Leisure Moments Quotes

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures--solitude, books and imagination--outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another [with sight and hearing]. Its people, scenery, manners, joys, and tragedies should be living tangible interpreters of the real world. The lecture halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiment of wisdom... But I soon discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt and still feel most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures – solitude, books and imagination – outside with the whispering pines. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

if, like many people, you tend to be vaguely unhappy much of the time, it can be very helpful to manufacture a feeling of gratitude by simply contemplating all the terrible things that have not happened to you, or to think of how many people would consider their prayers answered if they could only live as you are now. The mere fact that you have the leisure to read this book puts you in very rarefied company. Many people on earth at this moment can’t even imagine the freedom that you currently take for granted.

In a situation where every waking moment has become the time in which we make our living, and when we submit even our leisure for numerical evaluation via likes on Facebook and Instagram, constantly checking on its performance like one checks a stock, monitoring the ongoing development of our personal brand, time becomes an economic resource that we can no longer justify spending on “nothing.

…this is the problem with photographs. After a while, you can’t remember if you’re recalling the actual memory or the memory of the photograph. Or perhaps the photograph is the only reason you remember that moment. (p.85)

The slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. There can be few who believe that in the coming year a record as great as, say, the Stooges’ Funhouse or Sly Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On will be released. Still less do we expect the kind of ruptures brought about by The Beatles or disco. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods and you will quickly be accused of ‘nostalgia’. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests that the current moment is in the grip of a formal nostalgia, of which more shortly. It is not that nothing happened in the period when the slow cancellation of the future set in. On the contrary, those thirty years has been a time of massive, traumatic change. In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher had brought to an end the uneasy compromises of the so-called postwar social consensus. Thatcher’s neoliberal programme in politics was reinforced by a transnational restructuring of the capitalist economy. The shift into so-called Post-Fordism – with globalization, ubiquitous computerization and the casualisation of labour – resulted in a complete transformation in the way that work and leisure were organised. In the last ten to fifteen years, meanwhile, the internet and mobile telecommunications technology have altered the texture of everyday experience beyond all recognition. Yet, perhaps because of all this, there’s an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present. Or it could be that, in one very important sense, there is no present to grasp and articulate anymore.

Habitual excuses for inactivity indicates little or no interest in what one ought to have done.

Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.

In this moment, the noblest trade is mastering the art of leisure.

When I have a leisure moment, you will generally find me curled up with Spinoza's latest.

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

Let me begin with a heartfelt confession. I admit it. I am a biblioholic, one who loves books and whose life would seem incomplete without them. I am an addict, with a compulsive need to stop by nearly any bookstore I pass in order to get my fix. Books are an essential part of my life, the place where I have spent many unforgettable moments. For me, reading is one of the most enjoyable ways to pass a rainy afternoon or a leisurely summer day. I crave the knowledge and insights that truly great books bring into my life and can spend transported hours scouring used book stores for volumes which "I simply must have". I love the smell and feel of well-loved books and the look of a bookcase full of books waiting to be taken down and read.

Not a single thought managed to take shape in her mind: for the likeness of this day to the last seemed to her the clearest proof that it would be another quite useless day, a day she would gladly have done without. For a moment she thought that a day like this would be pointless for anyone on earth, then abruptly changed her mind as she realised that thousands of women, after a hard week's work, or a family quarrel, or even just after catching a cold, would envy her just for having the leisure to rest in comfort.

Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.

Perhaps that is what I like about these moments of leisurely insight, that come while lying comfortably in the beautiful in-between state of sleeping and waking, dreaming and doing, in which anything is possible and everything is lovely.

Listen,' said Morrel; 'it is not the first time you have contemplated our present position, which is a serious and urgent one; I do not think it is a moment to give way to useless sorrow; leave that for those who like to suffer at their leisure and indulge their grief in secret. There are such in the world, and God will doubtless reward them in heaven for their resignation on earth, but those who mean to contend must not lose one precious moment, but must return immediately the blow which fortune strikes. Do you intend to struggle against our ill-fortune?..

I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts.

Enjoy good moments while they last, then make sure they're not the last

Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.

The young man never seemed to know what idleness was,” marveled Cutler, “and every leisure moment would find the last novel, some English classic or some abstruse book on natural history in his hands.

I thought that nothing enormously bad or good had happened to me during my life. All the normal things had occurred. I had lived a completely unremarkable life. I wanted only my home, and the love and safety of those around me, nothing else. I knew there was no particular reason why I was put on this earth, but here I was and I was glad to be here, awed by the beauty of it. It was a perfect moment. (p.99)

In our leisure moments, whenever we have downtime, we should turn to literature—to works that took some time to write and will take some time to read, but will also stay with us longer than anything else.

The contemplation of revealed truth is a disturbing element in Christian philosophy though a very beautiful one, for it means that the framework of philosophy is widened, and, above all, it can never rest satisfied with the flat, one-dimensional "harmonies" of rationalism. That is the moment when a Christian philosophy, striking upon the rock of divine truth, foams and boils; and that is its unique privilege.

I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works that I have in hand I will finish afterwards. Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite, and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil. Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove. A Moments Indulgence Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

Here lies the present paradox: work has totally triumphed over all other ways of existing, at the very moment when workers have become superfluous. Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us.

When our hopes are most alive, it is less from a view of the imperfect beginnings of grace in our hearts, than from an apprehension of him who is our all in all. His person, his love, his sufferings, his intercession, his compassion, his fullness, and his faithfulness—these are our delightful themes, which leave us little leisure, when in our best frames, to speak of ourselves... If any people have contributed a mite to their own salvation, it was more than we could do. If any were obedient and faithful to the first calls and impressions of his Spirit, it was not our case. If any were prepared to receive him beforehand, we know that we were in a state of alienation from him. We needed sovereign, irresistible grace to save us, or we would be lost forever! If there are any who have a power of their own, we must confess ourselves poorer than they are. We cannot watch, unless he watches with us; we cannot strive, unless he strives with us; we cannot stand one moment, unless he holds us up; and we believe we must perish after all, unless his faithfulness is engaged to keep us. But this we trust he will do, not for our righteousness, but for his own name's sake, and because, having loved us with an everlasting love, he has been pleased in loving kindness to draw us to himself, and to be found by us when we sought him not.

Thorndyke never forgets a likely case. He is sort of a medico-legal camel. He gulps down the raw facts from the newspapers or elsewhere, and then, in his leisure moments, he calmly regurgitates them and has a quiet chew at them.

Harry moved closer to George and muttered out of the corner of his mouth, ‘What are Skiving Snackboxes?’ ‘Range of sweets to make you ill,’ George whispered, keeping a wary eye on Mrs Weasley’s back. ‘Not seriously ill, mind, just ill enough to get you out of a class when you feel like it. Fred and I have been developing them this summer. They’re double-ended, colour-coded chews. If you eat the orange half of the Puking Pastilles, you throw up. Moment you’ve been rushed out of the lesson for the hospital wing, you swallow the purple half –’ ‘“– which restores you to full fitness, enabling you to pursue the leisure activity of your own choice during an hour that would otherwise have been devoted to unprofitable boredom.

Once I am at leisure, said Salvatore, I take refuge in prose as one might in a boat. All day long I am surrounded by the clamour on the editorial floor, but in the evening I cross over to an island, and every time, the moment I read the first sentences, it is as if I were rowing far out on the water. It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.

To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.” Cooking

I've been thinking about this mouth all day" he said before covering my lips with his. I licked at his bottom lip and he opened for me, letting me leisurely taste him. The gentle pressure of his mouth was perfect and made me a little dizzy. His fingers slip up my thigh until both hands were gripping my butt. One of his fingers traced the edge of my panties. "I really like this skirt," he murmured against my lips. I really liked it too at the moment. My breath was coming in short gasps as he slid one hand inside the edge of my panties. He gripped my bare butt with one hand while he slid his other slowly back down my thigh and shifted closer to my inner thigh. I liked what his next move would be. What I didn't know was if I was going to let it go that far. Then he moaned into my mouth as his fingers touched the inside of my thigh and my leg fell open of its own accord. The slow, easy kiss became frenzied as we both fought to calm our breathing. His hand inched higher and higher up my exposed thigh. The second his finger grazed the outside of my panties, I jerked in his hold, and something very close to pleading squeaked in my throat. Sawyer pulled back, and his accelerated breathing made me tingle with pleasure. I loved knowing I did that to him. He kissed down my neck until he met the curve of my shoulder. He went very still. His warm breath bathed my chest and neck. His hand slowly moved again. One lone finger slipped inside the edge of my panties and made direct contact. He murmured something against my neck, but I couldn't focus enough to understand. My brain was in a foggy haze, and my heart was about to pound out of my chest. The urge to move against the hand, which now cupped the crotch of my panties, was strong. But I waited while he eased his finger farther inside and gently ran it along the folds. "oh, oh, oh my god," I managed to get out in a breathless chant. "God, you're so warm," he whispered in a strained voice as he began kissing the spot where he had buried his head in my neck. When he slipped his other hand over my leg and pulled it farther open then reached down and pulled my panties to the side as he gently stroked me, I started to come apart in his arms. "That's it, baby," he encouraged me as I clung to him, calling his name and wanting it to never end.

