answer, she moved farther into the library, the train of her gown sweeping across the floor. She neared a shelf and looked at the titles. She recognized none of them. Grinning, she whirled and moved through the main floor, running a hand across the dusty books.

..Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it make us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with a thorn in it's breast, singing it's heart out and dying. Because it has to, it's driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

You were a hero,” Joan said. “Not just a hero. You were a legend. Like King Arthur.” Nick went to laugh, but the uncertain amusement died on his face when he saw that Joan wasn’t laughing with him. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “My grandmother used to tell me bedtime stories about you,” Joan said. “People aren’t afraid of heroes.” It wasn’t funny, but Joan heard her breath come out hard. For a moment, he looked confused, and then understanding. put a shadow in his eyes. “Monsters are.” “You were a hero,” Joan said, needing him to understand. “You were more than just a hero. You were the hero. People told stories about you. Made art depicting you.

This is what’s so terrible about grief: You relive the final moments of your beloved’s life for years and years and years. It’s like flying with one wing. You never become used to it. The shock might wear off, the images grow a little dimmer. But the panic creeps back while you sleep in the brightest part of the day. My dreams are drenched now with the pink foam of the cresting waves, waves pink with the blood of my Lil. The same pink as the ice flowers she had worn on our wingfast night, the pink of the garland she had draped over her head. I have a deep and abiding hatred of morning light now, of high noon, of anything that reminds me of the day my mate died.

This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals sails appeared charmed. They blazed red in the day and silver at night, like a magician’s cloak, hinting at mysteries concealed beneath, which Tella planned to uncover that night. Drunken laughter floated above her as Tella delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly in search of Nigel the Fortune-teller. Her first evening on the vessel she’d made the mistake of sleeping, not realizing until the following day that Legend’s performers had switched their waking hours to prepare for the next Caraval. They slumbered in the day and woke after sunset. All Tella had learned her first day aboard La Esmeralda was that Nigel was on the ship, but she had yet to actually see him. The creaking halls beneath decks were like the bridges of Caraval, leading different places at different hours and making it difficult to know who stayed in which room. Tella wondered if Legend had designed it that way, or if it was just the unpredictable nature of magic. She imagined Legend in his top hat, laughing at the question and at the idea that magic had more control than he did. For many, Legend was the definition of magic. When she had first arrived on Isla de los Sueños, Tella suspected everyone could be Legend. Julian had so many secrets that she’d questioned if Legend’s identity was one of them, up until he’d briefly died. Caspar, with his sparkling eyes and rich laugh, had played the role of Legend in the last game, and at times he’d been so convincing Tella wondered if he was actually acting. At first sight, Dante, who was almost too beautiful to be real, looked like the Legend she’d always imagined. Tella could picture Dante’s wide shoulders filling out a black tailcoat while a velvet top hat shadowed his head. But the more Tella thought about Legend, the more she wondered if he even ever wore a top hat. If maybe the symbol was another thing to throw people off. Perhaps Legend was more magic than man and Tella had never met him in the flesh at all. The boat rocked and an actual laugh pierced the quiet. Tella froze. The laughter ceased but the air in the thin corridor shifted. What had smelled of salt and wood and damp turned thick and velvet-sweet. The scent of roses. Tella’s skin prickled; gooseflesh rose on her bare arms. At her feet a puddle of petals formed a seductive trail of red. Tella might not have known Legend’s true name, but she knew he favored red and roses and games. Was this his way of toying with her? Did he know what she was up to? The bumps on her arms crawled up to her neck and into her scalp as her newest pair of slippers crushed the tender petals. If Legend knew what she was after, Tella couldn’t imagine he would guide her in the correct direction, and yet the trail of petals was too tempting to avoid. They led to a door that glowed copper around the edges. She turned the knob. And her world transformed into a garden, a paradise made of blossoming flowers and bewitching romance. The walls were formed of moonlight. The ceiling was made of roses that dripped down toward the table in the center of the room, covered with plates of cakes and candlelight and sparkling honey wine. But none of it was for Tella. It was all for Scarlett. Tella had stumbled into her sister’s love story and it was so romantic it was painful to watch. Scarlett stood across the chamber. Her full ruby gown bloomed brighter than any flowers, and her glowing skin rivaled the moon as she gazed up at Julian. They touched nothing except each other. While Scarlett pressed her lips to Julian’s, his arms wrapped around her as if he’d found the one thing he never wanted to let go of. This was why love was so dangerous. Love turned the world into a garden, so beguiling it was easy to forget that rose petals were as ephemeral as feelings, eventually they would wilt and die, leaving nothing but the thorns.

Cixi’s lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity. Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi’s future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons’ brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines’ wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more “than nine million taels of silver had gone missing. Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty. Cixi’s great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amounted to 43,200 taels – a colossal sum, next to which his official salary had been a pittance. As he had died a long time ago, his son, Cixi’s grandfather, was obliged to pay half the sum, even though he worked in the Ministry of Punishments and had nothing to do with the state coffer. After three years of futile struggle to raise money, he only managed to hand over 1,800 taels, and an edict signed by the emperor confined him to prison, only to be released if and when his son, Cixi’s father, delivered the balance. The life of the family was turned upside down. Cixi, then eleven years old, had to take in sewing jobs to earn extra money – which she would remember all her life and would later talk about to her ladies-in-waiting in the court. “As she was the eldest of two daughters and three sons, her father discussed the matter with her, and she rose to the occasion. Her ideas were carefully considered and practical: what possessions to sell, what valuables to pawn, whom to turn to for loans and how to approach them. Finally, the family raised 60 per cent of the sum, enough to get her grandfather out of prison. The young Cixi’s contribution to solving the crisis became a family legend, and her father paid her the ultimate compliment: ‘This daughter of mine is really more like a son!’ Treated like a son, Cixi was able to talk to her father about things that were normally closed areas for women. Inevitably their conversations touched on official business and state affairs, which helped form Cixi’s lifelong interest. Being consulted and having her views acted on, she acquired self-confidence and never accepted the com“common assumption that women’s brains were inferior to men’s. The crisis also helped shape her future method of rule. Having tasted the bitterness of arbitrary punishment, she would make an effort to be fair to her officials.

I’m sure you’re just dying to tell me all the campus gossip about me. Right?” “I do have a life. Maybe I’ve been too busy to listen to rumors,” he huffed, pretending to have hurt feelings. I looked at him. He sighed. “Okay, you win. I’m bored out of my skull. Second Magician is busy playing detective, and Gelsi is neck-deep in some project and I never see her anymore.” Dax paused dramatically. “My life is so boring that I have to live vicariously through your adventures.” “And since the rumors are so accurate—” “Your adventures have turned into legends.” He swept his arms wide, laughing. “So where are you off to now? Going to slay a dragon? Can Itag along as your lowly squire? I’ll polish your staff of power every night with my shirt. I promise.” “I’m glad my problems are keeping you entertained,

TC Campbell doesn’t need any introduction, the man is a legend in the prison community and outside when this very strong-minded man was trying to prove his innocence for the six murders he had been convicted for. TC went on a fifty-day hunger strike, he ended up in hospital. This man was willing to die to prove his innocence, if he never done his famous hunger strike he probably would have never go the MPS in government to sit up and take note.

Dying is easy. Anyone can do that,” Suri said. “Living—going on after you’ve lost those you love, having to face each new day under the weight of their absence—is what’s hard. You have to witness a sun that is never again as bright and hear music that is no longer cheerful. Eating food will never fully satisfy, and you wake each morning to a shattered world that can never again be whole. Despite all this, you have to find a reason to breathe, to move.

You're still drunk on the stories you learned at your father’s knee, stories from a world that has passed away. But Leofric was the last gasp of a dying age. The Norman spike has driven itself deep into this soil. They have settled in the country and populated the towns, built fortresses and governed shires. They have left our brightest and best in a smoldering heap, from which the smoke can never more be gathered. We cannot expect to raise the stalk back up again when it has been ground into feed.

According to the gospels, Christ healed diseases, cast out devils, rebuked the sea, cured the blind, fed multitudes with five loaves and two fishes, walked on the sea, cursed a fig tree, turned water into wine and raised the dead. How is it possible to substantiate these miracles? The Jews, among whom they were said to have been performed, did not believe them. The diseased, the palsied, the leprous, the blind who were cured, did not become followers of Christ. Those that were raised from the dead were never heard of again. Can we believe that Christ raised the dead? A widow living in Nain is following the body of her son to the tomb. Christ halts the funeral procession and raises the young man from the dead and gives him back to the arms of his mother. This young man disappears. He is never heard of again. No one takes the slightest interest in the man who returned from the realm of death. Luke is the only one who tells the story. Maybe Matthew, Mark and John never heard of it, or did not believe it and so failed to record it. John says that Lazarus was raised from the dead. It was more wonderful than the raising of the widow’s son. He had not been laid in the tomb for days. He was only on his way to the grave, but Lazarus was actually dead. He had begun to decay. Lazarus did not excite the least interest. No one asked him about the other world. No one inquired of him about their dead friends. When he died the second time no one said: “He is not afraid. He has traveled that road twice and knows just where he is going.” We do not believe in the miracles of Mohammed, and yet they are as well attested as this. We have no confidence in the miracles performed by Joseph Smith, and yet the evidence is far greater, far better. If a man should go about now pretending to raise the dead, pretending to cast out devils, we would regard him as insane. What, then, can we say of Christ? If we wish to save his reputation we are compelled to say that he never pretended to raise the dead; that he never claimed to have cast out devils. We must take the ground that these ignorant and impossible things were invented by zealous disciples, who sought to deify their leader. In those ignorant days these falsehoods added to the fame of Christ. But now they put his character in peril and belittle the authors of the gospels. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Why did he not again enter the temple and end the old dispute with demonstration? Why did he not confront the Roman soldiers who had taken money to falsely swear that his body had been stolen by his friends? Why did he not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did he not say to the multitude: “Here are the wounds in my feet, and in my hands, and in my side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but death is my slave”? Simply because the resurrection is a myth. The miracle of the resurrection I do not and cannot believe. We know nothing certainly of Jesus Christ. We know nothing of his infancy, nothing of his youth, and we are not sure that such a person ever existed. There was in all probability such a man as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been crucified; but that he was the Son of God, or that he was raised from the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the nature of things, can never be, substantiated.

The Legend of Rainbow Bridge by William N. Britton Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge When a pet dies who has been especially close to a person here on earth, that pet goes to a Rainbow Bridge. There are beautiful meadows and grassy hills there for all our special friends so they can run and play together. There is always plenty of their favorite food to eat, plenty of fresh spring water for them to drink, and every day is filled with sunshine so our little friends are warm and comfortable. All the pets that had been ill or old are now restored to health and youth. Those that had been hurt or maimed are now whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days gone by. The pets we loved are happy and content except for one small thing. Each one misses someone very special who was left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one of them suddenly stops and looks off into the distant hills. It is as if they heard a whistle or were given a signal of some kind. Their eyes are bright and intent. Their body beings to quiver. All at once they break away from the group, flying like a deer over the grass, their little legs carrying them faster and faster. You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you hug and cling to them in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. Happy kisses rain upon your face. Your hands once again caress the beloved head. You look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet so long gone from your life, but never gone from your heart. Then with your beloved pet by your side, you will cross the Rainbow Bridge together. Your Sacred Circle is now complete again.

Each of us has something within us which won't be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that's all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, its self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

He studied, fretted, complained. He never should have taken the job; it was impossible. The next day he would be flying: he never should have taken the job; it was too simple to be worth his labors. Joy to despair, joy to despair, day to day, hour to hour. Sometimes Inigo would wake to find him weeping: “What is it, Father?” “It is that I cannot do it. I cannot make the sword. I cannot make my hands obey me. I would kill myself except what would you do then?” “Go to sleep, Father.” “No, I don’t need sleep. Failures don’t need sleep. Anyway, I slept yesterday.” “Please, Father, a little nap.” “All right; a few minutes; to keep you from nagging.” Some nights Inigo would awake to see him dancing. “What is it, Father?” “It is that I have found my mistakes, corrected my misjudgments.” “Then it will be done soon, Father?” “It will be done tomorrow and it will be a miracle.” “You are wonderful, Father.” “I’m more wonderful than wonderful, how dare you insult me.” But the next night, more tears. “What is it now, Father?” “The sword, the sword, I cannot make the sword.” “But last night, Father, you said you had found your mistakes.” “I was mistaken; tonight I found new ones, worse ones. I am the most wretched of creatures. Say you wouldn’t mind it if I killed myself so I could end this existence.” “But I would mind, Father. I love you and I would die if you stopped breathing.” “You don’t really love me; you’re only speaking pity.” “Who could pity the greatest sword maker in the history of the world?” “Thank you, Inigo.” “You’re welcome, Father.” “I love you back, Inigo.” “Sleep, Father.” “Yes. Sleep.” A whole year of that. A year of the handle being right, but the balance being wrong, of the balance being right, but the cutting edge too dull, of the cutting edge sharpened, but that threw the balance off again, of the balance returning, but now the point was fat, of the point regaining sharpness, only now the entire blade was too short and it all had to go, all had to be thrown out, all had to be done again. Again. Again. Domingo’s health began to leave him. He was fevered always now, but he forced his frail shell on, because this had to be the finest since Excalibur. Domingo was battling legend, and it was destroying him. Such a year.