I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent.

As we have seen, prayer, celebration of the religious offices, alms, consoling the afflicted, the cultivation of a little piece of ground, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, self-sacrifice, confidence, study, and work, filled up each day of his life. Filled up is exactly the phrase; and in fact, the Bishop's day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Yet it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented him from passing an hour or two in the evening, when the two women had retired, in his garden before going to sleep. It seemed as though it were a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for sleep by meditating in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament. Sometimes late at night, if the two women were awake, they would hear him slowly walking the paths. He was out there alone with himself, composed, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night emit their perfume, lit like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of creation’s universal radiance, perhaps he could not have told what was happening in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious exchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe. He contemplated the grandeur, and the presence of God; the eternity of the future, that strange mystery; the eternity of the past, a stranger mystery; all the infinities hidden deep in every direction; and, without trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, he saw it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him. He reflected upon the magnificent union of atoms, which give visible forms to Nature, revealing forces by recognizing them, creating individualities in unity, proportions in extension, the innumerable in the infinite, and through light producing beauty. These unions are forming and dissolving continually; from which come life and death. He would sit on a wooden bench leaning against a decrepit trellis and look at the stars through the irregular outlines of his fruit trees. This quarter of an acre of ground, so sparingly planted, so cluttered with shed and ruins, was dear to him and satisfied him. What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the day time, and contemplation at night? Was this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background not space enough for him to adore God in his most beautiful, most sublime works? Indeed, is that not everything? What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in the sky.

The only really leisured people are those who devote time to acquiring true knowledge rather than trivia.  Such people are not content to live ‘in the moment’ exclusively but show a keen awareness of history, of all the years that have gone before them and they know that the amount of time they have left is uncertain and finite.

It had become a habit with him lately to listen to his heart's pulsation while lying in bed. As usual, the palpitation was calm and steady. With his hand still on his chest, he tried to imagine the warm, crimson blood flowing leisurely to this beat. This was life, he thought. Now, at this very moment, he held in his grasp the current of life as it flowed by. To his palm it felt like the ticking of a clock. But it was more, it was a kind of alarm that summoned him to death. If it were possible to live without hearing this bell--if only his heart did not measure out time as well as blood--then how carefree he would be! How thoroughly he would savor life! But--and here Daisuke shuddered involuntarily. He was a man so attached to life that he could scarcely bear to picture his heart calmly beating to the coursing of his blood. There were times when, lying in bed, he would place his hand just below his left breast and wonder, what if someone gave me one good blow with a hammer here. Although he lived in sound health, there were instances when his consciousness awakened to the indisputable fact of his being alive as a near-miracle of good fortune.

Moment of pleasures helps to renew strength and reposition man to creative point

And yet the time saved did not seem to mean additional leisure or greater opportunities for meditation and reflection. Instead, with each new wave of technology, the pace of life increased; there was more to do, more choices to make, more things to experience, and people eagerly seized upon those experiences and filled the hours that had only moments ago become empty.

In this moment, the noblest trade is mastering the art of leisure. I can't think of a smarter person than someone who figures out a way to rob the modern world blind and never work again.

Just then, a little hopped-up Japanese car zips up next to us. It’s bright yellow with loud, high-pitched exhaust pipes and a big air spoiler on the back. I look over at the driver to see who’s making all the racket. I’m surprised to see a teenage girl there. After a moment, she gooses it and whinnies on past. On her back window, there’s a sticker: NO FEAR. I think, good girl.

He did not want middle-aged men with distinguished records with him: they could be better employed elsewhere, and would, moreover, have bored him. He wanted polished young men of good families, who were of his own world, who knew how to make themselves pleasant in exalted circles, and could amuse his leisure moments with their adventures, and their fun, and their bubbling energy.

A general is a specialist insofar as he has master his craft. Beyond that and outside the arbitrary pro and con, he keeps a third possibility intact and in reserve: his own substance. He knows more than what he embodies and teaches, has other skills along with the ones for which he is paid. He keeps all that to himself; it is his property. It is set aside for his leisure, his soliloquies, his nights. At a propitious moment, he will put it into action, tear off his mask. So far, he has been racing well; within sight is the finish line, his final reserves start pouring in. Fate challenges him; he responds. The dream, even in an erotic encounter, comes true. But causally, even here; every goal is a transition for him. The bow should snap rather than aiming the arrow at a finite target.

We are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain—perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present, it is not only my habit but even my taste—a perverted taste, maybe—to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is “in a hurry.” For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all—to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow—the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. For this very reason philology is now more desirable than ever before; for this very reason it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of “work”: that is to say, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-scurry, which is intent upon “getting things done” at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not “get things done” so hurriedly: it teaches how to read well: i.e. slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes ... my patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!

As I said, I decided to try an experiment: Right now, from within my perception of my current circumstances, and from within the starkness of this realization, I determined to conceive and focus on what I would tell—and what I have told—my younger self, and live with the consequences. Here is what I wrote down: Immediately disassociate from destructive people and forces, if not physically then ethically—and watch for the moment when you can do so physically. Use every means to improve your mental acuity. Every sacrifice of empty leisure or escapism for study, industry, and growth is a fee paid to personal freedom. Train the body. Grow physically strong. Reduce consumption. You will be strengthened throughout your being. Seek no one’s approval through humor, servility, or theatrics. Be alone if necessary. But do not compromise with low company. At the earliest possible point, learn meditation (i.e., Transcendental Meditation), yoga, and martial arts (select good teachers). Go your own way—literally. Walk/bike and don’t ride the bus or in a car, except when necessary. Do so in all weather: rain, snow, etc. Be independent physically and you will be independent in other ways. Learn-study-rehearse. Pursue excellence. Or else leave something alone. Go to the limit in something or do not approach it. Starve yourself of the compulsion to derive your sense of wellbeing from your perception of what others think of you. Do this as an alcoholic avoids a drink or an addict a needle. It will be agonizing at first, since you may have no other perception of self; but this, finally, is the sole means of experiencing Self. Does this kind of advice, practicable at any time of life, really alter or reselect the perceived past, and, with it, the future? I intend to find out. You

But in spite of this material prosperity he was a slave. His work and his leisure consisted of feverish activity, punctuated by moments of listless idleness which he regarded as both sinful and unpleasant. Unless he was one of the furiously successful minority, he was apt to be haunted by moments of brooding, too formless to be called meditation, and of yearning, too blind to be called desire. For he and all his contemporaries were ruled by certain ideas which prevented them from living a fully human life.

One of the central tenets of the Western worldview is that one should always be engaged in some kind of outward task. Thus, the Westerner structures his time—including, sometimes, even his leisure time—as a series of discrete programmed activities which he must submit to in order to tick off from an actual or virtual list. One need only observe the expression on his face as he ploughs through yet another family outing, cultural event, or gruelling exercise routine to realise that his aim in life is not so much to live in the present moment as it is to work down a never-ending list. If one asks him how he is doing, he is most likely to respond with an artificial smile, and something along the lines of, ‘Fine, thank you – very busy of course!’ In many cases, he is not fine at all, but confused, exhausted, and fundamentally unhappy. In contrast, most people living in a country such as Kenya in Africa do not share in the Western worldview that it is noble or worthwhile to spend all of one’s time rushing around from one task to the next. When Westerners go to Kenya and do as they are wont to do, they are met with peels of laughter and cries of ‘mzungu’, which is Swahili for ‘Westerner’. The literal translation of ‘mzungu’ is ‘one who moves around’, ‘to go round and round’, or ‘to turn around in circles’.

When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep. Or as the Book of Job says, “God giveth songs in the night” (Job 35:10). Moreover, it has always been a pious belief that God sends his good gifts and his blessings in sleep. And in the same way his great, imperishable intuitions visit a man in his moments of leisure. It is in these silent and receptive moments that the soul of man is sometimes visited by an awareness of what holds the world together:

And then, sir,' he added, 'you would oblige me infinitely by marrying us, if you have the leisure.' Captain Broke paused for a moment: was this a strangely-timed pleasantry? Judging from the Doctor's demeanour and his pale, determined face, it was not. Should he wish him joy of the occasion? Perhaps, in view of Jack's silence and Maturin's cool, matter-of-fact, unfestive manner, that might be inappropriate. He remembered his own wedding-day and the desperate feeling of being caught on a leeshore in a gale of wind, unable to claw off, tide setting hard against him, anchors coming home. He said, 'I should be very happy, sir. But I have never performed the manoeuvre -that is, the ceremony - and I am not sure of the forms nor of the extent of my powers. You will allow me to consult the Printed Instructions, and let you know how far I may be of service to you and the lady.' Stephen bowed and walked off.

At the moment I am full of life, my whole body overflowing with youth and strength. It seems impossible that I shall be dead in three hours’ time. And yet...” When someone seeks to tell the truth, words always falter in this way. I can almost see him now, fumbling for words: not from shyness, nor from fear, for the naked truth inevitably produces this verbal stumbling; but, rather, as a sign of a certain rough quality about truth itself. The young man in question had no long-drawn-out void left in which to await the absolute, nor did he have time to wind things up with words in a leisurely way. As he hurtled towards death, his final everyday phrases seized on a moment when the feeling for life, like chloroform in the strange headiness it produces, had temporarily benumbed his spirit’s awareness of the end, and, like a well-loved dog leaping up at its master, came rushing out upon him, only to be dashed rudely aside.