The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom. Without access to true chaos, we’ll never have true peace. Unless everything can get worse, it won’t get any better. This is all stuff the Mommy used to tell him. She used to say, “The only frontier you have left is the world of intangibles. Everything else is sewn up too tight.” Caged inside too many laws. By intangibles, she meant the Internet, movies, music, stories, art, rumors, computer programs, anything that isn’t real. Virtual realities. Make-believe stuff. The culture. The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it’s only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair. And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. The king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be. This

[…] if sophistication is the ability to put a smile on one's existential desperation, then the fear of a glossy sheen is actually the fear that surface equals depth. *** […] we wake up, we do something—anything—we go to sleep, and we repeat it about 22,000 more times, and then we die. *** Part of our new boredom is that our brain doesn't have any downtime. Even the smallest amount of time not being engaged creates a spooky sensatino that maybe you're on the wrong track. Reboot your computer and sit there waiting for it to do its thing, and within seventeen seconds you experience a small existential implosion when you remember that fifteen years ago life was nothing but this kind of moment. Gosh, mabe I'll read a book. Or go for a walk. Sorry. Probably not going to happen. Hey, is that the new trailer for Ex Machina? *** In the 1990s there was that expression, "Get a life!" You used to say it to people who were overly fixating on some sort of minutia or detail or thought thread, and by saying, "Get a life," you were trying to snap them out of their obsession and get them to join the rest of us who are still out in the world, taking walks and contemplating trees and birds. The expression made sense at the time, but it's been years since I've heard anyone use it anywhere. What did it mean then, "getting a life"? Did we all get one? Or maybe we've all not got lives anymore, and calling attention to one person without a life would put the spotlight on all of humanity and our now full-time pursuit of minutia, details and tangential idea threads. *** I don't buy lottery tickets because they spook me. If you buy a one-in-fifty-million chance to win a cash jackpoint, you're simultaneously tempting fate and adding all sorts of other bonus probabilities to your plance of existence: car crashes, random shootings, being struck by a meteorite. Why open a door that didn't need opening? *** I read something last week and it made sense to me: people want other people to do well in life but not too well. I've never won a raffle or prize or lottery draw, and I can't help but wonder how it must feel. One moment you're just plain old you, and then whaam, you're a winner and now everyone hates you and wants your money. It must be bittersweet. You hear all those stories about how big lottery winners' lives are ruined by winning, but that's not an urban legend. It's pretty much the norm. Be careful what you wish for and, while you're doing so, be sure to use the numbers between thirty-two and forty-nine.

We’ve had no luck in finding a cure or even a hint of one. Marry. Forge an alliance. Make an heir. Secure the throne and Ravka’s future.” “I will,” he said wearily. “I’ll do all of it. But not tonight. Tonight let’s pretend we’re an old married couple.” If any other man had said such a thing, she would have punched him in the jaw. Or possibly taken him to bed for a few hours. “And what does that entail?” “We’ll tell each other lies as married couples do. It will be a good game. Go on, wife. Tell me I’m a handsome fellow who will never age and who will die with all of his own teeth in his head. Make me believe it.” “I will not.” “I understand. You’ve never had a talent for deception.” Zoya knew he was goading her, but her pride pricked anyway. “How can you be so sure? Perhaps the list of my talents is so long you just haven’t gotten to the end.” “Go on, then, Nazyalensky.” “Dearest husband,” she said, making her voice honey sweet, “did you know the women of my family can see the future in the stars?” He huffed a laugh. “I did not.” “Oh yes. And I’ve seen your fate in the constellations. You will grow old, fat, and happy, father many badly behaved children, and future generations will tell your story in legend and song.” “Very convincing,” Nikolai said. “You’re good at this game.

Better if I do. The Nadir know me. "Death-walker." I'm part of their legends. They think I'm an ancient god of death stalking the world.' 'Are they wrong, I wonder?' said Rek, smiling. 'Maybe not. I never wanted it, you know. All I wanted was to get my wife back. Had slavers not taken her I would have been a farmer. Of that I am sure - though Rowena doubted it. There are times when I do not much like what I am.' 'I'm sorry, Druss. It was a jest,' said Rek. 'I do not see you as a death-god. You are a man and a warrior. But most of all, a man.' 'It's not you, boy; your words only echo what I already feel. I shall die soon . . . Here at this Dros. And what will I have achieved in my life? I have no sons nor daughters. No living kin . . . Few friends. They will say, "Here lies Druss. He killed many and birthed none." ' 'They will say more than that,' said Virae suddenly. 'They'll say, "Here lies Druss the Legend, who was never mean, petty, nor needlessly cruel. Here was a man who never gave in, never compromised his ideals, never betrayed a friend, never despoiled a woman and never used his strength against the weak." They'll say "He had no sons, but many a woman asleep with her babes slept more soundly for knowing Druss stood with the Drenai." They'll say many things, whiteboard. Through many generations they will say them, and men with no strength will find strength when they hear them.' 'That would be pleasant,' said the old man, smiling.

We’ve been instructed to reject any trace of poetry, myth, hyperbole, or symbolism even when those literary forms are virtually shouting at us from the page via talking snakes and enchanted trees. That’s because there’s a curious but popular notion circulating around the church these days that says God would never stoop to using ancient genre categories to communicate. Speaking to ancient people using their own language, literary structures, and cosmological assumptions would be beneath God, it is said, for only our modern categories of science and history can convey the truth in any meaningful way. In addition to once again prioritizing modern, Western (and often uniquely American) concerns, this notion overlooks one of the most central themes of Scripture itself: God stoops. From walking with Adam and Eve through the garden of Eden, to traveling with the liberated Hebrew slaves in a pillar of cloud and fire, to slipping into flesh and eating, laughing, suffering, healing, weeping, and dying among us as part of humanity, the God of Scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops. At the heart of the gospel message is the story of a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross. Dignified or not, believable or not, ours is a God perpetually on bended knee, doing everything it takes to convince stubborn and petulant children that they are seen and loved. It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does.

For the lady’s husband to become actively jealous was considered both doltish and dishonorable, a breach of the spirit of courtesy. Yet the record suggests that this was a fairly common occurrence and one of the occupational hazards of being a troubadour. The most famous crime passionnel of the epoch was the murder of Guilhem de Cabestanh, a troubadour knight whose love for the Lady Seremonda aroused the jealousy of her husband, Raimon de Castel-Roussillon. The story goes that Raimon killed Guilhem while he was out hunting, removed the heart from the body, and had it served to his wife for dinner, cooked and seasoned with pepper. Then comes the great confrontation: “And when the lady had eaten of it, RAimon de Castel-Roussillon said unto her: “Know you of what you have eaten?’ And she said, ‘I know not, save that the taste thereof is good and savoury.’ Then he said to her that that she had eaten of was in very truth the head of SIr Guilhem of Cabestanh, and caused the head to be brought before her, that she might the more readily believe it. And when the lady had seen and heard this, she straightway fell into a swoon, and when she was recovered of it, she spake and said: “Of a truth, my Lord, such good meat have you given me that never more will I eat of other.” THen he, hearing this, ran upon her with his sword and would have struck at her head, but the lady ran to a balcony, and cast herself down, and so died.” ...the story is probably apocryphal… grisly details...borrowed from an ancient legend...the Middle Ages believed it and drew the intended moral conclusion-that husbands should leave well enough alone. Raimon was held up to scorn while Guilhem became one of the great heroes of the troubadour epoch.

The hurricane was almost upon her. If she didn’t leave right now, dragons on the lost continent would die. Dragons who might one day be her friends, if she saved them. Dragons who had no idea what was bearing down on them, because there was no one there to warn them. Yet. Clearsight took a deep breath, vaulted into the sky, and pointed herself west. Her mind immediately started flashing through all the ways she could die in the next two days. This was why she hated flying in storms. They were too unpredictable; the smallest twitch of the wind in the wrong direction could send her plummeting to the rocks below, or drive a stray palm branch into her heart. Don’t think about that. Think about the dragons who need you. The other vision was fading; the one where she flew southeast and hid. In that one, she’d arrived on the lost continent in the hurricane’s aftermath. The images of the devastation and dead bodies would be hard to shake off, even if she prevented them in reality. Will they believe me? Will they listen to me? In some of her visions, they did; in some, they didn’t. All she could do was fly her hardest and hope. The hurricane fought her at every wingbeat, as if it knew she was trying to snatch victims from its claws. Rain battered her ferociously. She felt like she’d be driven into the endless sea at any moment. Or maybe she’d drown up here, in the waterlogged sky. But this was only the outer edge of the storm; there was far worse still to come. Clearsight was trying to reach land before the really terrible fury behind her did. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down for a moment. At one point she glanced back and saw a spout of water sucked into the air. In the middle of it, an orca flailed desperately, before the storm flung it away. A while later, after the sun had apparently been swallowed for good, Clearsight saw an entire hut fly by her, then splinter apart. She had to duck quickly to a lower air current to avoid the debris. Where had it come from? Who had lived in it? She would never know, her visions told her. And then, when Clearsight was beginning to lose all feeling in her wings, she saw a shape loom out of the clouds ahead. A cliff. Land. A lot of land. A whole continent, in fact.

Legends never die....too bad the men who make them do.

The bee answered, “Give me a stinger so I can defend myself from humans.”  Zeus became sad because he loved humans.  “I’ll give you your sting to defend yourself if anyone tries to steal your honey,” he replied, “but know this . . . if you hurt mankind with your stinger, you will die, for your sting is your life.”  From this legend, the ancient Greeks demonstrated that, when praying, one should never wish evil upon another.

like that. But I haven’t lived long enough to see an Elector die. Outside of the promotion of the late Elector’s desired successor and some fake national election for show, I wouldn’t know how it goes. I guess the Republic just pretends it never happened and skips right ahead to the next Elector. Now I remember reading about this in one of my grade school classes. When the time comes for a new Elector Primo, the country must remind the people to focus on the positive. Mourning brings weakness and chaos. Moving forward is the only way. Yeah. The government’s that scared of showing uncertainty to

In love or pain, in joy and sadness, in loss and achievement, a Traveller along the Entertainment Leys joining these domains, these zones and points of sympathy, will therefore never ever be alone. Rod Stewart's cousin might be near, or Elton John's grandfather might have died just up the road. Be it suffering or transcendent joy, an Entertainment Traveller is held in an intercontinental web of healing glory which doesn't cost a penny, and has absolutely no concern for your previous moral life. Entertainment Priests are not deeply troubled men in nightshirts, most of whom have so many psychological problems before breakfast their personal depression nearly kills them promoting the comedown, the comeback, the punishment, the price to be paid at the toll gates of both sides of the schism. If the new Entertainment Priests are not fun, there is an absolute lock on their spiritual progress. They have to be Entertainers first and foremost, and they are to cast out of the temple the depressing landscape of fear and guilt and horrorof the Old Analogue Age, which was the pre-Entertainment Time. As Entertainment Citizens we will come to see that this past was a bleak landscape in which everything was poisoned, gassed, and strangled. It was a psychopath's world of tortured animals and old iron of industrial and scientific determinism. Now, like a billion-ton ice-pack, this spiritual hell is beginning a perceptible shift of paradigm into a landscape of purest Entertainment Legend.

Garden of the Dragons (Vol. Three, 'The 'Halla') Epilogue (abridged 'Tis an immortaled foreverness we go to, On that wind shorn and storm torrid plain, Where hopes, dreams and life never dies - As we encounter ourselves, and in our love The victory do we gain. Even so, there are more forgotten fables of This eternaled lass, She exists in our dreams forever, that shadow land Where true hearts do last. She is our story, the legends and myths as are we, A tale to be told to the child within, who forevermore is free. Rides she everlasting in our quietest stores, And summons up the courage to live of what we Have royally into been born. Yea, once more she rules the Forgottenland, She has learned to love, but forever Alone, she stands. But we should know, deep down inside, Kari doth smiles for she is one of her kind (For if nothing else, she appreciates her all, Who she is and in this, knowing she will never fall). Thus it is written perhaps with our dissent, That those in Hell are of the unrepent. A place of one's own choosing so it would seem, Moment by moment we enter therein with our false dreams. Yet those who are there know one truth above all, The strength of iron hopelessness - Of realities not false. A prison to some, a Heaven to others, Freedom reigns when earthen illusions are shattered asunder. And Kari, does she know her secret? Surely she does, That to love and to be oneself are blessings from Above.

Amidst the many and varied emotions that we as humans endure the human imagination fuses with the realities of outer space for a new born planet to emergence that catapults a message of dire warnings to us, a cataclysmic finale for the planet earth that has fallen prey to human arrogance and greed. The events of this story play themselves out in NASA when its spacecraft disappear, one after the other, and in the moments of hopelessness and expectation and the glances of disappear from the eyes of the world, and the feelings of the families. It is here that three of the best of the best that NASA has to offer, hero astronauts, are deployed to solve the riddle. David, a pompous man if ever there was one, a man who has never been able to hold onto a woman in a serious relationship, least of all the last two women he was involved with. Jack, the consummate womaniser who can’t get enough of his relationships with woman, while his dutiful wife Suzie remains at home, seething with pain for his many treacheries. Finally there is Tony, the kind of heart, and his angelic wife Angela and their tragic infant son Cody, the apple of their eye, a handsome boy and smart suffering from an incurable disease that is on the verge of killing him. With all of that they love and support him and find time to do good deeds for all, garnering the respect and love of all. As the astronauts arrive in the designated spot in space where the previous missions disappeared, they almost collide with a semi-invisible planet from legend, dragging them towards it with all their attempts to flee. They see within it things that go beyond the wildest dreams of mortal man till they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Then they realise that this planet is besotted with many dark and ancient secrets relating to the Pharaohs, as they also learn that the planets responds only to human emotion. Upon their return to earth the great surprise involving Cody takes place, and in the moment of farewell this mysterious planet sends a definite and resounding message to earth and all who reside on it. The surprises don’t end there, till we return a second time to this planet to discover even more of its secrets… The only remaining question then is, will the inhabitants of this world reveal them?