At his leisure, the lieutenant allowed the unforgettable spectacle to engrave itself upon his mind. With one hand he fondled the hair, with the other he softly stroked the magnificent face, implanting kisses here and there where his eyes lingered. The quiet coldness of the high, tapering forehead, the closed eyes with their long lashes beneath faintly etched brows, the set of the finely shaped nose, the gleam of teeth glimpsed between full, regular lips, the soft cheeks and the small, wise chin… Wherever the lieutenant's eyes moved his lips faithfully followed. The high, swelling breasts, surmounted by nipples like the buds of a wild cherry, hardened as the lieutenant's lips closed about them. The arms flowed smoothly downward from each side of the breast, tapering toward the wrists, yet losing nothing of their roundness or symmetry…The natural hollow curving between the bosom and the stomach carried in its lines a suggestion not only of softness but of resilient strength, and while it gave forewarning to the rich curves spreading outward from here to the hips it had, in itself, an appearance only of restraint and proper discipline. The whiteness and richness of the stomach and hips was like milk brimming in a great bowl, and the sharply shadowed dip of the navel could have been the fresh impress of a raindrop, fallen there that very moment. Where the shadows gathered more thickly, hair clustered, gentle and sensitive, and as the agitation mounted in the now no longer passive body there hung over this region a scent like the smoldering of fragrant blossoms, growing steadily more pervasive… Passionately they held their faces close, rubbing cheek against cheek…Their breasts, moist with sweat, were tightly joined, and every inch of the young and beautiful bodies had become so much one with the other that it seemed impossible there should ever again be a separation…From the heights they plunged into the abyss, and from the abyss they took wing and soared once more to dizzying heights…As one cycle ended, almost immediately a new wave of passion would be generated, and together -with no trace of fatigue- they would climb again in a single breathless movement to the very summit.

In those moments, she felt something deeper than the mere need to survive, a glimpse at what it might mean if she could simply learn and stop trying so hard all the time time. She found herself fantasizing about a life not only without fear but without ambition. She would read, and go to class, and live in an apartment with good light. She would feel curious instead of panicked when people mentioned artists she didn't know, authors she'd never read. She would have a stack of books by her bedside table. She would listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic. She would get the jokes, speak the language; she would become fluent in leisure.

I had to write a decalogue for journeys, eight out of the ten virtues should be moral, and I should put first of all a temper as serene at the end as at the beginning of the day. Then would come the capacity to accept values and to judge by standards other than our own. The rapid judgement of character; and a love of nature which must include human nature also. The power to dissociate oneself from one’s own bodily sensations. A knowledge of the local history and language. A leisurely and uncensorious mind. A tolerable constitution and the capacity to eat and sleep at any moment. And lastly, and especially here, a ready quickness in repartee.

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)

You are mine for all eternity, Savannah, until we grow weary of this existence and choose to go together to the next." Reluctantly, he freed his body from hers,bent hif head to remove the thin triail of red marring her skin. Gregori settled her into him so that his head rested beside her breast. Her arms crept around his damp hair, cradling him to her, the sleep of their people calling to her. He shifted her slight body so that he could drape one leg over her thighs possessively, so that his hands could shape the length of her body at will,know it was imprinted there in the soil beside his. The chamber door slid noiselessly shut to seal them inside at his thought. The safeguards were many and all of them deadly.Anyone disturbing their rest would be in mortal peril.Gregori stroked her long hair, contended. At peace. "You are so small, ma petite, to bring such pleasure to a man." The warmth of his breath teased her nipple, and his tongue followed in a slow,leisurely caress. "I have made love to you each time I have taken you into my arms. There can be no other for either of us,Savannah." She stirred with drowsy contentment, the slight movement bringing her breast against his mouth. Her hands stroked his hair gently. "I am not the one who worries, lifemate.I know there is no other." His tongue made another lazy, contented curl around her creamy skin. "One who has gone centuries in utter darkness takes a long time to believe he will not lose the light.Go to sleep, Savannah, safe in my arms.Let the soil heal both of us and bring us peace, as Julian knew it would." She was silent for a moment, but his mouth feeding at her breast was causing little aftershocks, rushes of liquid heat. "I will if you behave.

Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him up in a few moments in quick little mouthfuls and leave only a perfectly clean skeleton behind? So, that's the way they're constituted. 'Do you want a clean life, like everyone else?' Of course the answer is yes. How could you not? 'Fine. We'll clean you up. Here's a job, here's a family, here's some organized leisure.' And the little teeth bite into the flesh, right down to the bone. But i'm being unfair. I shouldn't have said, 'the way they're constituted', because after all, it's our way, too: it's a case of who strips whom.

Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled. But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it. However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment. He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom. A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

Yet the sameness is also a trap. It’s part of the narrowing of your world, the tunnel vision of age. When something different happens to you, it’s hard to see it as a good thing. Which means you can’t always recognize a perfect moment or get yourself to a place where one can happen. Or sometimes perfect moments happen and you don’t even realize it. That is why you need to travel.

... I left Caen, where I was living, to go on a geological excursion under the auspices of the School of Mines. The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time, as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for convenience sake, I verified the result at my leisure.

Yes, many a function calls for fulfilment. For instance, why should it be thought foolish or low to superintend the kitchen? Why should care not be taken that the storeroom never lacks supplies? Why should a housekeeper be allowed to thieve? Why should slovenly and drunken servants exist? Why should a domestic staff be suffered in indulge in bouts of unconscionable debauchery during its leisure time? Yet none of these things were thought worthy of consideration by Manilov’s wife, for she had been gently brought up, and gentle nurture, as we all know, is to be acquired only in boarding schools, and boarding schools, as we know, hold the three principal subjects which constitute the basis of human virtue to be the French language (a thing indispensable to the happiness of married life), piano-playing (a thing wherewith to beguile a husband’s leisure moments), and that particular department of housewifery which is comprised in the knitting of purses and other “surprises.

For the record, yes.' I stare at him. 'Yes?' 'If someone asks whether I have a six-pack, tell them yes.' He makes a long, leisurely stretching motion with both hands, like a cat in a warm patch of sun. He’s so tall that his fingers almost scrape the closet ceiling. 'It’ll be good for my image.' 'Fine. Then you better tell everyone I’m a great kisser.' He grins then, slow and wide and teasing, and for the first time, I notice that he has dimples. A useless discovery. And yet . . . 'You got yourself a deal.

The four of us were together at last--me, the angel, the devil, and my demon. I felt like the moment should have seemed more momentous, or at least more pleasant, like we should have made jokes as we meandered down to the beach, collected driftwood for a fire, and leisurely toasted marshmallows. Instead, I was struggling to keep my eyes open, the angel was looking at the ground, Oz was glaring at the trunk, and for some reason I just knew that Forneus, locked down and wrapped in a sheet, was glaring right back.

If he were alive today, Plato—to take him as an example, because along with a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived—would certainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchanging, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out instantaneously for its content of reason and reality. He would have supposed a newspaper office to be that topos uranios, that heavenly realm of ideas, which he has described so impressively that to this day all the better class of people are still idealists when talking to their children or employees. And of course if Plato were to walk suddenly into a news editor’s office today and prove himself to be indeed that great author who died over two thousand years ago he would be a tremendous sensation and would instantly be showered with the most lucrative offers. If he were then capable of writing a volume of philosophical travel pieces in three weeks, and a few thousand of his well-known short stories, perhaps even turn one or the other of his older works into film, he could undoubtedly do very well for himself for a considerable period of time. The moment his return had ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little column on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section (but in the easiest and most lively style possible, not heavy: remember the readers), and the features editor would add that he was sorry, but he could use such a contribution only once a month or so, because there were so many other good writers to be considered. And both of these gentlemen would end up feeling that they had done quite a lot for a man who might indeed be the Nestor of European publicists but still was a bit outdated, and certainly not in a class for current newsworthiness with a man like, for instance, Paul Arnheim.

He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is? He then expiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combination, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention; all other intellectual gratifications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favorite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon the mind, and life passes in dreams of rapture or of anguish.

Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of “fun,” constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger “high.” A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now. Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing—too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person’s capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart is unfulfilled. Where is the security, the guidance, the wisdom, and the power? At the low end of the continuum, in the pleasure of a fleeting moment.

Far from erupting all over them, clinging like Greek fire for a moment, then leaping away to safety, Sir Mordred sized up his prey in the leisurely manner of a much older cat, taking all the time necessary to unsheathe his claws, blow on them, adjust for windage and elevation, and finally reach out to draw them daintily down Nicholas’ left leg from calf to ankle, like a bear marking a tree. And he looked upon his work, saw that it was good—four neat slits in the red hose, and scratched skin showing through—and he sat back, deeply content, and said, “Rao.

Another, unexpected result was a dramatic lowering of the suicide rate. All sorts of stressed and rising executives who had been forced, during the dark days of the Breathe-o-Smart tyranny, to jump in front of trains or stab themselves, could now just clamber out on to their own window ledges and leap off at their leisure. What frequently happened, though, was that in the moment or two they had to look around and gather their thoughts they would suddenly discover that all they had really needed was a breath of air and a fresh perspective on things, and maybe also a farm on which they could keep a few sheep.