Immortality is subjective. Your stories will always be told. Your legend will never die. But your body can.

Failure can feel like the ultimate death sentence, but it’s actually a step forward. When we fail, life is pushing us in a different direction so we can experience something new. One adventure has ended and another is about to begin, because it must. Think of your activities in life as scientific experiments. Scientists expect the vast majority of their tests to fail, but they still view each test as a step forward, regardless of the outcome. This is because each failed test rules out that particular approach, narrowing the remaining scope of potential solutions. You might be thinking, “What if all of my experiments fail until the day I die?” Great question. That might happen, depending on how you define failure and success. Here’s the magical solution to that problem: The results of your experiments are of little consequence. Only the experiments themselves matter. The old platitude is true: It’s about the journey, not the destination. Doing experiments will account for 99% of your time on this earth. That’s the journey. The result of your experiments is the other 1%. If you enjoy 99% of your life (the time spent in experimentation), who cares about the results? This is how to remove the problem of failure. Failure is just a temporary result. Its effect is as big or as small as you allow it to be. Elon Musk is becoming a household name. He cofounded Paypal. He now runs two companies simultaneously. The first, Tesla Motors, builds electric cars. The second, SpaceX, builds rocket ships. Many people think of Elon Musk as a real-world Iron Man—a superhero. He’s a living legend. He works extremely hard, and he’s brilliant. Did you know that Elon Musk never worked at Netscape? This is interesting because he actually wanted to work there very badly. He applied to Netscape while he was in grad school at Stanford, but never received a response. He even went to Netscape’s lobby with resume in hand, hoping to talk to someone about getting a job. No one in the lobby ever spoke to Elon that day. After getting nervous and feeling ashamed of himself, he walked out. That’s right. Elon Musk failed to get hired at Netscape. The recruiting managers didn’t see a need for him, and he was too ashamed to keep badgering them. So what happened next? Well, we know what happened from there. Musk went on to become one of the most successful and respected visionaries of our time.[30] Take a deep breath and realize that there are no life-ending failures, only experiments and results. It’s also important to realize that you are not the failure—the experiment is the failure. It is impossible for a person to be a failure. A person’s life is just a collection of experiments. We’re meant to enjoy them and grow from them. If you learn to love the process of experimentation, the prospect of failure isn’t so scary anymore.

Those who put their heart and soul into something bigger than themselves, never die from the psyche of humanity.

During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—“the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions”—has been utterly ignored or forgotten. This episode was by far the largest of Elizabeth’s wars and the last significant effort of her reign. It was also the most costly in English lives lost, both common and noble. By some estimates, the rebellion resulted in half the population of Ireland dying through battle, famine, and disease, and the countryside—through the burning of forestland—was changed forever. Yet almost no one studies it, writes of it, or discusses it, even as the impact of that revolt continues to make headlines across the world more than four hundred years later. Likewise, few people outside Ireland have ever heard of Grace O’Malley, surely one of the most outrageous and extraordinary personalities of her century—at least as fascinating a character as her contemporary and sparring partner Elizabeth I. Of course history is written by the victors, and England was, by all accounts, the winner of the Irish Rebellion of the sixteenth century. But the mystery only deepens when we learn that the only contemporary knowledge we have of Grace’s exploits—other than through Irish tradition and legend—is recorded not in Ireland’s histories, but by numerous references and documentation in England’s Calendar of State Papers, as well as numerous official dispatches sent by English captains and governors such as Lords Sidney, Maltby, and Bingham. As hard as it is to believe, Grace O’Malley’s name never once appears in the most important Irish history of the day, The Annals of the Four Masters. Even in the two best modern books on the Irish Rebellion—Cyril Fall’s Elizabeth’s Irish Wars and Richard Berleth’s The Twilight Lords—there is virtually no mention made of her. Tibbot Burke receives only slightly better treatment. Why is this? Anne Chambers, author of my two “bibles” on the lives of Grace O’Malley (Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley) and Tibbot Burke (Chieftain to Knight)—the only existing biographies of mother and son—suggests that as for the early historians, they might have had so little regard for women in general that Grace’s exclusion would be expected. As for the modern historians, it is troubling that in their otherwise highly detailed books, the authors should ignore such a major player in the history of the period. It

In 1969 the Swedish folklorist Bengt Olsson and his partner, Peter Mahlin, spent a summer loitering around Beale Street in Memphis, interviewing and recording blues musicians. I'm certain it was hot, thankless work. In 1970, Olsson compiled some of those interviews into a short, now long-out-of-print book called Memphis Blues. In it, Olsson recounts a conversation with the guitarist Furry Lewis, who was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, in 1893 and come up playing blues with the Memphis legend W.C. Handy. Olsson never did much editorializing on the page - he just presented the material he'd collected - but there's a quote toward the end of the Lewis chapter that's become lodged permanently in my cortex, repeating endlessly like a koan: 'The people I used to play around with, they all done died out,' Lewis tells Olsson. 'And sometimes I get scared myself, 'cause it look like to me it gonna be mine next. You know, it's a funny thing, but you can do a thing for a-many years, and all of them die out and you still here,' he continued. 'And you know, that's more than a notion if you come up and just think about it.' I had thought about it. And I knew they were all still here, together, etched into shellac, tucked into sleeves. I could hear them.

Heroes are always remembered, mate-- but legends never die. I fully intend to become a legend." Captain James Delacroix

Don’t give in to your fears,” said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. “If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.” “But I have no idea how to turn myself into the wind.” “If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” “I’m not afraid of failing. It’s just that I don’t know how to turn myself into the wind.” “Well, you’ll have to learn; your life depends on it.” “But what if I can’t?” “Then you’ll die in the midst of trying to realize your Personal Legend. That’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their Personal Legends were. “But don’t worry,” the alchemist continued. “Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.

Then you'll die in the midst of trying to realize your personal legend. That's a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never knew what their personal legends were.

An old Krynnish legend told of a man who had once committed a deed so heinous that the gods themselves gathered to inflict his punishment. When they announced that, henceforth, the man was to have the ability to see into the future, the man laughed, thinking he had outwitted the gods. The man had, however, died a tortured death—something Caramon had never been able to understand. But now he understood, and his soul ached. Truly, no greater punishment could be inflicted upon any mortal. For, by seeing into the future and knowing what the outcome will be,

Remember kid, heros get remembered, but legends never die; follow your heart kid, and you'll never go wrong.

The story was about three women who haunted the forest of Aokigahara. According to legend, the trio had been dropped so deep into the vast, dense forest that they could never find their way out. The only souls they ever stumbled across were those who came there to die, and even those dark souls were so terrified of their hideous faces, they refused to speak with them. For the rest of their days, they were doomed to wander the sea of trees, surrounded by death and sorrow.

But I won’t get to die a hero like you. Women never do. We just get old, then we’re forgotten.

I cannot deny that my life is better, a thousand times better, than anything I ever knew in the Underdark. And yet, I cannot remember the last time I felt the anxiety, the inspiring fear, of impending battle, the tingling that can come only when an enemy is near or a challenge must be met. Oh, I do remember the specific instance—just a year ago, when Wulfgar, Guenhwyvar, and I worked the lower tunnels in the cleansing of Mithral Hall— but that feeling, that tingle of fear, has long since faded from memory. Are we then creatures of action? Do we say that we desire those accepted cliches of comfort when, in fact, it is the challenge and the adventure that truly give us life? I must admit, to myself at least, that I do not know. There is one point that I cannot dispute, though, one truth that will inevitably help me resolve these questions and which places me in a fortunate position. For now, beside Bruenor and his kin, beside Wulfgar and Catti-brie and Guenhwyvar, dear Guenhwyvar, my destiny is my own to choose. I am safer now than ever before in my sixty years of life. The prospects have never looked better for the future, for continued peace and continued security. And yet, I feel mortal. For the first time, I look to what has passed rather than to what is still to come. There is no other way to explain it. I feel that I am dying, that those stories I so desired to share with friends will soon grow stale, with nothing to replace them. But, I remind myself again, the choice is mine to make. –Drizzt Do’Urden

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

I never did ask you about your street name. Why ‘Day’?” “Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything’s possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.” He looks toward the railway car’s open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. “You try to walk in the light.

Signs never lie. Legends never die. Quandaries are stilled, when visions are filled.

Blood // Water - Grandson Evil - 8 Graves 11 Minutes - Yungblud Ft. Halsey & Travis Barker Hate The Way - G-Eazy Feat Blackbear Control - Halsey Play With Fire - Sam Tinnesz You Should See Me In A Crown - Billie Eilish Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Lorde Courage To Change - Sia You Broke Me First - Tate McRae Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde Sweet Dreams - Marilyn Manson Wicked Game - Daisy Gray Nobody’s Home - Avril Lavigne Stand By Me - Ki: Theory Paparazzi - Kim Dracula Bringing Me Down - Ki: Theory (feat. Ruelle) Therefore I am - Billie Eilish I see Red - Everybody Love An Outlaw In The Air Tonight - Nonpoint Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson Saviour - Daisy Gray I Put A Spell On You - Annie Lennox Heaven Julia Michaels Heart Attack - Demi Lovato Dynasty - Mia Weak - AJR Redemption - Besomorph & Coopex & RIELL Legends Never Die - League of Legends & Against the Current Time - NF Rumors - NEFFEX

Blood // Water - Grandson Evil - 8 Graves 11 Minutes - Yungblud Ft. Halsey & Travis Barker Hate The Way - G-Eazy Ft. Blackbear Control - Halsey Play With Fire - Sam Tinnesz You Should See Me In A Crown - Billie Eilish Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Lorde Courage To Change - Sia You Broke Me First - Tate McRae Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde Sweet Dreams - Marilyn Manson Wicked Game - Daisy Gray Nobody’s Home - Avril Lavigne Stand By Me - Ki: Theory Paparazzi - Kim Dracula Bringing Me Down - Ki: Theory Ft. Ruelle Therefore I am - Billie Eilish I see Red - Everybody Love An Outlaw In The Air Tonight - Nonpoint Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson Saviour - Daisy Gray I Put A Spell On You - Annie Lennox Heaven Julia Michaels Heart Attack - Demi Lovato Dynasty - MIIa Weak - AJR Redemption - Besomorph & Coopex & RIELL Legends Never Die - League of Legends Ft. Against the Current Time - NF Rumors - NEFFEX

She was working for the Empire, a thing she had sworn she would never do, helping design a vessel that would, in all probability, be the most fearsome weapon the galaxy had ever seen. While it was true that improving the biometrics and seating pattern in an assembly hall was not the same as devising a superlaser that could melt moons, still… Still, one was either a factor in something’s success, or a factor in its failure. Working for the enemy, said the little voice she sometimes heard in her head. She often visualized it as a miniature version of herself, shaking a chastising finger. How sad is that? Not as if I had a choice, is it? she replied mentally. Nobody asked me if I wanted the job, now, did they? You could have turned it down, the avatar of her conscience shot back. And been sent back to that serpent’s nest of a planet to rot and die? To what end? Her inner self fell silent.

A MOTHER'S LOVE NEVER DIES...IT KEEP SHINING AS BRIGHT AS THE STARS IN THE NGHT SKIES ABOVE ❤️

It started with Isabella trying to escape from Dexter, who Miles led you to believe at the beginning wasn’t a good guy, except he tries to keep Isabella comfortable and he never touches her. But she’s being held against her will, so that didn’t engender any warm and fuzzy feelings between them. In fact, the insults she lobbed at him were fantastic, like, You pikey pillock. [...] Dexter, for his part, took them all in stride and never retaliated, not even when she told him his mother must have been a slag. Yikes. The only time Dexter exerted any force was when he came in to bring her food and she used her feminine charm on him. Poor Dexter was stupid enough to believe it might be real. Wishful thinking on his part. Except when Isabella did get close to him, she felt a little something and it startled her. [...] She kneed him in the groin anyway and ran away. Dexter recovered quickly enough to catch her. That’s when he started sleeping in her room to make sure she didn’t escape. And that was when things started to get interesting. Isabella meant to lure him into believing she was interested in him to gain his trust, but the more she got to know him, the more she can’t help but like him. I read their exchanges as they talked late into every night, with him on the floor and her on the bed, asking all sorts of questions from his family to how he felt about politics. [...] [Dexter] possessed a calm reassurance about himself and a deep understanding of people and situations. [...] Poor Isabella thought she was getting the upper hand in all of this, but it didn’t take her long to realize she was losing ground. She began looking forward to their nights spent talking and sometimes playing Stop the Bus, a card game she used to play with her father. Dexter began using these moments to gain her trust, to start telling her the truth of her situation. It was enough that when they were discovered by two men clad in black who claimed to be there to rescue Isabella, she chose to flee with Dexter after some kick-butt fight scenes. [...] Isabella and Dexter fled to France. They almost kind of had a moment there. Isabella was furious with him because she felt like he was hiding something from her. She goes to slap him, but he grabs her hand before she can make contact. The unspoken words and emotion between them were totally hot. You thought he was going to kiss her, and so did she. She found herself yearning for it and she hated herself for it. [...] While in Paris, Isabella discovered a clue in her father’s journal that led them to Colorado. It had to do with a town legend involving a tree where lovers carved their names. It was said any pair to carve their name into the Aspen tree would only be parted by death. I loved that he used an Aspen tree. That was where they began to see how intertwined their lives were. Dexter’s mother’s name and Isabella’s father’s name were carved together into the tree long before either of them was born, but Isabella’s father’s name was crossed out. At first, I was grossed out thinking that they might be siblings, but Dexter was ten years older than Isabella, and his mother died before Isabella was born. But their parents were lovers. Interesting. [...] While they tried to figure out who might have crossed out Isabella’s father’s name, Isabella and Dexter started dancing on the edge of their feelings. Miles made the cabin they were staying in at the Ranch one room, not just one bedroom. A large, single room with only a bathroom for any privacy. Inch by inch, the sexual tension between them grew. Little touches here and there. But more than that, there was an emotional connection. Isabella began to let down her guard. She owned how afraid she was that her life had been a lie. But on the flipside, she had this desperate hope her father was innocent. More than that, she longed to be able to trust someone, but she didn’t know how.