Dallas pointed out to me once that there is a world of difference between being busy and being hurried. Being busy is an outward condition, a condition of the body. It occurs when we have many things to do. Busy-ness is inevitable in modern culture. If you are alive today in North America, you are a busy person. There are limits to how much busy-ness we can tolerate, so we wisely find ways to slow down whenever we can. We take vacations, we sit in a La-Z-Boy® with a good book, we enjoy a leisurely meal with friends. By itself, busy-ness is not lethal. Being hurried is an inner condition, a condition of the soul. It means to be so preoccupied with myself and my life that I am unable to be fully present with God, with myself, and with other people. I am unable to occupy this present moment. Busy-ness migrates to hurry when we let it squeeze God out of our lives. Note the differences between the two: Busy Hurried A full schedule Preoccupied Many activities Unable to be fully present An outward condition An inner condition of the soul Physically demanding Spiritually draining Reminds me I need God Causes me to be unavailable to God I cannot live in the kingdom of God with a hurried soul. I cannot rest in God with a hurried soul.

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very blessings of civilisation. What is you excuse? it is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time. There is truth in what you say—I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1886; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by the law to possess her own property; and that in 1919—which is a whole nine years ago—she was given a vote? May I also remind you that most of the professions have been open to you for close to ten years now? When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and the fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning over five hundred a year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good. Moreover, the economists are telling us that Mrs. Seton has had too many children. You must, of course, go on bearing children, but, so they say, in twos and threes, not in tens and twelves. Thus, with some time on your hands and with some book learning in your brains—you have had enough of the other kind, and are sent to college partly, I suspect, to be uneducated—surely you should embark upon another stage of your very long, very laborious and highly obscure career. A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and what effect you will have. My own suggestion is a little fantastic, I admit; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction.

I love the way the rain melts the colors together, like a chalk drawing on the sidewalk. There is a moment, just after sunset, when the shops turn on their lights and steam starts to fog up the windows of the cafés. In French, this twilight time implies a hint of danger. It's called entre chien et loup, between the dog and the wolf. It was just beginning to get dark as we walked through the small garden of Palais Royal. We watched as carefully dressed children in toggled peacoats and striped woolen mittens finished the same game of improvised soccer we had seen in the Place Sainte Marthe. Behind the Palais Royal the wide avenues around the Louvre gave way to narrow streets, small boutiques, and bistros. It started to drizzle. Gwendal turned a corner, and tucked in between two storefronts, barely wider than a set of double doors, I found myself staring down a corridor of fairy lights. A series of arches stretched into the distance, topped with panes of glass, like a greenhouse, that echoed the plip-plop of the rain. It was as if we'd stepped through the witch's wardrobe, the phantom tollbooth, what have you, into another era. The Passage Vivienne was nineteenth-century Paris's answer to a shopping mall, a small interior street lined with boutiques and tearooms where ladies could browse at their leisure without wetting the bustles of their long dresses or the plumes of their new hats. It was certainly a far cry from the shopping malls of my youth, with their piped-in Muzak and neon food courts. Plaster reliefs of Greek goddesses in diaphanous tunics lined the walls. Three-pronged brass lamps hung from the ceiling on long chains. About halfway down, there was an antique store selling nothing but old kitchenware- ridged ceramic bowls for hot chocolate, burnished copper molds in the shape of fish, and a pewter mold for madeleines, so worn around the edges it might have belonged to Proust himself. At the end of the gallery, underneath a clock held aloft by two busty angels, was a bookstore. There were gold stencils on the glass door. Maison fondée en 1826.

Aesop’s fable “The Boar and the Fox” is all about building resilience. One day a fox was walking through the woods when he spotted a wild boar sharpening his tusks against the stump of a tree. The fox found this hilarious and made fun of the boar for worrying about nothing. When he finally stopped laughing, he asked, “Why are you being so fretful, you fool? There’s nobody here for you to fight!” The boar smiled and said, “True, but when one day I do hear the huntsmen coming, it will be too late then to prepare for battle.” The moral is that in times of peace, we should prepare for war if we want to be ready to defend ourselves. The Stoics likewise used moments of leisure to prepare themselves to remain calm in the face of adversity.

In the present state of the world, not only are many people destitute but the majority of those who are not being haunted by a perfectly reasonable fear that they may become so at any moment. Wage-earners have the constant danger of unemployment; salaried employees know that their firm may go bankrupt or find it necessary to cut down its staff; businessmen, even those who are reputed to be very rich, know that the loss of all their money is by no means improbable. Professional men have a very hard struggle. After making great sacrifices for the education of their sons and daughters, they find that there are not the openings that there used to be for those who have the kinds of skills that their children have acquired. If they are lawyers, they find that people can no longer afford to go to law, although serious injustices remain unremedied; if they are doctors, they find that their formerly lucrative hypochondriac patients can no longer afford to be ill, while many genuine sufferers have to forgo much-needed medical treatment. One finds men and women of university education serving behind the counters in shops, which may save them from destitution, but only at the expense of those who would formerly have been so employed. In all classes, from the lowest to almost the highest, economic fear governs men’s thoughts by day and their dreams at night, making their work nerve-wracking and their leisure unrefreshing. This ever-present terror is, I think, the main cause of the mood of madness which has swept over great parts of the civilized world.

I have known moments that had the pure blaze of a diamond. But they have always come without being called for. They used to spring up unex-pectedly, an unlooked-for truce, an unhoped-for promise, cutting across the activities that insisted upon my presence; would enjoy them almost illicitly, coming out of the lyce, or the exit of a métro, or on my balcony between two sessions of work, or hurrying along the boulevard to meet André. Now I walked about Paris, free, receptive, and frigidly indifferent. My overflowing leisure handed me the world and at the same time prevented me from secing it. Just as the sun, filtering through the closed venetian blinds on a hot afternoon, makes the whole magnificence of summer blaze in my mind; whereas if I face its direct harsh glare it blinds me.

We all agree, I think, that your problem is that you've never been given a chance to formulate your views. Because of the competitive American context, you've had to convert everything into action too rapidly. Your life has no reflective content; it's all instinct, and when your instincts let you down, you have nothing to trust. That's what makes you cynical. Cynicism, I've seen it said somewhere, is tired pragmatism. You accept these things as sacred not out of love or faith but fear; your thought is frozen because the first moment when your instincts failed, you raced to the conclusion that everything is nothing, that zero is the real answer. That is what we Americans think, it's win or lose, all or nothing, kill or die, because we've never created the leisure in which to take thought.

Like the bear who went over the mountain, I went out to see what I could see. And, I might as well warn you, like the bear, all I could see was the other side of the mountain: more of same. I propose to keep here what Thoreau called ‘a meteorological journal of the mind,’ telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights dizzyingly lead. I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been set down, if we can’t learn why. So I think about the valley. It is my leisure as well as my work, a game. It is a fierce game I have joined because it is being played anyway, a game of both skill and chance, played against an unseen adversary- the conditions of time-in which the payoffs, which may suddenly arrive in a blast of light at any moment, might as well come to me as anyone else. I risk getting stuck on the board, so to speak, unable to move in any direction, which happens enough; and I risk the searing, exhausting nightmares that plunder rest and force me face down all night long in some muddy ditch seething with hatching insects and crustaceans. But if I can bear the nights, the days are a pleasure. I walk out; I see something, some event that would otherwise have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing and I resound like a beaten bell.

When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else—though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence—a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry. The way I came to miss the end of the world—well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years—was sheer accident: like a lot of survival,

I continue to be immensely moved by the impermanence of hotels: not in any mundane Travel-and-Leisure way but with a fervor bordering on the transcendent. Some time in October, right around Day of the Dead actually, I stayed in a Mexican seaside hotel where the halls flowed with blown curtains and all the rooms were named after flowers. The Azalea Room, the Camellia Room, the Oleander Room. Opulence and splendor, breezy corridors that swept into something like eternity and each room with its different colored door. Peony, Wisteria, Rose, Passion Flower. And who knows--but maybe that's what's waiting for us at the end of the journey, a majesty unimaginable until the very moment we find ourselves walking through the doors of it, what we find ourselves gazing at in astonishment when God finally takes His hands off our eyes and says: Look!