A MOTHER'S LOVE NEVER DIES... IT KEEPS SHINING AS BRIGHT AS THE STARS IN THE DARKEN NIGHT SKIES ABOVE FOREVER ❤️A MOTHER'S LOVE NEVER DIES...IT KEEPS SHINING AS BRIGHT AS THE STARS IN THE DARKEN NIGHT SKIES ABOVE, FOREVER ❤️

A MOTHER'S LOVE NEVER DIES... IT KEEPS SHINING AS BRIGHT AS THE STARS IN THE DARKEN NIGHT SKIES ABOVE, FOREVER

And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die? Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek.

Sheol was really like. There were myths and legends, ballads and epic verse written about it. The saying went that the mouth of Sheol and Abaddon was never satisfied, Abaddon meaning “place of destruction.” It was the Land of Forgetfulness, outer darkness, where the worm does not die. It was said that Tartarus was the deepest pit in Sheol, which was as far below the earth as the earth was below the heavens. He already felt as if he was in Tartarus. He had no idea what possible reality heaven could ever have in his existence.

Her name was Jane,” I said, and Olivia stopped walking. “We were together for two years, married after a few months. I was happy, genuinely happy. Even though she was human, and I knew I’d outlive her, I just wanted to enjoy the time that we had together. “It all ended on a damp November morning in seventeen eighty-two. I’d been away working for Avalon for a few months and had been eager to get home. I found her inside the house we’d shared. She’d been butchered. Her blood decorated our bedroom. She was naked and appeared to have been dead for several days. My rage was…terrifying. I buried Jane with my own hands, placing her near a field that we used to love going to. And then I burnt the house to the ground.” Olivia’s shoulders sagged, but she didn’t turn and face me. “I hunted her killer for a year. I didn’t care who I hurt to get the information I needed. I was so single-minded, so determined to have vengeance. Eventually, I discovered that her murderer had been part of the king’s army, which had been going through the area. “The killer was an officer by the name of Henry. No idea what his last name was. It didn’t matter. He liked hurting women, and once he’d finished with them, he kept their hair as a souvenir. The rest of his squad had waited outside while he brutalized and murdered the woman I loved. No one had helped Jane, and no one had tried to stop him. “I discovered that they’d been on training maneuvers the day of the murder, just their squad of thirty. And after all my searching, I found them and I killed them. They died in one night of blood and rage. All but one. I left Henry until last. I took him away to a secluded place and had my fill of vengeance. It took a week for him to die, and when he finally succumbed, I buried Hellequin with him.” The memory of Henry’s blind and bloody form flashed in my mind—his pleas had long since silenced because I’d removed his tongue. I hadn’t wanted information from him; I’d just wanted to make him suffer. Before he’d lost his ability to talk, he’d told me that someone had paid him to do it, but he never said who. No matter what I did to him, he took that secret to his grave. And after a few years of searching, I decided he’d been lying. Trying to prolong his life for a short time more, hoping for mercy where there was none to give. “I no longer had the desire to go by that name,” I continued, still talking to Olivia’s back, “I no longer wanted to instill fear with a word. I hoped that the legend would die, but it didn’t, it grew, became more…fanciful. “You’re right, I’m a killer. I’ve killed thousands, and very few of them have ever stained my conscience. I can go to a dark place and do whatever I need to. But for those I care about, those I love, I will move fucking mountains to keep them safe. And I care about Tommy and Kasey, whether you grant permission or not.

When we offer forgiveness to those who have no excuse—and for things most of the world would consider unforgivable—we become most like Jesus. Remember, he died for sins he never committed to forgive people who had no right to be forgiven.

Beer gurgled through the beard. 'You see,' the young man began, 'the desert's so big you can't be alone in it. Ever notice that? It's all empty and there's nothing in sight, but there's always something moving over there where you can't quite see it. It's something very dry and thin and brown, only when you look around it isn't there. Ever see it?' 'Optical fatigue -' Tallant began. 'Sure. I know. Every man to his own legend. There isn't a tribe of Indians hasn't got some way of accounting for it. You've heard of the Watchers? And the twentieth-century white man comes along, and it's optical fatigue. Only in the nineteenth century things weren't quite the same, and there were the Carkers.' 'You've got a special localized legend?' 'Call it that. You glimpse things out of the corner of your mind, same like you glimpse lean, dry things out of the corner of your eye. You incase 'em in solid circumstance and they're not so bad. That is known as the Growth of Legend. The Folk Mind in Action. You take the Carkers and the things you don't quite see and put 'em together. And they bite.' Tallant wondered how long that beard had been absorbing beer. 'And what were the Carkers?' he prompted politely. 'Ever hear of Sawney Bean? Scotland - reign of James the First or maybe the Sixth, though I think Roughead's wrong on that for once. Or let's be more modern - ever hear of the Benders? Kansas in the 1870's? No? Ever hear of Procrustes? Or Polyphemus? Or Fee-fi-fo-fum? 'There are ogres, you know. They're no legend. They're fact, they are. The inn where nine guests left for every ten that arrived, the mountain cabin that sheltered travelers from the snow, sheltered them all winter till the melting spring uncovered their bones, the lonely stretches of road that so many passengers traveled halfway - you'll find 'em everywhere. All over Europe and pretty much in this country too before communications became what they are. Profitable business. And it wasn't just the profit. The Benders made money, sure; but that wasn't why they killed all their victims as carefully as a kosher butcher. Sawney Bean got so he didn't give a damn about the profit; he just needed to lay in more meat for the winter. 'And think of the chances you'd have at an oasis.' 'So these Carkers of yours were, as you call them, ogres?' 'Carkers, ogres - maybe they were Benders. The Benders were never seen alive, you know, after the townspeople found those curiously butchered bodies. There's a rumor they got this far West. And the time checks pretty well. There wasn't any town here in the 80s. Just a couple of Indian families - last of a dying tribe living on at the oasis. They vanished after the Carkers moved in. That's not so surprising. The white race is a sort of super-ogre, anyway. Nobody worried about them. But they used to worry about why so many travelers never got across this stretch of desert. The travelers used to stop over at the Carkers, you see, and somehow they often never got any further. Their wagons'd be found maybe fifteen miles beyond in the desert. Sometimes they found the bones, too, parched and white. Gnawed-looking, they said sometimes.' 'And nobody ever did anything about these Carkers?' 'Oh, sure. We didn't have King James the Sixth - only I still think it was the First - to ride up on a great white horse for a gesture, but twice there were Army detachments came here and wiped them all out.' 'Twice? One wiping-out would do for most families.' Tallant smiled at the beery confusion of the young man's speech. 'Uh-huh, That was no slip. They wiped out the Carkers twice because you see once didn't do any good. They wiped 'em out and still travelers vanished and still there were white gnawed bones. So they wiped 'em out again. After that they gave up, and people detoured the oasis. ("They Bite")

Are you so eager for war?” the drow asked, his face barely an inch from the elf’s. “Do you long to hear the screams of the dying, lying helplessly in fields amidst rows and rows of corpses? Have you ever borne witness to that?” “Orcs!” the elf protested. Drizzt grabbed him in both hands, pulled him forward, and slammed him back against the wall. Hralien called to Drizzt, but the dark elf hardly heard it. “I have ventured outside of the Silver Marches,” Drizzt said, “have you? I have witnessed the death of once-proud Luskan, and with it, the death of a dear, dear friend, whose dreams lay shattered and broken beside the bodies of five thousand victims. I have watched the greatest cathedral in the world burn and collapse. I witnessed the hope of the goodly drow, the rise of the followers of Eilistraee. But where are they now?” “You speak in ridd—” the elf started, but Drizzt slammed him again. “Gone!” Drizzt shouted. “Gone, and gone with them the hopes of a tamed and gentle world. I have watched once safe trails revert to wilderness, and have walked a dozen-dozen communities that you will never know. They are gone now, lost to the Spellplague or worse! Where are the benevolent gods? Where is the refuge from the tumult of a world gone mad? Where are the candles to chase away the darkness?” Hralien had quietly moved around the wall and walked up beside Drizzt. He put a hand on the drow’s shoulder, but that brought no more than a brief pause in the tirade. Drizzt glanced at him before turning back to the captured elf. “They are here, those lights of hope,” Drizzt said, to both elves. “In the Silver Marches. Or they are nowhere. Do we choose peace or do we choose war? If it is battle you seek, fool elf, then get you gone from this land. You will find death aplenty, I assure you. You will find ruins where once proud cities stood. You will find fields of wind-washed bones, or perhaps the remains of a single hearth, where once an entire village thrived. “And in that hundred years of chaos, amidst the coming of darkness, few have escaped the swirl of destruction, but we have flourished. Can you say the same for Thay? Mulhorand? Sembia? You say I betray those who befriended me, yet it was the vision of one exceptional dwarf and one exceptional orc that built this island against the roiling sea.” The elf, his expression more cowed, nonetheless began to speak out again, but Drizzt pulled him forward from the wall and slammed him back even harder. “You fall to your hatred and you seek excitement and glory,” the drow said. “Because you do not know. Or is it because you do not care that your pursuits will bring utter misery to thousands in your wake?

10. Never Give Up If there’s one person who understood the value and importance of sticking with things, it was Sir Winston Churchill. Legend has it that when he once gave a speech at Harrow School, he simply stood up and said, ‘Never give in, never, never, never. Never give in.’ He knew those simple words make such a difference. Whatever your walk in life, the ability to dig in and not quit when it gets tough will not only set you apart, it will set you up for a more exciting, more fulfilled and more prosperous life. That dogged resolve, that never-say-die attitude, takes people to a place that few are prepared to explore. And it is here that life becomes most interesting. So, when you think you’ve exhausted all possibilities, look inwards and just remember one thing: you haven’t! You always retain the ultimate decision whether or not to hang on in there. No one can force you to quit. And luckily Churchill knew that this tenacity had power. ‘Never give in, never, never, never. Never give in.’ He didn’t need to say any more during that speech. They were the wisest few words he could ever have imparted to those pupils - and it was a lesson learnt the hard way, at the bleak coalface of war. Never give in, never, never, never. Never give in.

You have the biological potential in your neurons to become a true lord of time, who never dies, despite having perished physically from earth.

The Wishers…. They told the tales sometimes at gatherings. The Tuath Stories remembered the fates of the Wishers well. Thousands of years ago, the sovereigns of the Fae lands issued a decree: The Wishers would die. The Wish Fae had managed to hide their powers for eons. But all secrets were eventually told, and it was so for this one as well. When the sovereigns were made aware of the abilities of the Wishers, they grew frightened. Powerful magicks were called forth, and in an act never before or since accomplished, both light and dark, both Seelie and Unseelie gathered together in their courts and combined their powers. The Wishers were annihilated. However... speculation caused rumors, which spread in whispers and eventually became legends that told how the strongest and most fortunate few managed to escape and hide themselves amongst humans in the mortal realm. But thousands of years passed with no sign of these legendary Wishers. In time, the sovereigns who had issued their massacre were overthrown. Under new rule, the truth of this terrible tragedy was well taught and lamented. The fae kingdoms had destroyed something precious. The Wishers were declared extinct. And in its rareness, in its extinctness, the lost, most powerful class of the fae, in fact became sacred.

As the librarian of the Buck Memorial Library, Geraldine Spooner, pointed out, the legend ignored many conflicting facts. Colonel Buck was described in the Bangor Historical Magazine as being a man of strong mind, retentive memory, and steadfast purpose. For instance, the Colonel was only a Justice of the Peace, not a Judge! He didn’t have the legal authority to pronounce the death sentence on anyone, much less his mistress. He was considered a righteous man of exemplary piety, who was respected by all. After all, in 1779 the Colonel had organized his own troops and, leading them, stormed the British garrison at Castine. This attack was repelled by the British, but Colonel Buck became a legend. The early history of Buckstown never had a bad thing to say about their Colonel. In March of 1795, the Colonel died and was laid to rest in the small village cemetery close to the tidal water, under a headstone that was inscribed to read “In Memory of the Hon. Jonathan Buck, Esq. who died March 18, 1795 in the 77 year of his age.

I was also dissolving time, since I knew I could never again participate in a ceremony more powerful than this one. And this is why, as I approached the line that separates consciousness and unconsciousness, I focused my entire being on that second, which still hadn't arrived but which certainly would arrive, when the past and future would be engulfed by a sheer and eternal present with which I would then merge.

Had Obi-Wan’s spirit not witnessed Vader’s action, he never would have believed it. Vader, the same monster that Obi-Wan had left to die on Mustafar, had sacrificed himself to save his son. And suddenly Obi-Wan realized where he had failed. For unlike Luke, Obi-Wan had not only believed that Anakin was completely consumed by the dark side, but had actually refused to believe that any goodness could have remained within Vader. And by refusing to allow that possibility, Obi-Wan had condemned not only his former friend but his own capacity for hope.