We had been out for one of our evening rambles, Holmes and I, and had returned about six o’clock on a cold, frosty winter’s evening. As Holmes turned up the lamp the light fell upon a card on the table. He glanced at it, and then, with an ejaculation of disgust, threw it on the floor. I picked it up and read: CHARLES AUGUSTUS MILVERTON, Appledore Towers, Hampstead. Agent. “Who is he?” I asked. “The worst man in London,” Holmes answered, as he sat down and stretched his legs before the fire. “Is anything on the back of the card?” I turned it over. “Will call at 6:30--C.A.M.,” I read. “Hum! He’s about due. Do you feel a creeping, shrinking sensation, Watson, when you stand before the serpents in the Zoo, and see the slithery, gliding, venomous creatures, with their deadly eyes and wicked, flattened faces? Well, that’s how Milverton impresses me. I’ve had to do with fifty murderers in my career, but the worst of them never gave me the repulsion which I have for this fellow. And yet I can’t get out of doing business with him--indeed, he is here at my invitation.” “But who is he?” “I’ll tell you, Watson. He is the king of all the blackmailers. Heaven help the man, and still more the woman, whose secret and reputation come into the power of Milverton! With a smiling face and a heart of marble, he will squeeze and squeeze until he has drained them dry. The fellow is a genius in his way, and would have made his mark in some more savoury trade. His method is as follows: He allows it to be known that he is prepared to pay very high sums for letters which compromise people of wealth and position. He receives these wares not only from treacherous valets or maids, but frequently from genteel ruffians, who have gained the confidence and affection of trusting women. He deals with no niggard hand. I happen to know that he paid seven hundred pounds to a footman for a note two lines in length, and that the ruin of a noble family was the result. Everything which is in the market goes to Milverton, and there are hundreds in this great city who turn white at his name. No one knows where his grip may fall, for he is far too rich and far too cunning to work from hand to mouth. He will hold a card back for years in order to play it at the moment when the stake is best worth winning. I have said that he is the worst man in London, and I would ask you how could one compare the ruffian, who in hot blood bludgeons his mate, with this man, who methodically and at his leisure tortures the soul and wrings the nerves in order to add to his already swollen money-bags?” I had seldom heard my friend speak with such intensity of feeling.

With her left thigh draped over his right hip, he pleasured her at a more leisurely pace. She closed her eyes and let him love her. Before long, however, he had stoked her fire until it blazed again. She pressed him onto his back and, looking intrigued with the possibilities, sat astride him; he never left her body. Victorious atop him, she appeared to savor this position---and her newfound power over him. There was no denying it. At the moment, he was hers, body and soul, whether she knew it or not. Whether he was quite ready for that or not. He was sure as hell not ready to admit it. "Rohan," she murmured, "why haven't we been doing this all the time that I've been here?" He gave her a licentious half smile. "I was trying to convince you that I was a gentleman," he replied, his low tone roughened by desire. She smiled at his irreverent answer and dragged her dainty fingers down his chest. "What would I want with a gentleman when I could have a Beast?

For one thing, the pupil is now far more defenceless in the hands of his teachers. He comes increasingly from businessmen's flats or workmen's cottages in which there are few books or none. He has hardly ever been alone. The educational machine seizes him very early and organizes his whole life, to the exclusion of all unsuperintended solitude or leisure. The hours of unsponsored, uninspected, perhaps even forbidden, reading, the ramblings, and the "long, long thoughts" in which those of luckier generations first discovered literature and nature and themselves are a thing of the past. If a Traherne or a Wordsworth were born to-day he would be "cured" before he was twelve. In short, the modern pupil is the ideal patient for those masters who, not content with teaching a subject, would create a character; helpless Plasticine. Or if by chance (for nature will be nature) he should have any powers of resistance, they know how to deal with him. I am coming to that point in a moment.

longer; it cannot deceive them too much." Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation. "As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" "Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment." "If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?" "Truly yes, madame." "Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?" "It is true, madame." "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go home!" XVI. Still Knitting Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible

A rattle of dishes warned of a servant’s entry into the hall, but Christopher was incensed, and half turning with a growl, he gestured Paine back. “Get out of here, man!” “Christopher!” Erienne gasped and took two halting steps to follow the befuddled servant, but Christopher came around to face her with a glare. “Stay where you are, madam! I am not finished with you.” “You have no right to give orders here,” she protested, her own ire growing. “This is my husband’s house!” “I’ll give orders when and where I damn well please, and for once, you will stand and listen until I’m through!” More than a trifle outraged herself, Erienne hurled back her answer. “You may command the men on your ship to your will, Mister Seton, but you have no such authority here! Good day to you!” Catching up her skirts, she whirled and stalked toward the tower until she heard the sound of rapid footsteps coming behind her, then a sudden panic seized her that he would make such a scene that she would not be able to face the servants… or her husband. She raced into the entry, stepping over the puddle, and took to the stairs, forcing every bit of strength she could into her limbs. She had barely gained the fourth step when she heard sliding feet, a loud thump, and then a painful grunt followed by an angry curse. When she whirled, Christopher was just coming to rest in a heap against the wall after sliding across the floor, partway on his back. For a moment she stared aghast at the dignified man sprawled in a most undignified manner, but when he raised his head to look at her with barely contained rage, she was struck by the humor of it all. Bubbling laughter broke forth, winning from him a dark scowl of exasperation. “Are you hurt, Christopher?” she asked sweetly. “Aye! My pride has been mightily bruised!” “Oh, that will mend, sir,” she chuckled, spreading her skirts to perch primly on the step above him. Her eyes danced with a lively light that was simply dazzling to behold. “But you should take care. If such a modest spot of water can bring you down so abruptly, I would not advise sailing beyond these shores.” “ ’Tis not a spot of water that’s brought me down, but a waspish wench who sets her barbs against me at every turn.” “You dare accuse me when you come in here huffing and snorting like a raging bull?” She gave a throaty, skeptical laugh. “Really, Christopher, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You frightened Paine and nearly made me swallow my heart.” “That’s an impossibility, madam, for that thing is surely made of cold, hard steel.” “You’re pouting,” she chided flippantly, “because I have not fallen swooning at your feet.” “I’m angry because you continually deny the fact that you should be my wife!” he stated emphatically. Footsteps on the stairs behind Erienne made them glance up. Aggie came nonchalantly down the steps, seeming unaware of Christopher’s storm-dark frown. Excusing herself, she stepped past her mistress. Finally, on reaching level footing, she contemplated the man, a twinkle of mischief in her eye. “Aren’t ye a wee bit old ter be takin’ yer leisure on the floor, sir?” He raised a brow at Erienne as that one smothered a giggle, and with a snort, got to his feet and brushed off his breeches and coatsleeve. -Christopher, Erienne, and Aggie

Having perfected his arrangements, he would get my pipe, and, lighting it, would hand it to me. Often he was obliged to strike a light for the occasion, and as the mode he adopted was entirely different from what I had ever seen or heard of before I will describe it. A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the Hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a small, bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in the corner of a kitchen cupboard at home. The islander, placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the friction creates are accumulated in a little heap. At first Kory-Kory goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his previous labours are vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops, becoming perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty particles glows with fire, and Kory-Kory, almost breathless, dismounts from his steed.

Quivering like a piece of fruit inside a dish of jello, he waited impatiently for the moment when the gelatine would kindly harden. It seemed to him that the coagulation of the world would have to be completed before he could look up to the blue sky with an easy mind and admire to his heart’s content the sunrise and sunset and the rustling of the treetops. Noguchi, like many other retired politicians, had wished to save “poetry” for his declining years. He had never had the leisure to appreciate that desiccated storage food, nor did he expect that it would taste good, but to such men as Noguchi, poetry lay hidden not in poetry itself so much as in an untroubled craving for poetry; poetry in fact symbolized the unshakable stability of the world. Poetry would make its appearance—indeed, would have to appear—when there was no further danger of the world changing, when one knew that there would be no further assaults of uncertainty, hopes, or ambitions. At such a time, he expected, the moral constraint of a lifetime and the armor of logic would melt and dissolve into poetry, like a column of white smoke rising in the autumn sky.

It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.[...]Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels, but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God. To renounce every value, therefore, amounts to renouncing rebellion in order to accept the Empire and slavery. Criticism of formal values cannot pass over the concept of freedom. Once the impossibility has been recognized of creating, by means of the forces of rebellion alone, the free individual of whom the romantics dreamed, freedom itself has also been incorporated in the movement of history. It has become freedom fighting for existence, which, in order to exist, must create itself. Identified with the dynamism of history, it cannot play its proper role until history comes to a stop, in the realization of the Universal City. Until then, every one of its victories will lead to an antithesis that will render it pointless. The German nation frees itself from its oppressors, but at the price of the freedom of every German. The individuals under a totalitarian regime are not free, even though man in the collective sense is free. Finally, when the Empire delivers the entire human species, freedom will reign over herds of slaves, who at least will be free in relation to God and, in general, in relation to every kind of transcendence. The dialectic miracle, the transformation of quantity into quality, is explained here: it is the decision to call total servitude freedom. Moreover, as in all the examples cited by Hegel and Marx, there is no objective transformation, but only a subjective change of denomination. In other words, there is no miracle. If the only hope of nihilism lies in thinking that millions of slaves can one day constitute a humanity which will be freed forever, then history is nothing but a desperate dream. Historical thought was to deliver man from subjection to a divinity; but this liberation demanded of him the most absolute subjection to historical evolution. Then man takes refuge in the permanence of the party in the same way that he formerly prostrated himself before the altar. That is why the era which dares to claim that it is the most rebellious that has ever existed only offers a choice of various types of conformity. The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

How did you find me, anyway?” “We went to your office, and your butler told us you had left to come here.” She laughed, remembering it. “Max said, ‘What, already?’ and Mr. Shaw said, rather loftily, that you could ‘wait for no man’s leisure’ and ‘tend on no man’s business.’ I gather that the man is as fond of Much Ado about Nothing as we are.” “Oh, he likes them all,” Dom said dryly. “Too many years spent as a bit player in the theater, I’m afraid. He keeps hoping that if he memorizes every play in existence, he will advance to a lead role.” He fastened his trousers. “But how did you even get away from your uncle and Blakeborough? They just let you ride off after me with Max and Lisette?” “Well, Blakeborough had no choice since I had just jilted him.” She sighed. “Oh, Lord. I have once again jilted a fiancé, haven’t I? I’m forever going to be known as the woman who jilted two men.” She made a face. “I should have calling cards made--‘Jane the Jilt,’ to go along with ‘Dom the Almighty.’” “I will never carry a card with the appellation ‘Dom the Almighty,’ so just put that right out of your head,” he said irritably. “In any case, since you’re marrying me, I’m no longer jilted.” He paused a moment to shoot her a wary glance. “You are marrying me, aren’t you?” That was even closer to asking. “Say ‘please,’” she teased. Though he eyed her askance, he pulled her close for a long, lingering kiss, then said, “Please, Jane, will you marry me?” She beamed at him. “I do believe I will.

Are you wondering what to write? Let’s start with some general statements that are useful each and every day. Then we’ll create statements that address specific emotional states like depression, anxiety, and feelings of stress. We’ll also create statements that pertain to specific situations such as sleep, relationships, parenting, job, school, health, skills, talents, and leisure activities. GENERAL STATEMENTS Here are some useful statements to write each and every day. Select two or three that resonate with you. You are not limited to these examples. You can write whatever you wish as long as it is a POSITIVE statement in the PRESENT TENSE that begins with ‘I AM’ and uses the PROGRESSIVE ‘ing’ form of the verb. At first, while learning the technique, you might want to use the statements suggested in this book. REMEMBER: Each POSITIVE, PRESENT TENSE, PROGRESSIVE statement is something you would like to be true. But you are writing it as if it already is true. In other words: I am writing positive statements. I am wanting them to be true. I am noticing that they are becoming true. I recommend writing at least two general statements every day. Here are some examples: I am embracing each and every day. I am enjoying today. I am living in the present moment. I am looking forward to today. I am having a productive day. I am staying focused. I am handling things well. I am taking things as they come. I am coping well with problems. I am focusing on the positives. I am moving smoothly through the day. I am confidently coping with challenges. I am noticing how well the day is going. I am feeling fully and deeply alive. Select two or three statements from the above list and write them here.

We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on. All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest. It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out. Incidentally, there appear to have been certain games which were regular concomitants of the feature article. The readers themselves took the active role in these games, which put to use some of their glut of information fodder. Thousands upon thousands spent their leisure hours sitting over squares and crosses made of letters of the alphabet, filling in the gaps according to certain rules. But let us be wary of seeing only the absurd or insane aspect of this, and let us abstain from ridiculing it. For these people with their childish puzzle games and their cultural feature articles were by no means innocuous children or playful Phaeacians. Rather, they dwelt anxiously among political, economic, and moral ferments and earthquakes, waged a number of frightful wars and civil wars, and their little cultural games were not just charming, meaningless childishness. These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible. They assiduously learned to drive automobiles, to play difficult card games and lose themselves in crossword puzzles--for they faced death, fear, pain, and hunger almost without defenses, could no longer accept the consolations of the churches, and could obtain no useful advice from Reason. These people who read so many articles and listened to so many lectures did not take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear, to combat the dread of death within themselves; they moved spasmodically on through life and had no belief in a tomorrow.

Marks,” he replied, crawling about on hands and knees, eyes intent on the short turf. “How did they know where to start and stop?” “Good question. I don’t see anything.” Casting an eye over the ground, though, I did see an interesting plant growing near the base of one of the tall stones. Myosotis? No, probably not; this had orange centers to the deep blue flowers. Intrigued, I started toward it. Frank, with keener hearing than I, leaped to his feet and seized my arm, hurrying me out of the circle a moment before one of the morning’s dancers entered from the other side. It was Miss Grant, the tubby little woman who, suitably enough in view of her figure, ran the sweets and pastries shop in the town’s High Street. She peered nearsightedly around, then fumbled in her pocket for her spectacles. Jamming these on her nose, she strolled about the circle, at last pouncing on the lost hair-clip for which she had returned. Having restored it to its place in her thick, glossy locks, she seemed in no hurry to return to business. Instead, she seated herself on a boulder, leaned back against one of the stone giants in comradely fashion and lighted a leisurely cigarette. Frank gave a muted sigh of exasperation beside me. “Well,” he said, resigned, “we’d best go. She could sit there all morning, by the looks of her. And I didn’t see any obvious markings in any case.” “Perhaps we could come back later,” I suggested, still curious about the blue-flowered vine. “Yes, all right.” But he had plainly lost interest in the circle itself, being now absorbed in the details of the ceremony. He quizzed me relentlessly on the way down the path, urging me to remember as closely as I could the exact wording of the calls, and the timing of the dance.

For most of our history, walking wasn’t a choice. It was a given. Walking was our primary means of locomotion. But, today, you have to choose to walk. We ride to work. Office buildings and apartments have elevators. Department stores offer escalators. Airports use moving sidewalks. An afternoon of golf is spent riding in a cart. Even a ramble around your neighborhood can be done on a Segway. Why not just put one foot in front of the other? You don’t have to live in the country. It’s great to take a walk in the woods, but I love to roam city streets, too, especially in places like New York, London, or Rome, where you can’t go half a block without making some new discovery. A long stroll slows you down, puts things in perspective, brings you back to the present moment. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking (Viking, 2000), author Rebecca Solnit writes that, “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord.” Yet in our hectic, goal-oriented culture, taking a leisurely walk isn’t always easy. You have to plan for it. And perhaps you should. Walking is good exercise, but it is also a recreation, an aesthetic experience, an exploration, an investigation, a ritual, a meditation. It fosters health and joie de vivre. Cardiologist Paul Dudley White once said, “A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.” A good walk is anything but pedestrian. It lengthens your life. It clears, refreshes, provokes, and repairs the mind. So lace up those shoes and get outside. The most ancient exercise is still the best.

My route, Sior Francis—and don't be surprised when you hear it—my route when I set out to find God... was... laziness. Yes, laziness. If I wasn't lazy I would have gone the way of respectable, upstanding people. Like everyone else I would have studied a trade—cabinet-maker, weaver, mason—and opened a shop; I would have worked all day long, and where then would I have found time to search for God? I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack: that's what I would have said to myself. All my mind and thoughts would have been occupied with how to earn my living, feed my children, how to keep the upper hand over my wife. With such worries, curse them, how could I have the time, or inclination, or the pure heart needed to think about the Almighty? But by the grace of God I was born lazy. To work, get married, have children, and make problems for myself were all too much trouble. I simply sat in the sun during winter and in the shade during summer, while at night, stretched out on my back on the roof of my house, I watched the moon and the stars. And when you watch the moon and the stars how can you expect your mind not to dwell on God? I couldn't sleep any more. Who made all that? I asked myself. And why? Who made me, and why? Where can I find God so that I may ask Him? Piety requires laziness, you know. It requires leisure—and don't listen to what others say. The laborer who lives from hand to mouth returns home each night exhausted and famished. He assaults his dinner, bolts his food, then quarrels with his wife, beats his children without rhyme or reason simply because he's tired and irritated, and afterwards he clenches his fists and sleeps. Waking up for a moment he finds his wife at his side, couples with her, clenches his fists once more, and plunges back into sleep.... Where can he find time for God? But the man who is without work, children, and wife thinks about God, at first just out of curiosity, but later with anguish.

He leaned back on his hands. And then idly turned to her. She inhaled, and exhaled an almost long-suffering sigh. And he began in a patient, almost leisurely fashion, in a voice fashioned from dark velvet, a voice that stroked over her senses until they were lulled, to lecture directly to her as if she was a girl in the schoolroom. "A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should... touch places in you that you didn't know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should... hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible..." He tipped his head back and paused to consider, as though he were envisioning this and wanted to relate every detail correctly. "It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it's very nearly pain." He waited, watching her face, allowing her to accommodate the potent words. Her mouth was parted. Her breathing short. She couldn't look away. His eyes and voice held her as fast as if he'd cradled her face with his hands. And as he said them, an echo of sensation sounded in her, like a remembered dream, an instinct awakened. She thought about Mars getting ready to give Venus a good pleasuring. Stop, she should say. "And...?" she whispered. "It should make you do battle for control of your senses and your will. It should make you want to do things you'd never dreamed you'd want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you've ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact..." he paused for effect "haunt you for the rest of your life." She sat wordlessly when he was done. As though waiting for the last notes of a stormy, discordant symphony to echo into silence. 'The most intense physical pleasure.' His words reverberated in her. As if her body contained the ancient wisdom of what that meant, and now, having been reminded, craved it.

My internal dialogue went something like this: leave it open!… but that would be strange if someone walks by… who cares? I care! Why do I care? Just close it! You can’t close it; you’re in your underwear!! and if the door is closed you might… do… something… Here is the situation: I’m in my underwear in my room with Quinn and my alcohol laden inhibitions are low, low, low. It’s like closing yourself up in a Godiva chocolate shop, of course you’re going to sample something… Don’t sample anything!! Don’t even smell anything!! If you smell it you’ll want to try it. Don’t smell him anymore. No. More. Smelling. I hope he doesn’t see the empty bottle of wine… Put some clothes on. Is it weird if I dress in front of him? I want some chocolate. Ah! Clothes!! Finally the door closed even though I hadn’t made a conscious decision to do so. I took a steadying breath then turned and followed, trailing some distance behind him and crossing to the opposite side of the room from where he was currently standing. I spotted my workout shirt on the bed and attempted to surreptitiously put it on. Quinn’s back was to me and he seemed to be meandering around the space; he didn’t appear to be in any hurry. He paused for a short moment next to my laptop and stared at the screen. He looked lost and a little vulnerable. Smash, smash, smash I took this opportunity to rapidly pull on some sweatpants and a sweatshirt from my suitcase. The sweatshirt was on backwards, with the little ‘V’ in the back and the tag in the front, but I ignored it and grabbed my jacket from the closet behind me and soundlessly slipped it on too. He walked to the window and surveyed the view as I hurriedly pushed my feet into socks and hand knit slippers, given to me by Elizabeth last Christmas. I was a tornado of frenzied activity, indiscriminately and quietly pulling on clothes. I may have been overcompensating for my earlier state of undress. However, it wasn’t until he, with leisurely languid movements, turned toward me that I finally stopped dressing; my hands froze on my head as I pulled on a white cabled hat, another hand knit gift from Elizabeth. Quinn sighed, “I need to talk to you about your sist-” but

For some reason newspapers are not the laboratories and experimental stations of the mind that they could be, to the public's great benefit, but usually only its warehouses and stock exchanges. If he were alive today, Plato—to take him as an example, because along with a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived—would certainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchanging, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out instantaneously for its content of reason and reality. He would have supposed a newspaper office to be that topos uranios, that heavenly realm of ideas, which he has described so impressively that to this day all the better class of people are still idealists when talking to their children or employees. And of course if Plato were to walk suddenly into a news editor’s office today and prove himself to be indeed that great author who died over two thousand years ago he would be a tremendous sensation and would instantly be showered with the most lucrative offers. If he were then capable of writing a volume of philosophical travel pieces in three weeks, and a few thousand of his well-known short stories, perhaps even turn one or the other of his older works into film, he could undoubtedly do very well for himself for a considerable period of time. The moment his return had ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little column on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section (but in the easiest and most lively style possible, not heavy: remember the readers), and the features editor would add that he was sorry, but he could use such a contribution only once a month or so, because there were so many other good writers to be considered. And both of these gentlemen would end up feeling that they had done quite a lot for a man who might indeed be the Nestor of European publicists but still was a bit outdated, and certainly not in a class for current newsworthiness with a man like, for instance, Paul Arnheim.

Meanwhile, in a lecture at the Sverdlov University two years later, under the pressure of outside events and interior realities, Lenin spoke with a precision which left little doubt about the indefinite continuation of the proletarian super-State. "With this machine, or rather this weapon [the State], we shall crush every form of exploitation, and when there are no longer any possibilities of exploitation left on earth, no more people owning land or factories, no more people gorging themselves under the eyes of others who are starving, when such things become impossible, then and only then shall we cast this machine aside. Then there will be neither State nor exploitation." Therefore as long as there exists on earth, and no longer in a specific society, one single oppressed person and one proprietor, so long the State will continue to exist. It also will be obliged to increase in strength during this period so as to vanquish one by one the injustices, the governments responsible for injustice, the obstinately bourgeois nations, and the people who are blind to their own interests. And when, on an earth that has finally been subdued and purged of enemies, the final iniquity shall have been drowned in the blood of the just and the unjust, then the State, which has reached the limit of all power, a monstrous idol covering the entire earth, will be discreetly absorbed into the silent city of Justice. Under the easily predictable pressure of adverse imperialism, the imperialism of justice was born, in reality, with Lenin. But imperialism, even the imperialism of justice, has no other end but defeat or world empire. Until then it has no other means but injustice. From now on, the doctrine is definitively identified with the prophecy. For the sake of justice in the far-away future, it authorizes injustice throughout the entire course of history and becomes the type of mystification which Lenin detested more than anything else in the world. It contrives the acceptance of injustice, crime, and falsehood by the promise of a miracle. Still greater production, still more power, uninterrupted labor, incessant suffering, permanent war, and then a moment will come when universal bondage in the totalitarian empire will be miraculously changed into its opposite: free leisure in a universal republic. Pseudo-revolutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality.

Besides the fact that you’re a scoundrel at the gaming tables,” she responded tartly, “I’m beginning to suspect that you’re a womanizing rake.” Christopher grinned leisurely as his perusal swept her. “I’ve been a long time at sea. However, I doubt that in your case my reaction would vary had I just left the London Court.” Erienne’s eyes flared with poorly suppressed ire. The insufferable egotist! Did he dare think he could find a willing wench at the back door of the mayor’s cottage? “I’m sure that Claudia Talbot would welcome your company, sir. Why don’t you ride on over to see her? I hear his lordship traveled off to London this morning.” He laughed softly at her sneering tones. “I’d rather be courting you.” “Why?” she scoffed. “Because you want to thwart my father?” His smiling eyes captured hers and held them prisoner until she felt a warmth suffuse her cheeks. He answered with slow deliberation. “Because you are the prettiest maid I’ve ever seen, and I’d like to get to know you better. And of course, we should delve into this matter of your accidents more thoroughly, too.” Twin spots of color grew in her cheeks, but the deepening dusk did much to hide her blush. Lifting her nose primly in the air, Erienne turned aside, tossing him a cool glance askance. “How many women have you told that to, Mr. Seton?” A crooked smile accompanied his reply. “Several, I suppose, but I’ve never lied. Each had their place in time, and to this date, you are the best I’ve seen.” He reached out and taking a handful of the cracklings, he chewed the crisp morsels as he awaited her reaction. A flush of anger spread to the delicate tips of her ears, and icy fire smoldered in the deep blue-violet pools. “You conceited, unmitigated boor!” Her voice was as cold and as flat as the Russian steppes. “Do you think to add me to your long string of conquests?” Her chilled contempt met him face to face until he rose and towered above her. His eyes grew distant, and he reached out a finger to flip a curl that had strayed from beneath the kerchief. “Conquest?” His voice was soft and deeply resonant. “You mistake me, Erienne. In the rush of a moment’s lust, there are purchased favors, and these are for the greater part forgotten. The times that are cherished and remembered are not taken, are not given, but shared, and are thus treasured as a most blissful event.” He lifted his coat on his fingertips and slung it over his shoulder. “I do not ask that you yield to me, nor do I desire to conquer you. All I plead is that you grant me moments now and then that I might present my case, to the end that we could share a tender moment at some distant time.” -Erienne & Christopher

It’s no wonder your grandmother despairs of you. God only knows what a trial you are to your poor parents.” The humor vanished abruptly from his face. “Sadly, my parents are too dead to be overly concerned about my behavior.” His words were flip, but the sudden glint of grief in his eyes told another tale. “Please forgive me,” she said hastily, cursing her quick tongue. “It’s awful to lose your parents. I know that better than anyone.” “No need for apologies.” He pushed away from the door. “They despaired of me long before they died, so you weren’t far off the mark.” “Still, it was very wrong of me to-“ “Come now, Miss Butterfield, this has naught to do with my proposal. Will you pretend to be my fiancée or not?” When she hesitated, he went on with a hint of anger, “I don’t see why you make such a fuss over it. It’s not as if I’m asking you to do anything wicked.” That ridiculous remark banished her brief moment of sympathy. “You’re asking me to lie! To deceive a woman for the sake of your purpose, whatever that is. It goes against every moral principle-“ “And threatening to stab a man does not?” He cast her a thin smile. “Think of it as playing a role, like an actress. You and your cousin will be guests at my estate for a week or two, entirely at your leisure.” A dark gleam shone in his eyes. “I can even set up an effigy of myself for you to stab at will.” “That does sound tempting,” she shot back. “As for Freddy there, he can ride and hunt and play cards with my brothers. It’s better entertainment than he’d find in the gaol.” “As long as you feed me, sir,” Freddy said, “I’ll follow you anywhere.” “Freddy!” Maria cried. “What? That blasted inn where we’re staying is flea-ridden and cold as a witch’s tit. Plus, you keep such tight hold on my purse strings that I’m famished all the time. What’s wrong with helping this fellow if it means we finally sleep in decent beds? And it’s not a big thing, your pretending to be betrothed to him.” “I’m already betrothed, thank you very much,” she shot back. “And what about Nathan? While we’re off deceiving this man’s poor grandmother, Nathan might be hurt or in trouble. You expect me just to give up searching for him so you can get a decent meal?” “And keep from being hanged,” Freddy pointed out. “Let’s not forget that.” “Ah, the missing fiancé,” Lord Stoneville said coldly. “I did wonder when you would bring him back into it.” She glowered at him. “I never let him out of it. he’s the reason I’m here.” “So you say.” That inflamed her temper. “Now see here, you insufferable, arrogant-“ “Fine. If you insist on clinging to your wild story, how about this: while you pretend to be my fiancée, I’ll hire someone to look for fiancé. A simple trade of services.

What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?" "...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business. "Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines. "The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.' "Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.

Sophia counted six clangs of the bell before Mr. Grayson jolted fully awake. He looked up at her, startled and flushed. As though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. She smiled. Rubbing his eyes, he rose to his feet. “Will I shock you, Miss Turner, if I remove my coat?” Sophia felt a twinge of disappointment. When would he stop treating her with this forced politesse, maintaining this distance between them? How many tales of passionate encounters must she spin before he finally understood that she was no less wicked than he, only less experienced? Perhaps it was time to take more aggressive measures. “By all means, remove your coat.” She tilted her eyes to cast him a saucy look. “Mr. Grayson, I’m not an innocent schoolgirl. You will have to try harder than that to shock me.” His lips curved in a subtle smile. “I’ll take that under advisement.” She watched as he shook the heavy topcoat from his shoulders and peeled it down his arms. He draped the coat over the back of a chair before sitting back down. The damp lawn of his shirt clung to his shoulders and arms. A pleasant shiver rippled down to Sophia’s toes. “It doesn’t suit you anyway,” she said, loading her brush with paint. He gave her a bemused look as he unknotted his cravat and pulled it loose. She inwardly rejoiced. Now, if only she could convince him to do away with his waistcoat…” “The coat,” she explained, when his eyebrows remained raised. “It doesn’t suit you.” “Why not? Is the color wrong?” The sudden seriousness in his tone surprised her. “No, the color is perfectly fine. It’s the cut that’s unflattering. That style is tailored to gentlemen of leisure, lean and slender. But as you are so fond of telling me, Mr. Grayson, you are no gentleman. Your shoulders are too broad for fashion.” “Is that so?” He chuckled as he undid his cuffs. Sophia stared as he turned up his sleeves, baring one tanned muscled forearm, then the other. “What style of garments would best suit me, then?” “Other than a toga?” He rewarded her jest with an easy smile. Sophia dabbed at her canvas, pleased to be making progress at last. “I think you need something less restrictive. Something like a sailor’s garb. Or perhaps a captain’s.” “Truly?” His gaze became thoughtful, then searching. “And even dressed in plain seaman’s clothes, would you still find me handsome enough? In my own way?” “No.” She allowed his brow to crease a moment before continuing. “I should find you surpassingly handsome. In every way.” She mixed paint slowly on her palette and gave him a coy look. “And what of my attire? If you had your way, how would you dress me?” “If I had my way…I wouldn’t.” A thrill raced through Sophia’s body. Her cheeks burned, and her eyes dropped to her lap. She forced her gave back up to meet his. Now was not the moment to lose courage. Nothing held sway over a man’s intentions like jealousy. “Gervais once kept me naked for an entire day so he could paint me.” He blinked. “He painted a nude study of you?” “No. He painted me. I took off my clothes and stretched out on the bed while he dressed me in pigment. Gervais called me his perfect, blank canvas. He painted lavender orchids here”-she traced a small circle just above her breast-“and little vines twining down…” She slid her hand down and noted with delight how his eyes followed its path. “I feigned the grippe and refused to bathe for a week.” Desire and jealous rage warred in his countenance, yet he remained as immobile as one of Lord Elgin’s marble sculptures. What would it take to spur the man into action?

Lady Thornton, how very good of you to find the time to pay us a social call! Would it be too pushing of me to inquire as to your whereabouts during the last six weeks?” At that moment Elizabeth’s only thought was that if Ian’s barrister felt this way about her, how much more hatred she would face when she confronted Ian himself. “I-I can imagine what you must be thinking,” she began in a conciliatory manner. He interrupted sarcastically, “Oh, I don’t think you can, madam. If you could, you’d be quite horrified at this moment.” “I can explain everything,” Elizabeth burst out. “Really?” he drawled blightingly. “A pity you didn’t try to do that six weeks ago!” “I’m here to do it now,” Elizabeth cried, clinging to a slender thread of control. “Begin at your leisure,” he drawled sarcastically. “here are only three hundred people across the hall awaiting your convenience.” Panic and frustration made Elizabeth’s voice shake and her temper explode. “Now see here, sir, I have not traveled day and night so that I can stand here while you waste time insulting me! I came here the instant I read a paper and realized my husband is in trouble. I’ve come to prove I’m alive and unharmed, and that my brother is also alive!” Instead of looking pleased or relieved he looked more snide than before. “Do tell, madam. I am on tenterhooks to hear the whole of it.” “Why are you doing this?” Elizabeth cried. “For the love of heaven, I’m on your side!” “Thank God we don’t have more like you.” Elizabeth steadfastly ignored that and launched into a swift but complete version of everything that had happened from the moment Robert came up behind her at Havenhurst. Finished, she stood up, ready to go in and tell everyone across the hall the same thing, but Delham continued to pillory her with his gaze, watching her in silence above his steepled fingertips. “Are we supposed to believe that Banbury tale?” he snapped at last. “Your brother is alive, but he isn’t here. Are we supposed to accept the word of a married woman who brazenly traveled as man and wife with another man-“ “With my brother,” Elizabeth retorted, bracing her palms on the desk, as if by sheer proximity she could make him understand. “So you want us to believe. Why, Lady Thornton? Why this sudden interest in your husband’s well-being?” “Delham!” the duchess barked. “Are you mad? Anyone can see she’s telling the truth-even I-and I wasn’t inclined to believe a word she said when she arrived at my house! You are tearing into her for no reason-“ Without moving his eyes from Elizabeth, Mr. Delham said shortly, “Your grace, what I’ve been doing is nothing to what the prosecution will try to do to her story. If she can’t hold up in here, she hasn’t a chance out there!” “I don’t understand this at all!” Elizabeth cried with panic and fury. “By being here I can disprove that my husband has done away with me. And I have a letter from Mrs. Hogan describing my brother in detail and stating that we were together. She will come here herself if you need her, only she is with child and couldn’t travel as quickly as I had to do. This is a trial to prove whether or not my husband is guilty of those crimes. I know the truth, and I can prove he isn’t.” “You’re mistaken, Lady Thornton,” Delham said in a bitter voice. “Because of its sensational nature and the wild conjecture in the press, this is no longer a quest for truth and justice in the House of Lords. This is now an amphitheater, and the prosecution is in the center of the stage, playing a starring role before an audience of thousands all over England who will read about it in the papers. They’re bent on giving a stellar performance, and they’ve been doing just that. Very well,” he said after a moment. “Let’s see how well you can deal with them.

ONCE YOU’VE HOOKED readers, your next task is to put your early chapters to work introducing your characters, settings, and stakes. The first 20-25% of the book comprises your setup. At first glance, this can seem like a tremendous chunk of story to devote to introductions. But if you expect readers to stick with you throughout the story, you first have to give them a reason to care. This important stretch is where you accomplish just that. Mere curiosity can only carry readers so far. Once you’ve hooked that sense of curiosity, you then have to deepen the pull by creating an emotional connection between them and your characters. These “introductions” include far more than just the actual moment of introducing the characters and settings or explaining the stakes. In themselves, the presentations of the characters probably won’t take more than a few scenes. After the introduction is when your task of deepening the characters and establishing the stakes really begins. The first quarter of the book is the place to compile all the necessary components of your story. Anton Chekhov’s famous advice that “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired” is just as important in reverse: if you’re going to have a character fire a gun later in the book, that gun should be introduced in the First Act. The story you create in the following acts can only be assembled from the parts you’ve shown readers in this First Act. That’s your first duty in this section. Your second duty is to allow readers the opportunity to learn about your characters. Who are these people? What is the essence of their personalities? What are their core beliefs (even more particularly, what are the beliefs that will be challenged or strengthened throughout the book)? If you can introduce a character in a “characteristic moment,” as we talked about earlier, you’ll be able to immediately show readers who this person is. From there, the plot builds as you deepen the stakes and set up the conflict that will eventually explode in the Inciting and Key Events. Authors sometimes feel pressured to dive right into the action of their stories, at the expense of important character development. Because none of us wants to write a boring story, we can overreact by piling on the explosions, fight sequences, and high-speed car chases to the point we’re unable to spend important time developing our characters. Character development is especially important in this first part of the story, since readers need to understand and sympathize with the characters before they’re hit with the major plot revelations at the quarter mark, halfway mark, and three-quarters mark. Summer blockbusters are often guilty of neglecting character development, but one enduring exception worth considering is Stephen Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. No one would claim the film is a leisurely character study, but it rises far above the monster movie genre through its expert use of pacing and its loving attention to character, especially in its First Act. It may surprise some viewers to realize the action in this movie doesn’t heat up until a quarter of the way into the film—and even then we have no scream-worthy moments, no adrenaline, and no extended action scenes until halfway through the Second Act. Spielberg used the First Act to build suspense and encourage viewer loyalty to the characters. By the time the main characters arrive at the park, we care about them, and our fear for their safety is beginning to manifest thanks to a magnificent use of foreshadowing. We understand that what is at stake for these characters is their very lives. Spielberg knew if he could hook viewers with his characters, he could take his time building his story to an artful Climax.